01 Nov New Orleans Report + Matador Playlist 10/3/24

I know, I know. I said that the more frequently I do these playlists the easier and faster it becomes to get the YouTube videos all lined up and posted, etc etc, and now it’s been weeks—several weeks—since my last Matador set list went online! That’s, like, the equivalent of at least a year in intrawebby/election year/news cycle time! Shameful, I admit, but there are reasons for that. Let’s call them excuses.

It was a busy week, my last week in Santa Fe. I had peeps in town, it was my birthday week, I was prepping to hit the road, trying to keep active on the ol’ Ink Cycle while the warm weather held out, juggling various domestic upkeep activities, so on and so forth. On Monday I hit the road for Ink South, spending a night deep in the heart of Tejas, hanging out with dearest Hailey in Austin. As I am prone to say, Tejas ain’t gettin’ any smaller and I ain’t gettin’ any younger.

As fate would have it, the second leg of my trip brought me to the western banks of the Mighty Mississippi right as Baton Rouge rush hour was kicking into high gear. This is often the crappiest part of these NM to LA excursions. The traffic leading up to and over the Horace Wilkinson Bridge (yes—that is its official name) is so far in excess of what the existing infrastructure can handle that it’s simply absurd. New Orleans dealt with its cross-river issues decades ago by augmenting the original 1958 bridge with an identical structure that opened in 1988 (only four years later than promised!), but at the Red Stick, whichever way you’re headed, regardless of time of day, you’re basically screwed to one degree or another.

There are alternative routes. If you’re coming from the north, say, down I-49 from Shreveport, you can cut east on state highway 190 at Opelousas and cross the river north of Red Stick on the other Huey P. Long Bridge—a diminutive 1940-vintage version of its much larger and grander 1935 namesake west of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish. From there you can hook up with I-10 on the east side of Red Stick for the final assault on the Crescent City. If you’re heading east or west across the state you can avoid Baton Rouge altogether by taking state highway 90, which dips well to the south through New Iberia and Morgan City. Highway 90 is a more circuitous route with lower speed limits and many stop lights but at least you can reasonably expect to keep moving for the majority of the time.

All in all, it’s probably a wash as to how much time—if any—one might save by taking either one of these options. The best bet is to aim to pass through the Red Stick in early afternoon or after 9:00 at night. But beware: If there’s an an LSU home game in the works you’re definitely screwed, so the best option would be to avoid Saturdays altogether. Regardless of any other considerations, if there’s an accident anywhere along the I-10 corridor east or west of Baton Rouge, you’re totally screwed there too: The extended sections of elevated causeway over the Atchafalaya Basin and the expansive marshes between Sorrento and Louis Armstrong Airport leave little room for error. If some Saints-crazed yayhoo racks it up with a semi truck and you don’t have a heavy-lift helicopter at your disposal, you’re just gonna have to sit and wait it out.

Now, one could ostensibly hook up with Interstate 12 east of Baton Rouge, bypass the swamps west of New Orleans, and then take the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway south from Mandeville, but that storied 24-mile span is even more susceptible to the whims of nature and erratic driving than I-10. Therefore, an option to consider only when there is no other alternative at hand.

The new governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry (a slavering MAGA ideologue, whom, I’m horrified to admit, there is a reasonable chance that I’m distantly related to) has professed that a new bridge for the Baton Rouge metrofuck will be a priority for his administration. Based upon the latest prognostications, however, there’s no reason to realistically expect any actual relief will arrive for at least another decade. Or two. By which time we’ll certainly have our flying cars anyway… right? Right.

In the meantime, there’s not much for it but to surrender to the whims of the traffic gods and search for something diverting on the radio. Should one find one’s self becalmed mid-span on the ol’ Horace Wilkinson, as so often is the case, it can be a disconcerting experience to feel the surface of the bridge bouncing up and down as the 18-wheeler traffic on the other side rumbles past (no matter which direction you’re headed, the traffic headed in the opposite direction always seems to flowing smoothly). It’s rather unnerving to be suspended 200 feet above the Mississippi River whilst being jostled about like you’re parked inside a bouncy castle. Pack a life jacket if you’re feeling a bit squeamish.

Once settled in at Ink South I hit the road on the ol’ Ink Cycle as soon as is practical for a circuit of Audubon Park and the levee trail. The first order of business in the Park is to locate my old friends, Goose and Swan. They have their traditional hangs on the Audubon Park lagoon, usually near the Prytania Street entrance opposite Bird Island, but they do mix it up now and again. This time around it took a couple of visits before I found them hanging out by the Newman Bandstand. The seasonal influx of black-bellied whistling ducks has made the vicinity of Bird Island rather crowded and noisy. These orange-billed critters are native to Mexico and first started appearing in significant numbers in the Crescent City area about four years ago. I cannot say whether or not they harbor rapists or drug dealers amongst their flocks, but they are apparently finding New Orleans to be to their liking. Some black-bellied whistlers have given up on all that migratory silliness and have seen fit to remain in residence year-round—at least until they’re all rounded up and deported, of course.

Once Goose and Swan are confirmed as present and accounted for I can relax and settle back into my usual routines. In my personal cosmology, Goose and Swan are bellwether mascots for the city. Like the ravens at the Tower of London and the Barbary macaques of Gibraltar, as long as Goose and Swan continue to paddle peacefully about in the Audubon Park lagoon the City That Forgot to Care can stagger onwards towards its unknowable destiny for a while longer. Their saving grace extends across a city that, for the most part, remains largely unaware of their befeathered beneficence.

In a late breaking development, I am thrilled to report that Swan made his (Her? Their?) small-screen debut in Season 2, Episode 8 of the generally quite ridiculous New Orleans-centric Showtime crime drama Your Honor (now streaming on Netflix). Swan’s cameo appears 49 minutes into the episode when disgraced former judge Michael Desiato (Bryan Cranston) sits down for a chin-wag with Asst. U.S. Attorney Olivia Delmont (Rosie Perez) at a gussied-up Newman Bandstand in Audubon Park. You have to look quickly and closely, but there is good ol’ Swan, paddling regally through the lagoon in the background of the scene. Congratulations, Swan! I’m so proud of you!!

Up on the levee trail, the river’s moods are in a constant state of flux but otherwise there’s little significant change to report—for the moment. The ol’ Batture Murder House is still standing (barely) and the array of barge, tug boat, oil rig, salvage and aggregate businesses lining the batture remain the same as ever. However, the old Bisso Marine facility, immediately upriver from the Audubon Zoo, has recently been sold and is slated for development by a couple of homeboy entrepreneurs. The ten-acre site has been a marine salvage yard since the mid-19th century and the new owners aim to transform it into a complex of restaurants and bars, all oriented towards an expansive lawn on the river-facing slope of the levee. The developers envision parking sufficient to accommodate 400 cars. That’s a lot of cars and a lot of people.

Upriver from the former Bisso site the batture is populated by Orleans and Jefferson Parish water intake facilities, cross-river power pylons, industrial sites, the baker’s dozen enclave of batture camps straddling the parish line, and, last but not least, the expansive Army Corps of Engineers complex just below Carrollton. Below Audubon Park the Port of New Orleans dominates over five miles of riverfront, extending down to the foot of Julia Street, where the downtown retail/dining/entertainment complex takes over.

The city’s most ambitious riverfront project is the development of the 40-acre site off Tchoupitoulas at Race Street, just upriver from the Morial Convention Center. Groundbreaking on this project, known as the River District Neighborhood, took place in November of last year but whatever progress has thus far been made is not yet visible from the street. I’m hoping that there’s some way the old Market Street Power Plant building can be rehabilitated as part of the project—its two soaring metal smokestacks have been city landmarks since 1905 (the plant generated its last watt in 1973).

The 22-acre Naval Support Activity yards at the junction of the Mississippi and the Industrial Canal in the lower Bywater are the other riverfront area being eyeballed for purposes in service of filthy lucre. That project has been mired in controversy—shocking, I know!—since Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration siphoned $40 million in federal grants away from its intended purpose to revitalize the facility to create jobs, provide housing and offer homeless services. Landrieu’s successor in the thankless office, LaToya Cantrell, has apparently not been able to move anything forward regarding the Navy yards either, and she’s got her own oysters to fry, as we shall see below.

So, long story short: A variety of changes are afoot along the river, from Uptown to the Bywater, but the one that will likely have the most impact as regards Your Humble Narrator would be the Bisso site—imaginatively imagined by its new owners as ‘The Batture.’ There are many regulatory hurdles to be dealt with—federal, state, and local bodies will all have to weigh in, including the Army Corps, the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, the Orleans Parish Levee District and the Port of New Orleans. And then there are the neighbors. Two pricey condo towers directly overlook the Bisso/Batture site, not to mention all the folks who live along the narrow streets off of Leake Avenue between Broadway and the Audubon Zoo. Those folks have banded together as the River Triangle Association to voice their concerns about that 400-car parking lot and the prospect of day/night revelry in their collective back yard. I would just have to ride my bike through it, not live with it, but it concerns me too. Unless the enterprising entrepreneurs figure out a way to transport people to their venue by boat I can’t imagine how The Batture development wouldn’t result in some pretty significant degree of mayhem upending the tranquility of an otherwise sleepy corner of Uptown. Stay tuned…

As for the rest of it, the Navy Yards might as well be in Plaquemines Parish so far as I’m concerned, and it appears that nothing is going to be happening there anytime soon. The River District Neighborhood is just a few minutes away down Tchoupitoulas from Ink South, but it probably won’t have much of an impact on my world… unless I decide to take up golf (one of those horrifying urban driving ranges is included among the proposed ‘amenities’—despite there being construction of an identical facility already in progress just a few miles away). Urban renewal is a double-edged sword and while it makes sense that these moldering properties scattered across the city should be rehabilitated and put to some constructive use, the concept of the ‘the greater good’ can get pretty fuzzy—especially in this town. Progress, folks: Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

One other item of recent note in New Orleans: The invasion of the Swifties. Miss Americana herself brought her Eras tour to the Louisiana (aka Caesars) Stupordome for three—count ‘em, THREE—sold out nights last weekend. That’s just under 200,000 Swifties in total—a feat no other artiste has ever pulled off. I’ve attended a few concerts in the Dome over the years (most notably a wild confab in July, 1978, featuring the Doobie Brothers, Van Halen and the Rolling Stones, if you can believe that) and I found the joint to be a distinctly unappealing venue for music. Concert sound reinforcement technology has come a long way since then, no doubt, so perhaps the sound was pristine for Ms. Swift and the sight lines were unimpeded. Whatever went on inside the Stupordome, outside the stadium the Swifties ruled the town for the week—filling the restaurants, bars and hotels, clogging the thoroughfares and the streetcars. If I had been of a more entrepreneurial bent I might have been able to get in on the Swift Grift myself by renting out Ink South for extortionate rates to out-of-town concert attendees. Wasn’t ever gonna happen though. I shudder to think of how long it would have taken me to vacuum all the sequins out of the carpet. The Eras tour is estimated to have had a $500,000,000 impact on the local economy. That’s 500 MILLIONS, folks. You could fix a lot of New Orleans potholes with that kind of money, but I ain’t holding my breath.

So, let us move on to Madame Mayoress LaToya Cantrell, shall we? It seems that the Mayor has been under the gun to one degree or another since her elevation from City Council to City Hall in May of 2018. Controversies regarding inappropriate use of taxpayer-funded credit cards, Cantrell family tax debt, prohibited travel upgrades, expenditures for a personal stylist and security and the Mayor’s generally pugnacious and unapologetic attitude in regards to all of it culminated in a recall petition being filed in August, 2022. The petition failed to accumulate the required number of signatures, so no recall vote was ever held but the heat on the Mayor did not let up.

In late 2022 reports of Cantrell spending time in a luxurious Upper Pontalba apartment owned by the city began to appear in local media. This news was soon followed by rampant speculation regarding the Mayor’s relationship with an NOPD officer named Jeffrey Vappie who was assigned to Cantrell’s security detail. It seemed that Vappie was spending long hours in the Pontalba in the company of the Mayor, including days when he wasn’t assigned to her. The Mayor was a married woman throughout this period (Vappie was married as well) but her husband, Jason, passed away in August, 2023, reportedly from a heart attack. Jason Cantrell had faded from public view during Cantrell’s second term during which time the Mayor’s residency at the Pontalba apartment had steadily increased. In January of 2024 Vappie’s wife filed for divorce, naming the Mayor as party to her petition. Vappie has since been indicted for falsifying his NOPD timesheets and has entered a plea of not guilty. It has been alleged that Mayor Cantrell passed over naming the city’s interim Chief of Police, Michelle Woodfork, for the position of permanent Chief when Woodfork allowed an internal investigation into Vappie’s timesheets to proceed against the Mayor’s wishes.

The ruckus elevated to new levels when another Upper Pontalba resident released photos and video of the Mayor and Vappie dining together on the second floor balcony of a restaurant directly across Chartres Street from the Pontalba. The city demanded that Cantrell relinquish the keys to the Pontalba apartment and Cantrell sued her neighbor, a real estate agent named Anne Breaud, for stalking. Questions have since arisen regarding the methods utilized by the Mayor to obtain confidential background information on Breaud and Breaud has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Mayor and members of her staff.

Amidst all of this unseemly wrangling rumors of an impending federal indictment of the Mayor have been persistently swirling. The rumors involve a colorful fireplug of a man—a Syrian-born former boxer, restaurateur and painting contractor by the name of Fouad Zeton, aka the Syrian Destroyer and/or Fred the Painter. Zeton is accused of having been a conduit for funneling bribes from a local electrical inspector named Randy Farrell to the Mayor. Zeton has parlayed contacts made through his house painting business into a portfolio of relationships with influential local politicos, beginning back in the 1980s with Mayor Dutch Morial. His relationship with Mayor Cantrell extends back to 2015 during her tenure on the City Council. She endorsed a zoning variance to allow Zeton to open a restaurant on the ground floor of the Magnolia Mansion—the grand Garden District property at the corner of Prytania and Jackson Avenue of which he was a part owner. The FBI raided the Magnolia Mansion and Zeton’s home in May, 2021, as part of an insurance fraud investigation, confiscating his cell phone in the process. Zeton cashed out of the Magnolia Mansion in 2023 and the property is now listed as ‘Permanently Closed.’ It still boasts a 2.0 rating out of a possible 5.0 on Yelp.

In April of last year Zeton pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in regard to artwork he claimed was stolen from his Lakeview home in 2019. The scam was undertaken with the assistance of Christian Claus, an NOPD officer whom Zeton falsely claimed not to know. Claus (no relation to Santa, one hopes) and Zeton collaborated on a fraudulent police report stating the value of the stolen artwork at $128,500 when, in fact, the paintings were not stolen and were worth significantly less than that amount. Zeton’s cell phone—the one seized by the Feds in 2021—has become a central focus of the investigation into Zeton’s connections to Mayor Cantrell, Randy Farrell and who knows who or what else. Zeton’s sentencing for the wire fraud case has been delayed to next year and there is speculation that he is utilizing the time to hammer out a deal to stay out of prison.

All a bit boggling of the ol’ brainpan, but that’s New Orleans for ya.

If something about Fouad Zeton sounds vaguely familiar it may be because of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, another Syrian-born painting contractor whose harrowing exploits in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina were recounted in Dave Eggers’ 2009 book, Zeitoun. Adbulrahman Zeitoun’s circumstances took a serious tumble following his lionization by Eggers, when he was accused of contracting to have his ex-wife, son, and another man murdered. He was acquitted of those charges but was later convicted of felony stalking and ordered to be extradited back to Syria—a fate he avoided due to the ongoing Syrian civil war. As to whether there is any connection between F. Zeton and A. Zeitoun, I have no idea.

As of this writing Mayor Cantrell remains un-indicted, but the circles of suspicion swirling around her continue to swirl ever tighter. My informed local sources advise me that the smart money is on Cantrell not being served with papers until after February 9, 2025—the date of Stupor Bowl LIX, not coincidentally. Our Pigskin Overlords have apparently deemed it unseemly and a potential blot on the sanctity of the Grand Scrum should the chief executive of the game’s host city be under federal indictment.

Whichever way the beignet crumbles, Cantrell terms out of office in spring, 2026. More—much more—is undoubtedly to come.

So that’s pretty much it for this edition of the New Orleans Report. Thrilling stuff, I know. Oh, and there was Halloween. Last year Halloween at Ink South was pretty lively so I acquired a pumpkin from Rouse’s, carved a jolly looking jack-o-lantern, and laid in about 40 pounds of quality, name-brand candy. Then the rain started. Two small groups of trick or treaters trickled down the sidewalk well after dark and that was it. A bit of a bummer, but at least I won’t have to buy Reese’s Cups for another year.

I should be back in the Matador DJ booth on November 14th and in the meantime, here is a long overdue playlist to tide you, my Gentle Reader(s), over to the next installment.

The YouTube playlist link is below—go ahead and click on it. You know you want to.

Matador Playlist 10/3/24

Grammar of Life – Charles Bukowski
Rocket USA – Suicide
Ramble On – Led Zeppelin
Twenty Four Hours – Joy Division
Some Kind of Wonderful – Grand Funk
Family Tradition – Hank Williams Jr. (request)
Smokestack Lightnin’ – Howlin’ Wolf
My War – Black Flag
Why Don’t We Try Anymore – the Knitters
Teenage Lust – MC5
I Got You (At the End of the Century) – Wilco
Pedal Pusher – Abdominal
Fire of Love – the Gun Club
Long Snake Moan – PJ Harvey
Cissy Strut – the Meters
Givin’ the Dog A Bone – AC/DC
Baby, I Love You – Aretha Franklin
Sheena Is A Punk Rocker – the Ramones
Sex and Candy – Marcy Playground
Hop, Skip and Jump – the Collins Kids
Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man – Grinderman
Thursday – Morphine
Fatback – Link Wray
Shadrach – Beastie Boys
Fell In Love With a Girl – White Stripes
Personality Crisis – the New York Dolls
Trap Queen – Fetty Wap (request)
Jump, Jive and Wail – Louis Prima
Portabella – Young Nudy (request)
Public Image – Public Image, Ltd.
Mandinka – Sinead O’Connor
Tutti-Frutti – Little Richard
Thunderstruck – AC/DC
Pull Up to the Bumper – Grace Jones
No Bells on Sunday – Mark Lanegan Band
The World’s A Mess, It’s In My Kiss – X
American Girl – Tom Petty
Good Vibrations – the Beach Boys
Back in the Saddle – Aerosmith
Ashes to Ashes – David Bowie
Love Shack – B 52s
Living After Midnight- Judas Priest
Ooh Las Vegas – Gram Parsons
How Many More Times – Led Zeppelin
Tired of Waiting for You – the Kinks
Change the Locks – Lucinda Williams
The Ocean – Led Zeppelin (request)
What Is Love? – Howard Jones
The Payback – James Brown
Star – David Bowie
Suspicious Minds – Elvis Presley
Help I’m Alive – Metric
I Can’t Quit You Babe – Led Zeppelin
I Fought the Law – the Clash
George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues – Drive-By Truckers
Motorcycle Leather Boy – Guitar Wolf
Buddy Holly – Weezer
Aces of Spades – Motörhead
The Great Man’s Secrets – Magazine
TV Party – Black Flag (request)
Revolution – the Beatles
Nearly Lost You – Screaming Trees
Rock and Roll All Nite – KISS
Blitzkrieg Bop – the Ramones
Y Control – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Want to Go to the Party – Courtney Barnett
Virginia Plain – Roxy Music
On the Corner – the Twilights Singers
Lithium – Nirvana
I Was Wrong – Social Distorion
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side – the Smiths
Let’s Get Out of Here – Les Savy Fav
Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) – Parliament
White Girl – X
Holiday – Madonna
Primo – Tito Double P & Natanael Cano
Train Kept A’Rollin’ – the Yardbirds
Titi Me Pregunto – Bad Bunny (request)
Intacto – Gigolo y la Excel & Noriel
Repuesta – 6ix9ine & Lenier
World Without Tears – Lucinda Williams