January 6th, 2013 by Nancy Fournier
We now enter into the season which is all but incomprehensible to those who do not live in New Orleans or are well versed in the rituals of the Christian calendar culminating in Mardi Gras and Lent. Today is Twelfth Night the night of Epiphany , January 6th.. For the New Orleans Carnival season, which after all the partying and parades are over is really no more than a extended preparation for Lent, it all starts after the Epiphany or Twelfth Night.
What this means on a practical level is the Carnival season officially kicks off today. The stores are full of Mardi Gras colors, jester hats, drinking glasses and all the grocery stores are offering their version of king cake for their customers.
Rex and his Queen
There are numerous events as the Mardi Gras traditions play out on a variety of different levels and are enjoyed across all the various social strata across town. From the elite classes Mardi Gras ball and the huge mega balls for the masses. We attended the Rex Ball one year (this is the upper of the upper echelons of society, we were only invited to this white tie event because a kind guest’s daughter was in the Rex court that year) The balls of this sort are more interesting from an anthropological standpoint that what one normally associates with a ball. Guests are assembled into viewing seats and there is the presentation of the court and a host of rules as to what connotes proper behavior (how one claps, one does not talk, one does not get up while the court is presented) If you are not part of the court you sit in little chairs and politely applaud as the court is introduced, they make a grand sweep around the room, ,first pages than escorts than maids and they all bow to the king and queen. There is an opportunity to actually dance but you must first be asked by a member of the court to do so, mostly it is sitting around a crowded bar trying to get a bad glass of wine served in plastic cups,. Some balls have midnight dinners and the grits and grillandes are fabulous but mostly it is looking at beautiful gowns and listening to small talk.
The mega balls are a little d
ifferent. They are open to all who want to buy a ticket, held in cavernous venues, have multiple bars and using one of not two live bands, often of the variety of those who were big in the last decade, now playing for those dressed up. We went to a ball last year where the B-52s played, it was weird to dance to them in a long ball gown.
Then there are the more bohemian versions of after parties from Krewes who parade and follow up their hours of throwing hand fashioned trinkets to the crowd with a lively party. The drinks are still in plastic cups but there lends to be liquor not just wine, the guests are more likely to be costumed than in ball gowns and tuxes and the bands are more raucous. That is just the balls wait to we start talking about parades!
Tags: festivals, Live Local New Orleans Jazz & Social Dancing, Mardi Gras, New Orleans Festivals, New Orleans life
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans, Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras New Orleans, New Orleans B&B, New Orleans Festivals | Comments Off
December 8th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
Ready For Papa Noel
My own personal panic started a week before Thanksgiving when I stopped off at a friend’s B&B to returned a borrowed item to find her inn completely decorated for Christmas, creche and all. I had not even braved the airports for the Thanksgiving rush yet. I have been ignoring the incessant creep of Christmas since Halloween when the stores started to display Santa right next to the Poison Ivy Superhero costumes and figured I had plenty of time once we returned home from our Northern visit December 1st.
When one has a building the size of the Sully Mansion, Christmas decorating is not an easy afternoon undertaking but rather a multi-stage process requiring multiple trips up and down the fourteen foot ladder. The two of us have pretty much gotten things down to a science, outdoor windows and wreaths one day, outdoor garland and lights the next, indoor garland over the doorways followed by the garland up the staircase and the sashes in the dining room leaving the tree for last. All and all it is a four or five day task in between attending to other inn keeping chores and responding to guest needs and inquiries.
It is easy to fall into a chore like mindset, really with the attic so many flights up and the endless trips up and down the stairs to get all the trinkets stored away from the previous year and where are the ornament hangers? The living room begins to look like a warehouse of cardboard boxes and little gold sparkles cling to your skin. Happily somewhere between the third and forth garland, you step back, see how the light captures the translucent glass balls, your nose fills with the scent of cedar and the twilight sets in and the lights wrapped in greenery climb up the columns of the house and suddenly it once again, as it does every year, gets magical and beautiful and transported to a lush decorative time and place.
Then you remember why you bother- the inn becomes a setting of serenely delicate beauty and the draping of ribbon, and beautiful bows and greenery everywhere make perfect sense. I walked around the neighborhood last night and the houses with their lights and the festive wreaths in the doorways were joyful to see. I love the holidays, it gives us all an excuse to decorate with an eye towards fancy and beauty and lushness. My esthetic and New Orleans are so much in synch, more is more and the intricate ornateness of the cornice on the house, the wrought iron gates festooned with hollies, large multicolored ornament balls dangling from the porches, its a second layer of eye candy in a neighborhood which on the drabbest day pops with visual delights. Christmas in New Orleans is beautiful.
Nutcrackers on the Mantle
.
Tags: Christmas, innkeeping, Live Local New Orleans Jazz & Social Dancing, New Orleans, New Orleans Bed and Breakfast, New Orleans life, Things to Do In new Orleans
Posted in Christams in New Orleans, Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans B&B | Comments Off
November 16th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
We are getting into the pre-holiday spirit around here which of course means more festivals and opportunities to enjoy unbridled creativity and (of course) food. This week end brings two types of festivals in the city, one well know and expanding in popularity and the other a bit more of an insider’s jewel. The big Daddy is the Oak Street Poor Boy Festival which is celebrates the iconic sandwich of New Orleans. The history of the poorboy has everything a history buff needs, social upheaval, revolts, union strikes, politics and citizen ingenuity but in its modern day incantation has come to reflect the diverse culinary tastes of the city. The standards are all there (oyster, ham, shrimp remoulade and roast beef) but there are exotic entries as well including fried Main lobster and Greek Eggplant Salad poorboys. There will be over 30 vendors of poor boys and two music stages featuring Los Poboycitos and a stage hosted by the Tipitina’s Foundation showcasing the talented young generation of the city. Multiple artist booths and of course Abita beer will be flowing. What started as a four block fall festival a few years ago has exploded into a six block event and a VIP wristband option. The Festival is this Sunday November 18th from 11 to 7. Have fun and go hungry!
The Fringe Festival is also underway this week with well over 70 performances occurring in various venues in the Marigny and Bywater neighborhoods of the city. There are adult puppet shows, comedy, circus, dance and other forms of creative madness. There are venues which are traditional theaters and some, like the firehouse we went to last evening for a multi media puppet show are gathering places which have been altered to mount a production. Acts are put on in some of the Mardi Gras Krewe dens next to their floats, in public gardens or in the large tent that has been erected in the heart of the Bywater. There are free shows and at other non traditional venues (like bars and snow ball stands) and a self guided art tour full of ‘installations’ by neighborhood artists or those who have an artistic bent. It is a bohemian smorgasbord and represents one of the more innovative and colorful aspects of the city. Go curious and enjoy.
Tags: festivals, New Orleans, New Orleans Community, New Orleans Festivals, New Orleans food, New Orleans life, New Orleans Locals, Things to Do In new Orleans
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans Festivals | Comments Off
November 6th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
Music on the street
It is such a musical town, sweeping the sidewalk you heard the lilt of a lone clarinet from someone practicing on their balcony, taking the dog for a walk , half a block ahead a thin man is singing an old school rhythm and blues number so perfectly it makes you want to follow him way off your regular route. A few weekends ago on my way to the drugstore I heard a group of tubas with a heavy beat thumping up behind me, when I turned around there were four battered horns swaying like drunk elephants in a ragged line marching into a small bar across the street from the CVS. Even the clinking of the streetcar lines has a staccato beat which gets you tapping your feet.
In a small restaurant in the Treme there is a funky three piece band playing New Orleans standards, it metamorphoses into a hip-hop beat and the surly waitress who seconds before placed a steaming plate of red beans and rice before you slowly moves towards the band stand, takes the microphone in her hands and a voice with a depth and range found among a selected few begins a soulful rap about her New Orleans neighborhood, it is hard to take the richness of her lyrics in as her delivery is so striking. When the song is over she steps off the stage and picks up the used glasses on the tables near her.
Little boys with trumpet cases jumping off the school bus, teenage girls walking along Baronne Street with snare drums slung over their shoulders like Coach purses, old men singing along with voices like virtuosos. Our music is not something0 packaged for the tourists, it permeates the city, heard at traffic lights, through open windows, filling most nights standing on a sidewalk creating the backdrop against which we conduct our lives and I would not have it any other way.
Tags: Live Local New Orleans Jazz & Social Dancing, New Orleans, New Orleans Community, New Orleans Locals, New Orleans Music
Posted in Eating & Drinking in New Orleans, Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans Music | Comments Off
October 22nd, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
We are creeping up on Halloween and any true New Orleanian is getting serious about their costume. This is not a city which puts much stock in store bought costumes, although there are quite a few good costume shops throughout the city- for a true New Orleanian the role of these stores is to provide the garnish, accessorize or help you find the size thirteen platform shoe. We take pride in creating our own costumes and any resident worth their salt has at least one costume box, a glue gun and enough wigs to side line as a country western singer!
At this point in the calendar most of us are moving from a conceptual to an implementation phase of costuming in which the lessons learned in shop class come in handy, how do you affix glass to leather? What is the best way to wire LED lights to follow the curve of your leg? Those art classes especially the ones on shadowing come in handy too. There is a lot of activity in New Orleans in October but you can bet at least one night this weekend folks were staying home, one is gluing sequins along the hemline of their costume while other is trying on fangs and mutton chop sideburns in the bathroom and usually it is the women working those sideburns.
Yes there are Halloween parties and some say Voodoo Fest is one big Halloween party, but the action is out in the streets (Bourbon, Frenchman, deep in the Marigny) in which all manner of costumed individual gather to take in the music, the vibe and mainly each other. Much in the manner of Judy Garlan in Easter Parade, the primary activity on Halloween is to walk the avenue and survey the costumes and show off yours. We don’t care much for symbols of affluence but honor a well made, convincing, humorous clever costume which makes us revel in the opportunity to embrace fantasy and be someone or something else for a while.
Tags: festivals, Halloween, New Orleans Bed and Breakfast, New Orleans Community, New Orleans Locals, Things to Do In new Orleans
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans Festivals | Comments Off
September 19th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
Seasonal change is a relative term. Here in Southern Louisiana where the Gulf of Mexico laps ever nearer to our doorstep, we do not get the change of colors or piles of leaves and crisp apples. We do get a tangible shift in humidity level and suddenly what was a continuous light mist of dampness ever present wafts away and there is clear dry air throwing the colors of the homes in stark contrast to the sky. Everyone walks with a little bounce in their step after making it through another hot summer.
We never stop having a good time in this town often you just sweat your way through it or go into the cooling cave of an air conditioned venue loosing all sense of time when you emerge hours later with new best friends. But when the weather changes into fall it seems everyone wants to stay outside longer and so the party moves back outside.
With the end of September the musicians come back in town and concerts, festivals fill the air. Tonight the Harvest the Music series starts at Lafayette Square, Doctor John , Rebirth Brass Band, Colin Lake, Mia Borders all playing in the next few weeks. The quieter festivals like the Poorboy Festival, Hog For a Cause are coming up and it is a great time to be here. Of course we are beginning to plan our Halloween costumes and there is football and tailgating with gumbo and spicy sausages on the grill. We are not over hurricane season yet and the weathermen dutifully pull out their bar graphs with spiky lines every night to remind us we have four weeks left, but with the tang in the air, we are itching to don a long sleeve shirt and get on with the fall season.
Tags: bed and breakfast, festivals, Live Local New Orleans Jazz & Social Dancing, New Orleans, New Orleans Bed and Breakfast, New Orleans Festivals
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans B&B, New Orleans Festivals | Comments Off
September 8th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
This Saturday morning the sun is out and there is a cold front coming which will wipe away all the humidity and make it clear and blue in a way you can only find in Southern Louisiana. The Saints are playing tomorrow in the Superdome and our phone is ringing with folks wanting to come back and enjoy the city now that the coast is clear. There are three art markets this weekend and the Burlesque Festival is happening and two new restaurants to sample. . Our levees held, and once again neighbors looked out after one another and we made it through the slow moving hurricane. This city is really like the grass growing through the concrete. Every reason to celebrate.
Still in the aftermath – if you watch the news and see the fate of those outside the ring of levee protection you do have the sense of living on borrowed time. I never really knew what the expression cheating death meant before we lived here and this notion of making the most of everything because life here is so fragile and dependent upon the graces of the wind and the rain. The resilience and sense that we can and continually do spit in the eye of destruction is exhilarating but it is also exhausting. There is a jewel here, in addition to the culture expressed through the food and the music and the arts- the way the light shines in the late afternoon, the sweetness if the air, there is also an incredible wealth of nature’s riches with its bayous and marshes, it is hard to understand why its protection seems like such a low national priority. So we made it through this last storm, surely there will be another and we will ill likelihood make it through that as well, but you got to wonder- what will it take if Katrina’s wrath did not make it so and the BP oil spill did not cause a national upraising and the pictures of cow stranded in the mud in Plaquemines Parish nor the tears in watermen eyes and they try to patch their life together yet again doesn’t galvanize everyone to demand saving the wetlands a national priority do it is hard to know what will.
So if you have not experienced this rare corner of the world, our advice is to move it up on your list of must dos. We will still stare disaster straight in the eye and offer it a drink but at some point we will have tempted fate too long.Voice of the Wetlands- “poor man’s paradise”
Tags: hurricanes; wetlands, New Orleans, New Orleans life, New Orleans Locals, oil spill
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans | Comments Off
August 20th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
One of the challenges one has here as native New Olreanian is to deal with the crowds when your favorite festival gets discovered. We long for the days when beers at Jazz Fest were $2.00 and you could swing by and pick up a Crawfish Monica and walk right up to the Blues Stage (pre-tent) in the space of five minutes. We remember when French Quarter Fest grow really was a local Festival were you could walk the Quarter and actually hear the jazz trios set up to Royal Street. The Poor Boy Festival has had to move twice to accommodate the crowds. When we find something some little event which is quintessential New Orleans we rejoice but hope no one finds out. Hogs for Cause, the Mirlaton Festival even the Saturday before Halloween when Frenchmen Street becomes a large costume shop are all wonderful but we look over our shoulder to make sure not too many know about it.
Well we may have found the next big thing… that sleepy, hot, muggy and rainy middle weekend of August, before the Tulane students and musicians return to town, when the threat of a hurricane and a zillion percent humidity has forced everyone indoors, you are tired of your summer skirts and figure with a few good novels and Netflix you can make it through till September and the concerts come back on Lafayette Square. Well that weekend happens to boast two events that are so local only those in walking distance seem to come, that’s right folks you heard it here the next big events to rival Voodoo Fest and waiting for the Phunny Phorty Phellows riding the streetcar on Twelfth Night is the Cupcake Throw Down and Daiquiri Fest.
Both events are held in different
locations in the discovered hip spots of the Upper Ninth Ward and Bywater (that’s right even the New York Time is waxing poetic about a neighborhood with a disproportionate ratio of dreadlocks and tattoos to bodies -even by New Orleans standards) The Cupcake Throw down is a fund raiser for the St. Roch Community Center and a local art gallery. For a dollar a bottle cap you can trade your caps for various cupcakes made by home and professional bakers or participate in a hip hop cake walk, when the music stops if you are on the right circle you can pick out a cake, maybe even one made in homage to our Hubig’s Pie whose factory burned down this month. Life without Hubig’s here is like a Twinkies deforestation for the rest of the country. There were also cakes which looked like litter boxes and others like a crawfish net. Lots of kids running around with sugar highs, infants in slings and sticky fingers. What could beat it?
Well the next stop on our fabulous Fest tour in August, the 2nd Annual Daiquiri Fest. Last year the ‘founder ‘rented a van and a group drove around the some of the best frozen daiquiri spots. This year they decided to mix up their own so on a half paved parking lot deep in the Bywater they set up three daiquiri machines, promised fresh ingredients, a DJ and general festiveness we have come to expect when more than twenty people are assembled here. The event was set from 3 to 9. We arrived at 4:15 and they had just set up the frozen daiquiri machines and were mixing cocktails. They realized that the concoctions need to freeze for a few hours and after forty minutes started to hand mix daiquiris and added ice. The rain which started as a gentle mist began to come down with biblical ferocity, but it did not stop the revelers. The DJ was playing scratchy 50’s rock and while the daiquiris were hardly frozen they were potent and people were dancing the twist, splashing in mud puddles and standing in a non moving lines for hour waiting for their unfrozen Daiquiris. We saw
a few of the helpers toting neon colored plastic gallon containers, a sure sign that other Daiquiri shops were assisting in the effort. It did not matter- a street party and neither rain nor a horrid sound system nor slushy Daiquiris would keep them away. Girls in costumes, drunk b
oys dancing in puddles and the ubiquitous fedora wearing crowd was there in spades. The Empanada Intifada Food truck slacked the revelers’ hunger. Once thoroughly drenched and with a slight stitch in the side from too much twisting, we called it a day knowing we had been a part of the inaugural crowd of what is sure to be the next big Festival in the Big EASY.
Tags: Live Local New Orleans Jazz & Social Dancing, New Orleans, New Orleans Festivals, Things to Do In new Orleans
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans Festivals | 1 Comment »
August 8th, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
There is so much creativity in New Orleans it permeates every element of daily life. From electricity pole a block from the inn which someone has wrapped colored Mardi Gras beads all around so it glitters in the afternoon sunlight in a rainbow of colors catching your eyes while you wait for the street car, to the banged up computer desk sitting on the curb waiting for the trashman which someone has painted with a spray can to look like an apartment house complete with window boxes to the Chocolate Bar lounge which has the wildest graffiti along its side in which a cubist dragon appears to be eating the used tire store which is located next door. Art everywhere if you just look around.
Our friend King Charles Barkely (pictured here) is a master hat maker and he fashions his creations out of brown shopping bags, palm fronds, mesh Christmas tree garland and of course feathers and rhinestones. I watched a group of women dance to the Charleston last weekend and they wore home made costumes and head band of white fringe and ostrich feathers. As they danced everything shimmered in this ice cycle blue/white flash it was just amazing and actually had a cooling effect cutting the heat and humidity.
To live in a community where one man’s trash is an others art supplies and they take these pieces and create before y0ur eyes blurs the lines between ‘everyday space’ and art space’ as everything becomes a form of artspace. It allows you look at random objects with an eye towards creativity. As you hear the far off blare of a trombone and look at how the light is captured between the leaves of the trees, glinting off a sparkle which someone has left behind on the sidewalk an organic mosaic begins to form. While I cannot personally make that transformation from everyday object to beautiful art I am grateful almost everyday that I live somewhere where many people can and do make magic on a daily basis. 
Tags: Art in New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans Community, New Orleans life
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans | 1 Comment »
July 23rd, 2012 by Nancy Fournier
If you stay in touch with the news from New Orleans you are aware that ‘Uncle’ Lionel Baptiste died July 8th. As a result of NOLA traditions (including biblical force rainstorms for the last week) his actual burial and funeral second line took place this morning, July 23rd. There have been four parades with brass bands, five memorial shows at the Candlelight Lounge in the Treme and a three hour funeral service last Friday for Uncle Lionel. No burial last Friday, because the cemetery was flooded so they put him back in the funeral home and did it all again this morning.
He was in his eighties and for relative newcomers like ourselves, (we have lived here for seven years having arrived right after the storm, or Hurricane Katrina for those of you from a different land where you call a hurricane by its name and not just –the storm-) he epitomized everything so special about this unique place.
He was from a time when homage was paid throughout the Jazz and Heritage Festival with its second line parades through the Fairgrounds and brass tents , a time when the music flowed up from the streets. He was always nattily dressed, whether in the standard black trousers and white shirt with the Treme Brass Band cap, or in a dizzying array of colored suits, Uncle Lionel always had his sun glasses on, his watch wrapped around his hand and a smile for everyone.
I have danced more than once with Uncle Lionel on a random Saturday night in a club on Frenchman Street where the music just infects you and you find yourself whirling round the floor. He was a great dancer and from general talk on the street, quite the ladies man. We have shared a beer or two during a festival when it gets so hot the cold beer brings temporary respite. He was a musician and spirit and like so many characters who become visual representatives of an aspect of the city, you see them going about their daily life as you go about yours. It is a little disconcerting to see and an icon board a bus or shop for produce, but there is a kindred connectedness among us that live here. We catch each others eyes over the heads of the tourist and revel in their delight in what they are experiencing on their holiday, and feel lucky that it is our routine backdrop in this magical placed, New Orleans.
I am grateful for the times I spent with Uncle Lionel and for the fact that we live in a place where he was so cherished and we insist on sending him off in the best New Orleans tradition despite rainstorms and lashing winds we just wait till the time is right and the sun is shining.
Tags: Jazz and Heritage Festival, Live Local New Orleans Jazz & Social Dancing, New Orleans Second Lines, Uncle’ Lionel Baptiste funeral procession
Posted in Live Like a Local In New Orleans, New Orleans Music | Comments Off
New Orleans Mardi Gras
Crescent City Christmas Countdown