This Bears Repeating ...

This is very funny and very relevant to N.O.

Almost Like New York, But Not

Couldn't sleep last night. Some asshole was playing the violin outside my window.

Heavier Than The Humidity

A new friend said there's this constant violent tension here: "You can feel it in the air."

It's talked about over beers and in cafes -- though more so by angsty newcomers; it's written about clinically in the Times Picayune; and it's aftershocks are mourned with second-lines and memorial concerts.

New York had a jangled, nervous twitch, but a feeling of motion. New Orleans has the same nervousness, but it's stagnant, permanent, and more serious.


This place's surreal beauty works as Xanax to the anxiety. (Mint Juleps and grits work too.) But, like Xanax, it only treats the symptoms.

But just as the feeling in the air is heaver, the fun I have and the people I connect with feel like small, brave victories.

You Interrupted My Song For That?

St. James James Infirmary is one of the most covered songs down here and my favorite. It's about a guy that sees his girl dead and laid out in the morgue.

My favorite lyric : "Let her go, let her go, God bless her, wherever she may be. She can look this wide world over, but she'll never find a man like me."

So the three-piece jazz group was wailing this out to an audience of about 9, when my listening was interrupted by a drunk guy who is a friend of Diana's.

He shook my hand and thanked me, vigorously and repeatedly, for moving to New Orleans. I mumbled "no problem" or something equally awkward.

"My girlfriend (he said it just as matter-of-factly as he had thanked me) just got pushed down in front of her apartment."

Then he told me again that he was drunk and to be careful.

They did a Screamin' Jay Hawkins cover next, complete with expert manic laughter. We all joined in.

She's the Raid to My Nostalgia

In my previous post I admitted to some NYC subway nostalgia. Ana Dane has offered me a cure:


"oh, dear. look, all i can recommend: take a plastic bag. fill it with those sweaty gym clothes, still steaming, then take a piss on them. let the bag sit in the sun for two days, then empty it out, and cut an air hole and let it sit loosely over your head for an hour while you stand next to a jackhammer on one side, and a crying infant on the other. throw away $4 from your wallet at the end.

if that doesn't make you feel a tiny bit less nostalgic, i don't know what will."

What Happens When You're Lonely

-You buy an overpriced lamp.

-You're glad to come home to said overpriced lamp.

-You have coffee with people you find unsettling and narcissistic.

-You begin thinking of people as potential acquaintances or not worth the conversation.

-You spend too much time on the stationary bike at the gym.

-You get too upset when hipsters at bars stare at you.

-You become too diligent with your dishes.

But worst:

You get nostalgic about the subway when you find an old Metro card in your wallet.

I Don't Like This City's Obits

When someone dies here, they have a second-line parade. People dance/march with a brass band to the funeral.

I think their white hearses put Cadillacs to shame, but it's a matter of taste.

On my first Saturday here, my friend Diana said, matter-of-factly, that she was going to a second-line for a girl from our neighborhood who had been murdered.

Diana wasn't sure how she'd been killed, but she said she probably lived in the a higher-crime area of our neighborhood. I wondered where, exactly, this high and low-crime line is.

Last night I stopped in at a cafe to get some of the strong coffee I needed and an idealized-hippy-punk chick handed me a flier about a show that night to benefit the family of a girl that got shot.

"Oh they had a second-line for her today," I said.

"No, that was someone else," she replied.

I looked at the flier with the murdered girl's photo on it. It looked too familiar, like something off of Myspace. The flier named the cross-streets where she was found with a bullet in her head. I didn't know the streets, or what crime lines they crossed.

Later I showed Diana the flier. "She shouldn't have been in that area," was all she said.

The Times-Picayune police blotter lists all the crimes that happened the previous day. Most are robberies (house) and assault (not ending in murder).

The next page is the obituaries. A third of today's deaths were people below 35 (no cause of death listed). I'd feel more comfortable if they were all above 60.

I've never read New York's crime reports, so I can't compare. I've also never assessed how close to my home a murder occurred.

Here are the cities with the highest murder rates (from 2007), per the FBI:

1. Gary, IN – 73 (pop. 97,048)
2. Richmond, CA – 46 (pop. 102,471)
3. Baltimore, MD – 45 (pop. 624,237)
4. Detroit, MI – 44 (pop. 860,971)
5. St. Louis, MO – 40 (pop. 348,197)
6. Birmingham, AL – 38 (pop. 227,686)
7. JP/NOLA – 38 (pop. 683,000)
8. Newark, NJ – 37 (pop. 280,158)
9. Baton Rouge – 31 (pop. 228,446)
10. Oakland, CA – 30 (pop. 396,541)

Diana reads the crime blotter every morning. I wonder how many New Orleaneans do.

Sweet Sweat

I've been able to put aside the mind-fuck that is relocation twice since Sunday.

One: having Cajun food with my parents at a place called Crocs.

Two: Peddling on a stationary bike from the 1980's in a balmy gym with a red lit-up sign flashing "boxing" over the door outside.

Mike, the owner, is a New Yorker and a New Orleanean all in one. Sure the rafters shake when I hit the bag and we all have to share one shower, but that makes it all the sweeter.

Thank you Freret Street Gym.

The gym sits just on the border of where I'm not supposed to go. I went and got Gatorade from a convenience store on the "wrong side of the line" -- the owner of the store was a Mexican woman who asked me about my workout and called me sweetie.

Some kids said hi to me on the walk back. Mike was waiting for me with a concerned look.

Peddling my bike through the French Quarter on my way back, I was almost sideswiped by what looked like a well-fed gentleman in a sports car.

The Big ... Sort of, Maybe, Not Sure Yet, Easy?

Your biggest aspirations never turn out exactly how you think they will. I'm taking that with me from now on.

Culture shock is real and it creeps up on you -- so do dashes of stinging loneliness, even though I mainly communicated with my friends via G-chat in New York as well.

Here is some good and bad New Orleans at first glance:

-It's no lie that you don't want to make a wrong turn, but I have yet to see if the danger is exaggeration. I don't like taking people's word, but don't want to find out the hard way.

-The cockroaches are huge and nasty, but they're flushable. You often, I've learned, have to flush twice.

-Nobody seems to get pissed off in traffic. There's a lot of, I wouldn't call it traffic ... slow-moving vehicles creating this sort of lava flow with the occasional streetcar clot.

-Ass kicking music and bars of the same caliber are everywhere. When you want to work or stay healthy, that's a downside. It's becoming like a game to me -- can I peddle past all the seductive bars and brass bands on my way to the gym? Victory was mine today.

-Yes, this city has "groups." E.g.: Rich, poor, black, white, Mexican, people who were born and raised here, people who are "not from around here," etc. This gets me; I hate groups. I'm battling not to be in one.

- Even the tomato soup at a tourist-trap cafe is stunning.

-People don't walk around on cell phones -- I'm the only asshole that does.

-You can jump into conversations easily, but it's not rude to just cut out of one and leave. This is probably a survival instinct -- otherwise New Orleans would be a 24-hour conversation.