Today is another beautiful New Orleans day. You-know-who is working with you-know-who. The Guy Fieri crowd is out in full force. They must have chartered a plane. This has to do with the Sugar Bowl. It is some kind of football game. It brings the yahoos to the city. I have a bee in my fedora. I have a yen to head to Antoine’s. It is a strong, primitive yearning, an eruption of animal sprits on my part, a hunger for Beef Robespierre. Beef Robespierre is marinated beef tenderloin cooked so rare as to be slightly bloody. I do not normally like rare meat but it is the sauce that makes Beef Robesp ..read more

New Orleans is like no place else on God’s green earth.  You should stay at La Belle Esplanade.  Visit new Orleans like you live here.  We live on a very interesting street.  Get out and explore. Check-in. Checking in to La Belle Esplanade, and much of the daily operation of the inn is fairly self-serve.  We are happy to offer more personalized services but, the best part of the La Belle Esplanade Experience (TM) is now à la carte.  You can choose to take advantage of our company and our expertise, or not, at your leisure. Here is how things will work out after y ..read more

I was intrigued by the title of this essay: “When Did You Last Hang Out?” I clicked the link. The unexamined life is not worth living.  I spend most of my time hanging out in New Orleans.  Everybody does.   I have to admit that I am hanging out with the chickens in my back garden as I write this. I had one eye on them as I read this lady’s essay about hanging out, so I was only half paying attention. She makes hanging out seem something rare. In New Orleans, all we do is hang out. The texture of life is different in New Orleans. Even when people are working, they are just hangi ..read more

I like to go to the Broad Theater for lunch and not just for the pinball. I like to go for the hot dogs.  The Broad Theater has the best hot dog lunch in New Orleans, not just in Mid-City. The Broad Theater is a four-screen movie theater in an old plumbing supply warehouse built in the 1920s, the Jazz Age. Before Katrina, it was a boxing gym, the “House of Champions.” That sign is still painted on one of the outside walls and it is on the official Broad Theater tee shirt, which they don’t seem to sell over their website. You have to go the lobby in person. If you want one, tell me your s ..read more

If you are looking for a palm reading in New Orleans, you can go to Jackson Square. I know a couple of palm readers who work in Jackson Square.  You can get your palm read at any hour of the day or night.  There is always a collection of psychics and gypsies and Most of them prefer to read tarot cards.  Tarot cards reveal more about the present moment than the life lines, and the love lines, and the strife lines we all bear on the grasping parts of our hands.  New Orleans is places where wishes get caught and cherished.  This does not happen at birth, it happens when y ..read more

Decatur Street is not pronounced like a French word.  It is named after Stephen Decatur, a commodore in the U.S. Navy.  Lower Decatur Street is the the stretch between Esplanade Avenue and Ursulines Street.  It is its own ecosystem within the larger French Quarter.  People who do not frequent this part of the Quarter do not think of it as particularly distinct.  The people who do frequent this stretch, who work in it and live in it, inhabit it, are a part of of it, they call it Lower D and they know where they mean.  It is the part of New Olreans where the twenty ..read more

When you live in New Orleans you can feel the seasons in your bones.  The temperature fluctuates more in winter than in summer.  Spring and autumn are wings of summer.  Leaves do not change color in New Orleans.  Winter is when flowers don’t bloom.  Autumn in New Orleans is when the air is pleasant and everyone is happy to escape August.  It takes that long. You should visit New Orleans in autumn.  It will feel like a balmy summer day to you, from the end of September to the middle of December, the weather is predictably pleasant.  Nobody knows this. &n ..read more

Here is a solid recommendation.  Go to the Rock ‘n’ Bowl on a Thursday night.  This is real New Orleans.  It is zydeco night at the Rock ‘n’ Bowl on Thursdays.  People come from all over the state to dance and dance and dance.  People don’t just come from Louisiana.  They come from Mississippi and Texas, too.  Happiness loves company and there is nowhere else to be happier than at the Rock ‘n Bowl on a Thursday night, zydeco night.  Laissez les bon temps rouler! I am not sending you there to bowl, though you can.  There are lanes in the back.   ..read more

There is a bar in New Orleans where there are brass plaques glued to the bar.  The plaques commemorate regular customers who have contributed to the history of this particular establishment.  The bar is located in Katie’s, a restaurant located on the corner of North Telemachus Street and Iberville Street, in Mid-City. It is very glamorous.  Guy Fieri has been there.  Other famous people have been there, too.  You can hobnob with the best in this part of New Orleans.  The food is good. Jefferson Davis is a regular.  I know.  I saw the plaque.  I kno ..read more

When people come to New Orleans they start to tell Orleanians about the city where they live. They receive a blank look in return. Other places play a different game than New Orleans plays.  It takes a certain kind of person to live a successful NOLA life. Orleanians will politely listen until you get it out of your system.  Yes.  Uh-huh.  You can tell how things are done other places.  Tell us about the great restaurant where you live.  It goes in one ear and out the other.  We will eventually change the topic to something New Orleans-related.  Out-of-s ..read more