new orleans... yes, another post

this morning we got up late and went to this french cafe place that sells coffee and beignets (french donuts, like little personal funnel cakes, including the powdered sugar) for lunch. it was ridiculously hot outside but we could tell it was going to rain, especially by the time we took a streetcar uptown to the garden district, a really pretty section of old colonial homes. about 5 minutes off the car, it started dumping rain. i freaked out, worried about getting struck by lightning, but of course dan was unperturbed. of course as soon as we got back on the streetcar and back to the french quarter, the rain had stopped, so we picked the perfectly wrong time to see the pretty houses and only saw a couple of them.

ever since the garden district, it's been a kind of parade of strange people. for example, as we walked home in a strange, weaving pathway through ghetto areas and sweet, gardened areas, a guy in the streets stopped in his tracks while i was taking a picture (dan had walked ahead). "hey!" he called - and i sort of turned and sort of planned on ignoring him. "hey, no worries," he said. "i love your hair - it's like, strawberry blonde, right?" "yeah," i said, hesitating. "i love it. it's beautiful." "thanks." "no - thank you. you should have like, 8 boyfriends." "ha, well i only have one, thanks though." "one's enough. wow."

i was amused. possibly the worst pickup line ever, except that i was like 65% sure this guy was gay.

then later on in the evening (after more mtv and a really good dinner at an african restaurant), we wandered back to bourbon street. we bought a hurricane - one of two signature drinks in new orleans, the other one being a hand grenade which supposedly ludacris sings about (?). then we went to lafitte's blacksmith shop, a place that claims to be the oldest bar in the US. it's kind of contrived, with fake worn-down concrete on the outside and only candles to light the inside, and yet with about 12 security cameras. they claim to be a piano lounge, so a really bad pianist played really bad covers of really well-known people like otis redding and elton john. we hung out there for a bit and after a while, we saw a strange group of people. first, a guy who was like a cross between sting in the 80s, johnny rotten, and david bowie, with an older woman who was vaguely punked out. they hovered outside the bar for almost 10 minutes doing nothing. then, a very bum-ish looking guy with a cane hobbled in, leading two touristy-looking women (i think they were dating, but i'm not sure, and they looked like soccer mom types too, oddly). they were greeted (i think!) by the sting guy and his groupie, and all of them sat down at the bar and were welcomed cheerily by the young, beautiful bartender girl. the bum guy left a few minutes later and sting & his groupie moved to a different table, but i have to say it was the most unlikely combination of people for a few minutes there.

after that bar, and a little mtv/xmen/whatever was on tv action in the hotel room, we decided to seek out a real jazz club, avoiding bourbon street. we ended up at a place a couple blocks behind our hotel called the spotted cat, which boasted another strange crowd. we were the youngest by far, not entirely surprisingly. while the bar was kind of strange, i have to say that it definitely kind of redeemed what i had assumed was a sort of lagging music scene in new orleans. the band was a guitarist, bassist, saxophonist and drummer, and after they took a break they welcomed a random other saxophonist to come play along and improvise with them, and that was kind of cool to see, musicians networking and jamming and stuff.

tomorrow we leave in time to avoid the hurricane, and we have a long drive through pretty much all of mississippi ahead of us, so it's bedtime for bonzo.