A rainy Friday night mood

Outside Vaughan's Lounge, Friday night after the rain.

Mean streets

The first hole was dug right at my front gate. It was done in July by Cimmaron, a contractor for Entergy, our New Orleans gas and electric utility. One morning, a man named Felipe knocked on my door and explained that they were upgrading the gas lines. A white spray-painted marking on the sidewalk showed where the hole would be dug.

So in front of every house in my block, a hole perhaps 2' x 3' was cut in the concrete sidewalk, and a deep pit opened up down to the gas lines. These pits were encircled by orange plastic fencing. They remained open for weeks while workers ran new lines under the ground from pit to pit.

When they were finished, sometime in mid-August, the workers filled the pits with sand. They removed the orange fencing, and circled the sandy holes with yellow caution tape.

Finally, in early September, they returned with a cement truck, and laid down fresh concrete.

This was repeated in every block of the Bywater. First you'd see the white painted markings, then would come the concrete cutting and the prising up of the sidewalk. Then would come the backhoe, digging the pit; the workers with the pipes, and the ubiquitous orange fencing.

Each block is like an obstacle course for walking. There are orange fenced pits, or yellow taped sandholes. There is mud and sand in the gutters. The white markings advance downriver - from Bartholomew to Mazant, then to France. Now there's an open pit in front of Vaughan's Lounge on Lesseps. When I walk the dog, I walk down the middle of the street to avoid the mud and the holes.

Now it's mid September, and Bartholomew Street has been made whole; the pits have been filled and paved with fresh, new, white concrete. The rains are slowly washing away the mud.

Yesterday, walking home from Vaughans, I noticed on the ground spray-painted markings in yellow. Some were even marked right over the new fresh concrete.

This morning, coming home from the dog park, I saw a cluster of workers in dayglo lime vests hanging out in my street. The vests were labeled "Sewerage and Water Board." A back-hoe rumbled up, with a jack-hammer attachment on the boom. The digging began.

Yes. Now another utility is digging up the streets of the Bywater. Will it ever stop?

There is no joy in Mudville

A disappointed fan

Saints lose to Raiders, 34 - 35.

Artist's hideaway

My friend B has a little place to go when she needs to clear her mind. She calls it her "garret," and like the little artists' hideaways of story and song, it is an attic room, up among the rooftops of the old French Quarter near Jackson Square.

B lives in a nice double shotgun in the Marigny now, but she keeps her garret for the use of family and friends who come to visit. She showed it to me yesterday. Just off a tiny alley near St. Louis Cathedral, you climb a narrow, winding staircase up to the top of the building.

B on her deck

The room is within, beneath sloping ceilings. A daybed piled with pillows provides seating and sleeping in this tiny space. a small desk and chair are arranged beside a window that looks out into the gardens behind the cathedral. A door leads to a rooftop deck with marvelous views of the chimney pots, slate roofing, and (modern) airconditioning units above the touristy hubub.

Wouldn't you like to hideaway in such a lovely little place?

Snake eyes

Freddy the snake-man came by when Becky and I were sitting outside on the smoking bench at Vaughans Lounge. When he came close we could see the two snakes coiling and writhing around his hands.

One was pale ivory speckled with coral-colored markings. The other was even paler, with markings that were lavender-pink ghosts of those of its sister.

They were young snakes, Freddy said, only a few feet long and harmless. They were boa constrictors, and he had a name for them that I can't remember, but it was something flowery.

Becky held one and let it crawl up her body and coil its tail around her index finger. She stroked its flanks and let it nuzzle its arrow-shaped head on her throat. "It feels so silky," she said.

I'm less enamored of snakes, but I worked up the nerve to touch one. And she was right. Its skin, though shiny, was not "slimy" or moist at all, but rather, it felt like a finely woven silver chain, the scales like tightly braided wire slipping cooly past my fingers. I could feel the taut muscular energy beneath the skin. The pale snake - Freddy said it was an albino - cantilevered its body out from Freddy's grip, a miracle of physical strength.

The snakes fluttered their little forked tongues, flicking against our fingertips.

I don't think I've ever handled a snake before - certainly not in recent memory. I'm not sure I like them, but I can't forget the feeling of the silky, muscular energy of them coiling against my hands. Freddy the snake-man is a professional dealer in reptiles.

Farewell to decadence

The Labor Day weekend is the customary date for the Southern Decadence Festival, a celebration of mostly-male gay culture in the wickedness of New Orleans.

Famously, in 2005, the festival was interrupted by bad weather.

This year, weather affected the festival, too, but not as severely as Hurricane Katrina. But despite the fact that there were fierce thunderstorms during the Sunday parade, these parade-goers were ready to party.

Now we're on the far side of the Labor Day weekend, and thoughts are turning to autumn, school, and getting back to business. Farewell to the decadence and languor of summer! Hello to hard work!

Deconstruction

This is a serving of key lime pie.

Yes, really. At the restaurant Borgne, the key lime pie is deconstructed - the customary graham cracker crust is just a dusting of crumbs alongside a merengue-top scoop of key lime filling.\

It tastes just as good, though.

Pretty street in the Marigny

Here's a pretty house on a pretty street - Royal Street in the Marigny.

I've caught a cold, and I was walking to a Thai restaurant to get some hot and sour tom yum soup. This pretty house cheered me up!

Who wants pie?

Here's a pie I made using the blueberries I picked at my friend Krenkel's place in Picayune, Mississippi.

This weekend is the Southern Decadence Festival in New Orleans, so why not enjoy some PIE???