French Quarter Journal writers and photographers explore life in the country's quirkiest neighborhood during the COVID crisis.  Newest stories are at the top -scroll down for earlier entries. 

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Books, bookstores, writing and reading:  historian Frank Perez contemplates the literary life in a neighborhood that's "a world of dreams and letters." 

- by Frank Perez

Wake up feeling guilty.  I dreamed a book on my shelf was feeling neglected.  I could not discern which book it was and I’m not sure if it was sad or angry or both, but I do know it was disappointed.  Struggling out of bed, I look at my custom-made bookshelf and my eyes take in the multi-colored slivers, the spines of a thousand memories.
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I have nothing to feel guilty about, really, at least with regard to books.  I read constantly, usually three or four books concurrently.  Right now Ardoin’s Stone Motel  is on my nightstand along with Boulard’s Huey Long Invades New Orleans.  Berch’s The Woman Behind the Lens and Codrescu’s New Orleans, Mon Amore are on my desk, Vaid’s Virtual Equality waits in the bathroom.  These are non-virgin books for me, which is to say I’ve read them before.  Some books are like lovers, ones you return to again and again.

The Stewart Butler manuscript awaits.  Some minor editing and revising notwithstanding, the work is nearly complete.  I hope, anyway.  I still need to look over some of Stewart’s papers, which are housed at the Tulane University archives, but they have been closed since March.  In the Before Time, I made regular trips to Jones Hall to comb over the Butler papers, which in archival parlance comprise 17 linear feet.  Translation: a lot of personal papers.  I was at linear foot 9 when the university closed.
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I’ve written a few books before but never a biography. Writing about Stewart’s life and work has been an intellectual challenge—and it has given me a new appreciation for biography as a genre.  I am fortunate that Stewart saved every letter he ever received, and he told his family and friends to save the letters which he wrote to them, and most of them did.  It was as if he knew his life would be consequential.  I spent the better half of 2018 and a lot of 2019 reading thousands of these personal letters.

I pause and recline my chair and my eyes fall on the shelf above my monitor.  There is T. Harry William’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Huey Long.  The book has remained the most significant of my life since I first read it in the eighth grade—no small feat considering it is 900 pages long.  Since then I’ve read it at least two dozen times.  This book seduced me and compelled me to fall in love with language, with writing, with research, with history, with politics.  

For a while, when I was very young, the book even made me want to go into politics.  Ultimately I became an English Professor, in no small part due to another book--The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot.  On the first day of graduate school, before walking to my first class, I read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: Let us go then, you and I …  
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After an M.A. degree at what was then the University of Southwestern Louisiana and some Ph.D. work at Texas Christian University, I landed an Associate Professor of English gig at Tarrant County College.  It was the perfect job for a bibliophile.  

Zoom meeting with the editors of a forthcoming anthology tentatively titled Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations in Librarianship.  Looks like I’ll be contributing a chapter.  It’s an exciting project but it means a few other writing projects will remain on the back burner: a collection of short stories, a play, a book about the letters of John Kennedy Toole, an anthology of history essays, a memoir, and a book about queer publications in Louisiana.  All of these are works in progress at different stages of development.  Of Hamlet, Polonius observed, “How pregnant his replies are!”  I feel like my brain is pregnant with books.

My mother calls and we catch up on our respective COVID worlds.  I hang up and think about the house I grew up in.  I think about my favorite place to read (my treehouse).  I think about what I was reading as a teenager (presidential biographies).  I think about mowing neighbor’s lawns to earn money to buy books. I think about the set of encyclopedias my parents had in the den.  I remember sitting down with a pen and a notebook and rewriting the entries in my own words.

Dinner is roasted chicken with sautéed asparagus spears and slices of salted Creole tomato. 

Tonight’s film is a new documentary--The Booksellers, about rare book dealers in New York.  A good film that triggered dozens of memories of bookshops in the Quarter.  

Back in graduate school I would spend weekends in New Orleans.  I would arrive on Friday and spend the afternoon browsing Quarter bookshops—Crescent City Books, Beckham’s, Dauphine Street Books, The Librarie, Arcadian, and of course Faulkner House.  I never knew what book I was looking for until I found it.  The discovery was the joy.  Friday night was the bars, but the bulk of Saturday was coffee and books at Kaldi’s on Decatur before moving down the street to Molly’s for pints of Guinness under the watchful eye of W.B. Yeats.

On the summer solstice, historian and writer Frank Perez reflects on the passage of time as his French Quarter neighborhood slowly reopens.  

- by Frank Perez

Sit down at the computer.  I’m not working on theStewart Butler manuscript today; rather, this morning is all Archives Project work.  I’ve served as president of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana since it was founded in 2014, and although getting queer history out of the closet pays nothing financially, the work is significant, and the emotional dividends are priceless.  

This summer we have five Tulane students transcribing previously conducted oral histories.  This morning I’m checking their work and answering several Archives Project-related emails.  Also, I’m writing a proposal for a chapter in an anthology about “LGBTQIA librarianship and community engagement in a post-Stonewall era.”  

Balcony break:  The streets are quiet.  After watering the plants, I sit and take in the silence. Even though the city has re-opened and the Quarter is slowly coming back to life, this morning, with its solitude and silence, reminds me of the first few weeks of the shutdown, a calm strangeness.  Then, the lone sound of a trumpet.  Goosebumps.

Mindful of the Summer Solstice, I step outside to gaze upon the shortest shadows of the year.  

Sitting at my writing desk, I pause and survey the room, which is spacious enough to double as a dining room.  The dining table is a family heirloom purchased by my grandmother at an antique store on Royal Street just blocks away.  So many memories, like familiar spirits, are attached to that table.  

In the corner of the room is a recent acquisition - a hand-carved, German-made buffet / dresser.  Like New Orleans herself, the piece is old and somewhat tarnished, yet elegant and beautiful.  Next to the plants soaking up the sun through  lace-curtained French doors are a few pictures: my father, Chris and I getting ready for a Carnival ball, my friend Rip who died a few years ago, Stewart and Alfred along with Rich Magill and Ron Joullian, and finally a picture of Bette Davis in repose smoking a cigarette.  

A few years ago, I received a package from Rich containing a complete set of a newspaper he published briefly in the 1980s - The Big Easy Times. About an hour after I received it, a mutual friend called to inform me Rich had committed suicide.

I was sad, of course, but honored he entrusted the old papers to me and the LGBT+ Archives Project. Rich, who had a place on Chartres Street, and I would occasionally run into each other at Café Lafitte in Exile or sometimes he would drop by my office on St. Ann. I cherish those conversations. Listening to Rich reminisce about meeting Stewart Butler and fighting in the trenches with him on behalf of LGBT+ rights was always inspirational.

I don’t know much about guardian angels, but I do know Bette Davis helped me through some of the most difficult times of my life.  

I think about Rip and Marsha and Stewart and Rich and my grandparents and a host of others who have passed on.  How I wish I could have them around that table for one more meal.
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My pause has morphed into reflection.  Something lonely about Saturday mornings, like tired sunlight on a dusty mirror.

Lying in bed, I randomly open James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room to the following passage:

“I remember that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning. In the beginning our life held a joy and amazement which was newborn every day.”

I fall asleep thinking about the last three months and the return of “normalcy” to the Quarter, about rooms and sea-changes.

Saturday marked the beginning of Phase Two, in which bars not serving food could reopen at 25% capacity.  Stroll with us down Bourbon Street.

- by Ellis Anderson

The bars of New Orleans probably haven't seen a longer downtime since Prohibition.  Those not serving food have been shuttered for nearly three months, since mid-March.  

On Saturday, Phase Two of the reopening began (click here to read complete guidelines). 

In Mayor Cantrell's official statement, she addressed the success New Orleans has had thus far in tamping down COVID.  She also pointed out that the city would be watching infection rates closely before easing more restrictions: 
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“We are ready to move to the next phase of our safe reopening thanks to the tireless efforts of our public health and safety workers and the diligence and patience of our residents. We have practically gone from worst to first in responding to this pandemic, flattening the curve, and ramping up our testing and other efforts,” said Mayor Cantrell.

“In many ways, our Phase Two guidelines will look similar to those implemented last week by the State, with some subtle but key differences,” Mayor Cantrell added.“I want to be very clear: We are NOT out of the woods yet, and how we respond in Phase Two will be pivotal for our City’s recovery.”

We left the French Quarter Journal office on Chartres Street around 8pm and started at the lower end of Bourbon Street's club strip.  Lafitte's Blacksmith Bar (on the corner of St Philip Street and Bourbon) is one of the most beloved in the city.  It was clear that it'd been missed by the community.

A block toward Canal, Cafe Lafitte in Exile and the Clover Grill, also drew jubilant patrons. 

We continued our walk toward Canal Street, passing the Tropical Isle. 

We stepped off Bourbon to check out two classic bars which have served generations of patrons, Molly's and the Dungeon.  The newer Toulouse Dive has become part of a triad. 

Street preachers tried to engage passersby on two different corners and more ministry workers spoke with passersby.  

Some preferred other forms of transport over walking. 

The bollards hadn't been put in place yet to block the streets, and a few brave motorists were creeping through the crowds.  This officer was blocking the streets to create the nightly pedestrian zone. 

Felix's, one of the most famous oyster eateries in the country, was still boarded over.  Galatoire's, across the street had never fully closed, switching to gourmet take out throughout the shutdown. 

And what would a Bourbon Street reopening be without Lucky Dogs? Ignatius would be proud. 

We turned toward the river on Iberville Street and headed back down a very quiet Royal Street.  The Hotel Monteleone reopened two weeks ago. 

Royal House, on the corner of St. Louis and Royal streets, hosted a low-key crowd.  

Cabildo Alley is the shortest named street in the French Quarter.  It runs between St. Peter Street and Pirate's Alley.  The Pirate's Alley Café was open for the first time in months.  

Heading back to our FQJ office, we passed through a serene Jackson Square. 

Near our office on Sunday night, Harry's Corner, another iconic French Quarter watering hole, remained shuttered.  We peeked inside and so no signs that they were preparing to reopen. 

As the nation writhes in turmoil, historian and writer Frank Perez looks through the lens of the past to ponder the French Quarter's future.

- by Frank Perez
- photos by Frank Perez and Ellis Anderson

Wake up to news that Minneapolis is on fire.  My mind goes back 30 years to the Rodney King verdict and the LA riots that followed. I think about my own brief career in “criminal justice.”  I interned as a probation officer before landing a job with the Sheriff’s department (in a different city).  It didn’t take long to recognize the institutionalized racism operating within the department. I wanted no part of it. I quit shortly after I started, firmly convinced we do not have a criminal justice system but a criminal justice industry. 
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I hit the brew, then respond to emails and begin writing.  The topic?  Stewart Butler’s opposition to the “War on Drugs” and his advocacy for reforming marijuana laws.

Walk to Walgreens on Decatur to pick up prescriptions.  The store was closed during the lockdown and has only recently reopened.  It is comforting to be greeted by name, by familiar faces.  Another small sign of hope that the worst of COVID is behind us.  Key word: hope.

As I walk the three and half blocks home, I notice the streets are lined with parked cars. I consider the Mayor’s proposal to banish cars from the Quarter.  For me the litmus test is this: will it make people more or less likely to live in the Quarter?  Because more than anything, the Quarter needs permanent, long-term, full-time residents.  There is no neighborhood without neighbors. No Quarter without community.

Imminent strange was certainly the case on March 7, 1699, when Iberville and Bienville went sailing through Bulbancha and first spotted what would come to be modern day New Orleans.  In his journal, Iberville noted three bison laying on the banks of the river in what is now the CBD.  Upon seeing the expedition, the bison got up and walked away. ​

Lunch is a pork chop with spinach. ​

Walk Rupee to the vet.  The 15 block walk takes longer than normal because Rupee has to sniff, inspect, and mark half a dozen things on each block. It's okay; we are not in hurry.  I had hoped to take a break in Washington Square Park, but it was closed.  I pause upriver on Royal and Frenchmen where Bernard de Marigny lived out the latter part of his life. 

Before long Rupee and I are at the vet’s office.  I’m not allowed in and am told they will call me when he’s ready to be picked up.  Ordinarily I would have popped in across the street at the Phoenix. That is not to be.  I look at the Starbucks. No.  There was a time when a Starbucks in the Marigny, with all its corporate, bourgeois associations, was unthinkable. Times change.  

​I look at the boarded up Phoenix and remember the first time I visited the bar many moons ago.  Then it occurs to me my friends Mike and Guy live around the corner.  After a nice visit with them, the vet calls.  Rupee is newly vaccinated, and my wallet is a bit lighter.

News and social media are all Minneapolis. The coverage is repetitive, the story essential. The pundits call racism/slavery our nation’s “original sin.” The charge is true. The effects of our national sin extend to African American and Native communities, the latter of which represent the first enslaved people in Louisiana.

My thoughts turn to dinner.

​Pere Antoine’s across the street from me is open, but I decide I’m not in the mood to go out.  Not really that hungry, come to think of it. 

On the couch with Chris and Rupee watching television, a barrage of thoughts.  I think about the rioting, about racism, about white privilege.  I think about how little things have changed.  I think about the righteousness and volatility of anger.

I think about the city, the Quarter, reopening.  Will it ever be like it was before?  Will tourists return?  And if so, in what numbers?  And when?  Which restaurants will survive, and which will close?  How will all my friends in the service industry fare?  Can restricting traffic in the Quarter really work?  When will tours resume? How long will we have to wear masks in public?  Will the bars open next week?  How, exactly, does social distancing work in a bar after patrons drink a few cocktails?  
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I don’t know the answers.  All I know is neighborhoods, like lives, inevitably change.

A writer and French Quarter tour guide discovers a time-tested culture where small pleasures bring great satisfaction.

-  by Glennis Waterman

While hunkering down during the COVID19 crisis, I spend a lot of time on my front porch. I live in the Bywater, about a mile from the French Quarter and three blocks from the Mississippi.  The area was developed in the antebellum days as riverfront plantation owners divided their properties and sold off small parcels to working class immigrants.  My neighborhood is a mix of Creole cottages, shotgun doubles and early 20th century bungalows.  My house is one of the latter - a Craftsman bungalow with a deep front porch, flanked by Doric columns.
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Since March 22, when the state of Louisiana declared a “Stay at home” lockdown, I’ve spent my days sitting in a turquoise plastic chair on this porch. My house faces east, so the early morning sun streams in through the stained glass of my front door, splashing crimson across my living room. By the time I make coffee and butter my toast, the sun has risen high enough for me to sit in a shady corner while enjoying the sun on my bare toes. 

The weather this spring has been heartbreakingly beautiful. I watch the play of clouds against the sky. The air smells of citrus blossom and jasmine, or of sun-warmed concrete suddenly rain-wet. Mockingbirds and cardinals sing sweetly while balancing on power lines, and swallows dive-bomb the crows atop the magnolia trees. I sometimes wonder if the universe has decided to give us this gift while we endure the crisis; other times I wonder if it’s taunting us for having ignored its beauty in our earlier, too-busy lives.
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My house is what we call a “double” in New Orleans – two mirror-image units under one roof. My immediate neighbor is a woman about my age, Lanie. Her best friend lives across the street with her partner. Though our front porch has become a shared social space, I spend a lot of time out there by myself, in my turquoise chair, reading and watching people.

Now I’m home all day, I’ve learned my neighbors’ routines. Mo, an artist who lives in the next block, makes a daily pilgrimage to the corner store on St. Claude. She is impossibly skinny, almost emaciated, and the only time I’ve seen her wear shoes on her callused feet was during a prolonged cold snap two years ago. She stops by to offer a handful of parsley from her garden, or to share a tale.

​A lot of people have dogs. There’s a stumpy-legged basset mix named Watson, Murphy, a St. Bernard, several pit bulls, little terriers in rhinestone collars and a teeny-tiny black chihuahua whose owner is a large and imposing man, whose face blooms with a sweet smile when I admire his dog. There are bike riders, dads with their kids in tow; one boy wears a helmet with a spiky red mohawk.

I’ve also come to know the postal carriers, and delivery workers from Fed Ex, Amazon and UPS. Handymen and yardmen drive by in pickup trucks hauling two-by-fours and mowers; an ice cream truck bleats its electronic song. The trash collectors shout and catcall as they leap on and off the truck and choreograph intricate ballets, spinning the trash bins. 

COVID has inspired many gardeners, and Lanie is one of them. In a small plot about the size of an area rug, she’s planted bright begonias and caladiums. A purple-flowered buddleia attracts monarch butterflies. On the broad front steps leading to our porch is an array of potted flowers, herbs, and vegetables – a vigorous tomato plant threatens to take over my side. Passersby admire the flowers, and then, when they see me, compliment their beauty.  I thank them on Lanie’s behalf. On her side, a Cajun hibiscus flaunts its huge ruffled flowers. On mine, deep violet petunias are white-spangled like a constellation of little stars. 

Directly across is a family with three kids. Each morning I watch the mom, baby on one hip, wrangle the two toddlers – a flaxen haired little girl and a sturdy boy - into a stroller for their morning walk. On the river side of our house, there’s a family with a seven-month-old girl. In the next block, a newborn, and down on the corner is another baby. Some mornings, I can hear babies crying from three directions.
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Ryan and Jason live in the gray house, and next to them are a couple from Colorado. On my side, toward the lake, is a couple who just moved here from Brooklyn the week the lockdown started. How strange it must be, to move into a new city at the brink of a shutdown. Yet they’ve been welcomed into the universe of our block in a way that might not have happened under “normal” life. 

Front porches can look like performance stages. My neighbor Dave plays his guitar Friday nights on his. Everyone comes out to listen. A couple of Dave’s friends from uptown brought folding chairs to sit on the sidewalk. Mo stopped on her way back from the corner store, and Ryan put out a chair for her. Dave’s wife gave us all homemade cookies.

By the end of the 20th Century, many Americans abandoned their front porches, perhaps due to the advent of air-conditioning and TV. But here in the South, especially New Orleans, porches continue to be a vital part of life. The urban planning activist Jane Jacobs writes how front stoop sitting allows for “eyes on the street,” which helps keep neighborhoods safe from crime. New Orleans writer Chris Rose wrote that, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, "if you went out on your front porch and popped open a beer or brought out a cup of coffee, inevitably, people would begin to gather.”
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The front porch is featured in works by many Southern authors such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers as a place where family stories and secrets are revealed. It is also a space where people could conduct domestic business in comfort and civility without violating accepted boundaries of class or race. Where visitors feel welcome even while excluded from the intimate home.

This liminality is particularly important now, during the COVID crisis. While no one expects to be invited indoors these days, you can visit friends on their porch. Here in New Orleans, we conduct a kind of peripatetic Happy Hour, cocktail in a go-cup, maintaining social distancing from the sidewalk.

I am a lucky person – healthy, retired, with a secure income. I don’t have to worry about a job, or how to feed myself. My family – though in distant cities – are in safe circumstances.  But there have been moments during the lockdown when I’ve experienced deep despair, fear and sorrow. Such moments often come before sleep, when I’m alone and wondering how long before I’ll ever feel another human being’s touch again. 
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Yet in the morning, the bright splash of crimson sunlight moves across the floor; the coffee maker steams, and I take my cup out on the porch. Across the street, the little girl squeals and her brother rides his scooter. Leslie from up the block walks by, a broad-brimmed straw hat on her head and an orange bandana as a mask. A train whistles from down by the levee, and a monarch butterfly flickers in the air before alighting on a spray of deep purple buddleia. 

​We’ll be okay. We can wait this thing out.

A sprinkling of restaurants and shops opened their doors for the first time in two months, welcoming a cautious vanguard of locals.  

- by Ellis Anderson 

A reminder if you're planning to visit:  Please be especially mindful of our hospitality workers, culture bearers, and residents. If you love the Quarter, show some love to our peeps.  You'll find guidelines to help protect them here.  

A few early birds settle in for breakfast service at Maspero's on Decatur and Toulouse streets. 

Jackson Square, about 8:30am.  Only one vendor had set up. 

Around noon, another artist appeared. 

Louis K. Shabareck, Jr., AKA Dr. Joker, has been setting up on the Decatur side of the square through  much of the shutdown.  The sign lists some of his many occupations. 

Just in time for lunch:  the Hot Tamale man. "I love you, Bay-beeeee!"  

The mostly empty square makes this block of Chartres Street bikeable again. 

A smattering of shops were open on Saturday and Sunday.  One shop owner told us that sales were comparable to a slow day in mid-August, the toughest time of year for Quarter businesses. 

Then we ran into Clyde Casey.  "Casey," is an artist (his bracelets made from forks are highly collectible in the city) and a musician.  I first met him when we were both French Quarter street musicians in the late '70s  He's best known for his enormous portable interactive percussion contraptions/sculptures that he pushes through the streets to the delight of all.

Casey's been sheltering in place since mid-March. On the first official day of reopening the city (Phase One), he came out briefly with a pared down rig, complete with face shield. The theme for the day was "Let the Essential Good Times Roll."  He said he wanted to "reconnect with the streets of the Quarter on the initial day, to let it be known that The Energy has been there all through this p@nd@mmit!!"

Groups of bicyclists were more common than cars. 

A few shops, like UAL on Chartres Street, had regular customers waiting their turn to go in. 

This photo was taken earlier in the week, as the Napoleon House management worked on logistics for inside dining that will meet the new requirements. The upstairs, usually reserved for special events, will be open for dining as part of the plan.  We were given no firm date ("soon") for opening the dining rooms, but in the meantime, fans can order for curbside pick-up.  On Saturday, we treated ourselves to a muffuletta and a shrimp po-boy - both of which were even better than we remembered.  

Also on Chartres Street, the crew at Pierre Maspero's announced their open status to passersby. 

The sparsely peopled Royal Street served as a romantic backdrop for this pair of newlyweds.  

This tiny shop on the 400 block of Royal sandwiched between two large neighbors. The yellow building on the right was the first New Orleans residence of Tennessee Williams. 

Most of the Bourbon Street sightseers stayed in their vehicles.  

When people spotted us photographing, they often waved. 

Bourbon  and Toulouse streets. 

The 600 block of Bourbon Street

Traditionally the busiest intersection in the French Quarter, at Bourbon and St. Peter streets.  

Uncle Louie is a French Quarter fixture, providing Instagram ops by  freezing in place mid-step while "walking" his toy dog, Little Willie.  We found him by the Rouse's at Royal and St. Peter, proudly showing off Willie's protection gear. 

Michael, the Realistic Mystic, started off the morning in Jackson Square, but by early afternoon, had relocated to Pirate's Alley. 

Ready for Memorial Day at Royal and St. Ann streets.

The 800 block of Royal Street.

On Decatur Street, a fashion statement. 

Late in the week, film crews were spotted in the Quarter, along with rumors that a public service announcement with Harry Connick, Jr. was being produced. 

Saturday at dusk, we walked through the square.  The park was closed off and we  paused to watch a masked film crew working inside, finishing the afternoon's shoot.  One familiar-looking man removed his mask briefly to address an applauding crew.  

We don't know the story, but it's sure to be an interesting one. 

For the past few weeks, the Fleurty Girl store on Chartres Street has hosted a Josh Wingerter plywood triptych, part of a series he painted in the Quarter and on Frenchmen Street. 

The intersection of St. Ann and Chartres streets, looking toward the river:  St. Ann Street is normally a busy corridor between Bourbon and Café du Monde.  The first evening of opening day, only a few pedestrians wandered through. 

The intersection of St. Peter and Chartres streets looking toward Bourbon. 

Chartres and Dumaine streets, looking toward the square at twilight. 

A family of Sunday morning explorers on Royal Street. 

Another spontaneous wave on Royal, where the third-generation restaurant, Court of Two Sisters, had reopened. 

The corner of Royal and St. Peter streets, early Sunday morning. 

At Matthew Peck Gallery on Chartres Street, Clair Blue wore an evening gown to celebrate the occasion. 

Artist Isabelle Jacobin on the balcony of her home/studio above Rouse's, at the corner of Royal and St. Peter streets.  Pre-COVID, she often painted scenes capturing the lively street action below.  

On the way home at the end of the day. 

Residents dined above restaurant patrons at the French Market's Louisiana Pizza Kitchen.

Peace prevailed in the neighborhood.  

During the COVID shutdown, a seasoned group of French Quarter street performers create an online platform to raise money for fellow buskers in need.  

- by Reda Wigle

The word busker derives from the Spanish buscar, to seek. Practiced cross culturally for centuries, busking is part of the patch-worked tapestry of New Orleans. When the COVID crisis caused two months of complete French Quarter shut down,  street performer and sleight-of-hand magician Douglas Conn helped the city’s buskers seek new stages. 
 
In late March, Conn launched the Facebook page Big Easy Busker Bonanza, defined as, “A small group of eccentric artists banding together to get through weird times.” Conn’s intention was to create a platform for performers and audiences to connect in the era of social distancing. 

“The majority of the street theatre community thrive on performing. That’s the heart and soul, artists that love their craft and want to be able to practice it as of​ten as possible,” Conn explained. 
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Throughout April, Conn and his band of merry buskers hosted FacebookLive events that featured several notable street performers. Magician and musician Mick Stone opened the first show with the bonafide pandemic bop, “What’s Underneath Your Bandanna, Hannah?” He was joined by NOLA newcomer the Loud Mime, who recorded his performance in a sunny, albeit empty, Jackson Square. 
 
Top-hatted neighborhood staple Warpo, whose magic act, forty-five years in the making and includes snorting a lit cigarette, broadcast from his own home. 
 
In conjunction with the live and recorded performances, Conn created a Facebook fundraiser to help the city’s struggling performers.

“Facebook asks you to a set a goal for fundraising. I didn’t want to put a number on what we’re worth - I wanted to say $8 million, I went with $5000. Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t. The point is, these guys get to do their art.”

Lured south to New Orleans decades ago by the promise of warm weather and deep pockets, Conn learned the art of the busk from mentor and magic legend Jim Cellini. 
 
“I ran away from home at eighteen fully prepared to be a street performer,” recalls Conn who has made a career of large scale magic shows and more intimate, sleight of hand performances. “I learned from the great Jim Cellini that sound, movement, and color were three of the main things that you needed to work on the street.” 
 
Conn maintains that finding success as a street performer in New Orleans, then and now, is baptism by fire. 

“It’s the most challenging of all American cities to work in. There’s oversaturation [of performers], and a large homeless population.  It can be sensory overload for visitors. But, if you can make it work here, you can pretty much make it work anywhere.” 
 
In the new light of quarantine, that "anywhere" became the internet for Conn and his compatriots, though he admits organizing his fellow buskers was akin to amateur cat wrangling. “This line of work attracts a strong-willed and independent individual who relies on themselves and isn’t used to participating in organized activities.” 
 
While the work may call to the outsider, the community that’s fostered by street performers is tight knit, and as of late, sorely missed. 
 
“I miss seeing the other buskers and the comraderie we have in Jackson Square. We’re somewhat of a big dysfunctional family, but a family. On some levels we all have to work together, or it doesn’t work.”

That spirit of comraderie persists in spite and because of the challenges of the ongoing pandemic.  Conn noted that one of Warpo’s performances "generated a sizeable donation and he opted to share some of that wealth with his fellow buskers.” ​

Nearly $1000 was donated to the Facebook fundraiser, money that was split between the performers.  Moving forward, Conn plans to continue supporting the busking community through the Facebook page.  "I do plan to produce more content.  We're just not sure what the next thing is right now." 
​
Conn, who stayed in New Orleans through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath remains hopeful that the city’s street performer community will revive itself as it has before:

“We’ve been through the fire and emerged. We came back. We did it.” 
 
And so they seek to emerge again. 

Leaving the French Quarter for the first time since the COVID shutdown, the writer's destination of choice?  The family tomb in Galliano. 

- by Frank Perez

Rupee is napping at my feet as I polish a passage.  It’s almost time to go.  I had asked my friend Jeffrey Dude for a lift to pick up some prescriptions and when he readily agreed, he also suggested we also take ride out of the city.  He said he needed a change of scenery.  

“Sure,” I said.  

“Any place you’d like to go?” he asked.  

I thought for a second and replied, “Yeah, I’d like to go visit my grandparents’ grave.”

So Jeffrey, Chris and I head down the bayou to Galliano.

Galliano is a small town on Bayou Lafourche, a discarded incarnation of the Mississippi River, a little over an hour from New Orleans.  The drive down was like riding through my childhood. Memories were everywhere—sitting on my grandmother’s knee as she fed me potted meat on crackers with Dr. Pepper, my grandfather’s nicotine stained hand patting me on the back as smoke twirled and hung in the air, the triumphant feeling that overwhelmed me the first time I caught a speckled trout, and the first time I ate a raw oyster.  

​My great uncle was an oyster fisherman and when I was eight or nine, he took me out on his boat.  I remember him dipping the oyster tongs into the water and retrieving what at first appeared to be sludge.  He held the oyster in front of me, shucked it, and then offered it to me.  It looked nasty to me, but the smile on his weathered face convinced me it was okay to eat.  I slurped it down and fell in love.

We arrive at the cemetery.  The tomb is in good shape, freshly painted and well-kept.  My Paw Paw, Earl Angelle, died in 1990, but still comes to me in dreams from time to time.  In these dreams he whispers a word to me, a word I need at the time, a word like patience, or forgiveness, or endurance.  ​

We stop at a roadside market advertising fresh shrimp and produce.  Dinner tonight will be boiled shrimp.

"Just because there's no festival doesn't mean the world can't look festive!"   Jazz Fest sign artist, Nan Parati, teams up with one of the city's savviest retailers, Lauren Haydel.  ​

- story by Reda Wigle 
- photos by Nina Cameron 

“It brought me so much joy to see my sign and meet Nan," said Haydel.   "I got home, put my sign up in the window and came up with the idea to share it with other people so they could have the same kind of memento, a piece of Jazz Fest history."  

Haydel now sells and distributes Parati’s signs through the Fleurty Girl website.  Haydel and Parati began with the modest sales goal of 100 signs. In just two weeks the pair sold over 700. 

​With a heavy handmade workload and nary a masseuse operating in the quarantined city, Parati remedies her aches and pains with fish oil and turmeric. No stranger to high volume, Parati typically makes around 3,000 signs for Jazz Fest, among them a safety warning that became a hot collector’s item. 

 Parati said that “A few years ago Jazz Fest's insurance company worried that people might fall into the ditches that surround the infield, so they asked the art department to make signs for the barricades that read, ‘Stay Clear of Ditches.’  

"It didn't take the general public but four minutes to convert the D to a B.  I've since seen the altered phrase on homemade flags, t-shirts, bags, all kinds of stuff.  And now, people want it on their Jazz Festing in Place signs.”

Parati is as much a fan of Jazz Fest as she is an integral part of its aesthetic. Having attended every year for the past three and a half decades, Parati cites 2006 as a banner year for the festival.

“That year after Katrina, every band, every singer was full of the loss, the love, the healing. The two standouts for me were John Boutte singing Leonard Cohen's ‘Hallelujah’ and Bruce Springsteen's whole Seeger Sessions set.” This year’s Jazz Festing In Place provided Parati the soundtrack to her sign making. “I was listening to WWOZ all day, everyday, when they were doing it.” 
 
Haydel also mixed business with leisure to the tune of WWOZ, “I had people pick their signs up on my front porch while I was Festing In Place. I got to see their faces light up and hear a lot of stories.”

Haydel featured some of those stories in an Instagram series, called, fittingly, #festsignstories. Selling the work of local makers from her porch is a return to form for Haydel who launched Fleurty Girl from her Oak Street home in 2009. In addition to local delivery and front porch pickup, Haydel has shipped Parati’s signs to customers across the country.

​The popularity of the pieces has proved to be a blessing for Haydel and the Fleurty Girl family, “We started getting sign orders, it started taking off and I was able to bring people back to work. It’s trickled into this wonderful, beautiful thing.” 

Another beautiful offshoot of the collaboration? Parati’s pieces are being recognized for the original works of art they are.

“A lot of people ask me to sign the signs which I think is really sweet,” she said. The recognition has been fun for Parati who began her career as a store sign writer in the 1980s for Whole Food Company, the local grocery that helped inspire the national chain Whole Foods Market.  

“I want everyone to know, If you stick to something for thirty-five years, it will pay off.”
 
Part of that pay incudes Parati’s own Cajun coronation: “I write really, really fast. Several years ago this old Cajun guy was standing watching me make signs for the longest time. He finally turned to his friend and said, ‘this is a sign making motherfucker,” Parati remembered with a laugh. “That’s what he said, and that’s what I am.”

And pandemic be damned, that’s what she’ll stay. 

A grounded duo of travel bloggers cook up a hilarious shelter-in-place video series covering local history.  Fortunately, "local" for them is the French Quarter. 

​- by Reda Wigle 

Local bloggers and guide writing duo, theTraveler Broads, AKA Jessica Fender and Kerry Maloney, have spent the last several years casting themselves across continents in search of good times, cold drinks and enviable photo opportunities. Now homebound in the French Quarter, the Broads are focused on celebrating the storied, and sordid history of their favorite city through their weekly video series, Quarantine History. 
 
“We’re so lucky we have to be in lockdown in one of the most interesting places in the entire world. There isn’t much to see right now but we can go back in time,” said Maloney.

The idea for Quarantine History was, as many grand schemes before it, born from boozing, “I had been thinking for years that historical reenactments of New Orleans would be great. I was like, ‘how can we do this, we would need a budget and we don’t really know how to do anything.’”
 
“Then I got really drunk and I texted Fender late at night with all of my ideas and I said something like I really need this,” Maloney remembered with a laugh. 
 
“I said we’ll talk about this tomorrow,” Fender countered. 
 
Tomorrow came and the idea stuck. 

Inspired in part by New Zealand comedian Te Radar's Chequered Past video series, Quarantine History marries hard facts and high camp. To honor the former, the pair has partnered with guide Christine Miller, owner of Two Chicks Walking Tours. Miller provides research and foundational materials and verifies the historical accuracy of each script. ​

 
The goal for all parties is to showcase obscure stories from the city’s past. “We tend to tell ourselves the same stories over and over again here, so it has been really fun to shed light on some of the lesser known pieces of New Orleans history,” explained Fender. 
 
Recent Quarantine History subjects include Bricktop, a flame-haired, double knife wielding sex worker and Bulletproof Baroness Pontalba, the death defying teen bride credited with the construction of Jackson Square. 
 
“New Orleans is a character-driven town which is perfect for storytelling,” said Fender, whose on camera turn as the Baroness was not without peril. “We were trying to figure out what to use in the bloodletting scene and I got shot in the face with hot sauce before we switched to ketchup. Anything for my art, man,” she said.

Said ketchup is the only item the Broads, both avid costumers and DIY enthusiasts, have had to purchase for the shoots. 
 
“We have so much stuff. I never throw things away that could be costumes,” said Maloney. 
 
The two have gotten considerable mileage out of a vintage dress and a certain leisurewear staple of Maloney’s. “We have one pair of blue sweatpants that we’ve been trading back and forth. She had to be a soldier, she had to be a drummer, I had to be the general and we both had to share pants,” explained Fender. 
 
The pair also share production responsibilities. While both Fender and Maloney have backgrounds in journalism, the two admit filming and editing the series is a bit of a learning curve. 
 
“There’s been a lot of trial and a lot of error,” said Maloney who shoots the series entirely on her Google Phone. “We’ve been putting bloopers in at the end of every clip that we haven’t had to manufacture.” 

What they lack in technical know-how the Broads make up for in source material. Upcoming episodes will focus on the spit soaked legacy of General “Spoons” Butler and the city’s starstruck response to a certain 19th Century Swedish opera singer. 
 
Will Quarantine History continue after the lockdown is lifted? “I worry we’re going to be expected to have better props then,” joked Maloney. 
 
“I think we can stick to our ragtag production values,” said Fender who maintains that when it comes to stories, there’s no place like home.
 
“New Orleans not only has so much fodder for stories but really celebrates a good story. If you’re interested in the quirky and the weird, it’s the town to be in.”

If you’re interested in the Traveling Broads brand of quirky and weird follow them on their Youtube channel. New episodes of Quarantine History drop every Sunday. How long will the series continue? 

"Until we're bored," said Maloney.  

"Dining out" has taken on a new meaning these days.  Four of our favorite French Quarter restaurants will help you do delectable at home:  Galatoire's, GW Fins, Italian Barrel and The Pelican Club.  

by Kim Ranjbar
- photos courtesy featured restaurants

Everything is touch-and-go these days, especially in the restaurant industry. Owners are going back and forth over the financial feasibility of staying open for curbside and delivery, possibly offering jobs for employees who desperately need it or closing their doors rather than operating on a minimum and risking the health of everyone involved.

If there's one thing that's certain, the diners of New Orleans appreciate those who can still manage to serve us our favorites, even if it comes in a box.  And at the same time, we're also more than understanding concerning others remain closed to wait out the storm.  
 
Here's an update on several French Quarter favorites offering curbside and takeout… and even a few specials for Mother's Day!

While you may not have the black and white tiled floor, mirrored walls or lively Friday afternoon confabs at your elbow, you can still get a taste of Galatoire's in the comfort of your own home. The historic restaurant has been going strong with daily to-go, “Family Style” offerings featuring dishes like grilled filets with Brabant potatoes, lamb chops in a strawberry Marchand de Vin, Oysters Rockefeller and Key Lime tartlets.

​Not surprisingly, Galatoire's is also offering a special Mother's Day menu with bake-at-home dishes like a seafood eggplant casserole, roasted pork loin and Monkey Bread with roasted praline sauce and fruit preserves. They're also featuring a “Mimosa Kit” which includes two bottles of Gala Sparkling, a quart of fresh orange juice and a pint of strawberries.
 
Call (504) 525-2021 or email sales@galatoires.com Tuesday through Saturday to place your order and schedule a pickup time. Friday orders must be placed by 7PM on Thursday. Saturday orders must be placed by 7PM on Friday. Visit Galatoire's online to check out the current menu for your next family meal.

The folks at GW Fins were open, then they closed, but now they're back at it again and we couldn't be happier. Once again offering super-safe and efficient curbside pickup, the three-course “Fins Feast Menu” plus they added a new and delicious angle. Diners can now also order from a large selection of fresh seafood (like drum, halibut, scallops, and Gulf shrimp), GW Fins' signature sides, sauces and desserts, plus their own biscuit mix to make at home.

​The latest “Fins Feast” menu features items like lobster dumplings, fried soft shell crab with spoonbread and crawfish maque choux, Mangrove snapper with shrimp Creole and Ponchatoula Strawberry Shortcake.  
 
Naturally, GWFins is also offering a special “Mother's Day Package for Two” for the upcoming weekend. Choose from dishes like Barbeque Shrimp with goat cheese grits, Wagyu beef short rib and a chocolate mousse bomb with raspberry coulis. Add a gift-wrapped bottle of champagne or wine, or you can opt for pre-batched versions of their Chocolate Martinis and Mimosas made with freshly-squeezed orange juice and Mumm Cuvee Prestige. Put a cherry on top of the day by gifting Mom with a copy of Tenney Flynn's new cookbook “The Deep End of Flavor.”
 
To get in on this bounty, call (504) 581-3467 and place your order beginning at 11AM and schedule your pickup time. The fresh seafood and prepared, heat-at-home items are available for pickup from 12PM to 7:30PM and the 3-course “Fins Feast” pickup is available from 4:30PM to 7:30PM. Visit GW Fins online at gwfins.com or their Facebook page to see the latest menu. 

Oft overlooked, but never forgotten, The Italian Barrel over on the corner of Barracks and Decatur streets is still in full swing offering their full menu, though have switched to takeout only. Also, be sure to stop at the ATM before pickup up from the Barrel, as they are only accepting cash. A small price to pay when feasting on Prince Edward Isle mussels sauteed in white wine and garlic, porcini and truffle ravioli draped in a creamy white wine sauce, linguine tossed with pesto and sauteed jumbo shrimp or veal piccata in butter, capers and shallots.
 
​Owner and chef Samantha Castagnetti is also slinging some mammoth Italian sandwiches, that would easily feed two, like the Verona – Italian cooked ham, fresh mozzarella and artichoke sauce served on your choice of ciabatta or focaccia bread.  Call The Italian Barrel Tuesday through Saturday at (504) 569-0198 to place your order for pickup. 

After two months in French lockdown, FQJ's managing editor finds herself experiencing culture shock on her return to the states. 

- by Rheta Grimsley Johnson

I missed my dog and I missed grits. And maybe I should add that I missed a few human friends. Otherwise, I could have happily remained in France. The French had discipline, purpose. Almost everyone was united in a belief in science and an unselfish desire to save lives.
​
But now we are home. The Center for Disease Control folks met our plane in Atlanta, took our temperature and sent us out into an airport where duty free shops and bars were open and you could sit wherever the hell you pleased. Some people wore masks, more did not.

That was not the scene in Paris, where we began our journey, or Amsterdam, where we had a brief layover. Those airports were coronavirus-wary, to say the least. Every other seat in those lounges was taped to necessitate a distance between waiting passengers. Almost everyone wore masks. In both Paris and Amsterdam, only one shop in each airport was open, the ubiquitous one that sells bottled water and coffee and snacks.
​
After negotiating four airports we picked up a rental car in Huntsville, Ala. After lockdown in the French countryside for two months, it was strange to see traffic. Only trucks are rolling in the Charente in Southwest France where we spent two months in voluntary lockdown.

For once, I wasn’t burdened with a lot of souvenirs, with scarves and tablecloths and mementoes from grand sights. Unless it came from the grocery store we were allowed to visit weekly, I couldn’t buy it. Instead I brought home with me two notebook pages where each morning I tracked the French coronavirus deaths. For over a month I would write the grim number – beginning with 860 deaths and ending the day before we left with 23,293. Toward the end, the lockdown seemed to be working; deaths had dropped below 300 a day and a gradual reopening across France was announced for May 11.

I will keep those two pieces of scrap paper. They are the most important souvenirs I have ever scored.  “Souvenir” is the French verb for “to remember.” And I want to. The last week or so the number of deaths was dramatically dropping. It felt like a personal victory, one we helped secure by obeying the dictum to “Restez Chez Vous” – stay at home.

I do not understand the rather blasé attitude of so many in this country and my home state, Mississippi. Everyone I talk to by email or phone claims to be sequestering - except for a multitude of exceptional activities. Car detailing, dinner with a few friends, hair appointments, trips to the lake.

The state health department phoned the first morning of our arrival to say we needed to quarantine for 14 days. I replied a tad sarcastically that we certainly intended to, but that it didn’t look like anyone else was bothering.  The caller agreed.
​
Protests against virus restrictions were going on in 10 states over the weekend. I guess staying at home is considered by some to be un-American.

I am still recovering from jet lag. I don’t watch the news anymore. It feels good to sleep in my own bed, on my extra firm mattress, but then I wake up and know that the worst may still be coming.

Galleries may be closed and Jackson Square deserted, but artist Josh Wingerter spiced up the French Quarter and Marigny neighborhoods, using plywood as his canvas. 

- photos by Ellis Anderson

The first few appeared on Royal Street.  Then, on what would have been the opening weekend of Jazz Fest, a Jazz triptych on Chartres offered the "Sounds of Love." When an entire gallery manifested on Frenchmen Street, #joshua_wingerter lit up Instagram. The invitations to use boarded up windows and doors as canvas by the "Pop Art Scientist" began rolling in.  

We met Josh on April 24, when he and his crew were finishing up a series on Decatur Street for the French Market folks.  A few more have since appeared on Decatur and more on Royal, but the artist has been directing his energies into creating more portable works.  He's painted 140 that have been sold to help feed out of work hospitality industry employees.  

Below, you'll find shots of most of Josh's individual paintings. You can find out more about the artist and his work on his website.

I wake up with Paris on my mind. I had been dreaming I was roaming the Pompidou Center in the 4th arrondissement. My thoughts go to the Bastille and the image of the Marquis de Sade leaning out his cell window imploring the disgruntled masses huddled below to storm the prison. It occurs to me that all true revolutions require bloodshed and I wonder how long the quarantine would have to last before the working masses of America rise up against their corporate overlords. These thoughts are heavy.  I need coffee. ​

Balcony check. The streets are shiny with wet and devoid of any life. It is very quiet. The sky is Paris grey.  I look toward the river and am transfixed by the lower Pontalba building.   The Pontalba buildings, which flank Jackson Square, were inspired by the Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris. Truman Capote called the Pontalba buildings “somberly elegant.”  Rupee, not feeling as contemplative, waters a plant.

The Paris connection persists. If COVID has reminded of us of anything, it’s that day-dreaming costs nothing.  As I check my emails and gather bills that need to be paid, I remember my time in Paris. It was 2006 and I had spent a month in Salzburg attending the Salzburg Seminar for work.  

​After the seminar I met my mom and stepfather in Vienna where we enjoyed a few days exploring that city and taking a side trip to Prague.  After the folks returned stateside, I lingered in Europe, spending the rest of my time in Paris.  There I immediately felt at home. 

With work done for the day, I decide to return to Paris.  I spend the rest of the afternoon reading.  But what to read?  There are so many books from which to choose: Barclay’s A Place in the World Called Paris, Karnow’s Paris in the Fifties, Mayle’s A Year in Provence, White’s The Flaneur, Baxter’s We’ll Always Have Paris, Flanner’s Paris Was Yesterday, and so many more.  

​I choose Julian Green’s Paris: “Paris, as I have said, is loathe to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreamers . . .”

Dinner is a pork and vegetable stir-fry, with an imaginary bottle of ’83 Bordeaux. 

New and newly-noticed homeless people spark memories of desperation and generosity in a former French Quarter street musician.  
 

- by Ellis Anderson

 I think of her as The Screamer, but really she shouts and yells.  Those two verbs seem mild:  A stadium crowd shouts.  A quarreling couple yells.  The ferocious cries of this woman carry agony, deep and abiding.
​
“Motherfuckers!” she blasts into the COVID-quiet streets of the French Quarter.  “Get out of my head, you piece-of-shit lying fuckers!” 

That’s one of the few complete phrases I’ve been able to make out, though she’s interrupted my sleep, and that of my neighbors, many times since the shut-down began.  

The Screamer usually starts raging about three or four in the morning and she paces through the neighborhood until dawn.  Her curses continue at top volume for hours.  They carry for blocks in the cool night air, for once blissfully devoid of a round-the-clock stag-party soundtrack. Gone are the frat-boy pre-dawn mass-howling events, the drunken packs of bachelorettes screeching and the sound systems of cars blaring full-blast with the windows down, their drivers believing that the French Quarter is only a Disney-for-adults where no one lives. The Screamer’s night cries, with no competition now, bounce off the centuries-old brick buildings, echoing down the narrow street canyons.  Her strident distress calls carry the anxiety of the entire city - or at least my own. 

I caught a glimpse of her one morning while she was closing out another long night.  She ambled down the sidewalk away from me, her slight form bent like an old person.  She paused and let loose another loud curse across the empty asphalt lanes of Decatur Street.  It seemed impossible that such a small body could generate such volume. 
​
The Screamer is just one of the unsheltered who populate the neighborhood streets now.  Some have been there all along, but since the busy backdrop of tourists has dissolved, they come into high relief.  There are the recently homeless too, like the tarot card reader with the signature cowboy hat.  His sign reads, “The Realistic Mystic.”  

​Before COVID, we always greeted each other in passing.  He sets up his table in the deserted square, but now  he sleeps in his chair at night.  The Realistic Mystic tells me a paranoid roommate asked him to leave.  Savings were threadbare and few customers inquire about the future these days, even from six feet away.  When I ask what he can use, he tells me he’s no beggar.  But he mentions that water is always nice. On a few evenings I bring him filtered water in sanitized containers.

Editor's note:  We are happy to report that the Realistic Mystic now has housing "for the duration."
​

Another new fixture is the young woman who reminds me of a grimy Peter Pan, with cropped hair and a turned-up nose.  She lives in a deep Dumaine Street doorway, one shut for good.  In the daytime, she often sits cross-legged on cardboard in her four-by-two-foot space. At night, she makes a little coffin of the cardboard and curls beneath.  

I always walk on the opposite side of the street from Peter Pan.  I’m 63 and know that COVID covets mature lungs.  I don’t want to come close to anyone, especially a person who’s high risk.  The dogs drag me toward the river with impatience.  But the beam of her smile crosses the street and tugs for attention.  

“They’re so beautiful,” she sometimes coos at us.  “They look so sweet!”  And I agree.  She asks once if she can pet them, but I think of my dogs as virus mops and don’t let anyone touch them these days.  I feel awful denying her such a small thing. 

One morning I am walking the dogs down Dumaine a bit earlier than usual.  On the other side of the street, I see the cardboard coffin.  I wonder if Peter Pan has been able to sleep; The Screamer was active much of the night.  It’s disturbing enough to hear in my secure bedroom.  How would a vulnerable young woman feel, with only a piece of cardboard to protect her against a raver - or a rapist?

Then, a mighty curse rises from beneath the cardboard.  

“Damn you!  You’re something – something, you motherfuckers!” 
 
I levitate off the sidewalk.  Even the dogs bolt.  

That the gentle Peter Pan and The Screamer are the same person never occurred to me.
​

Years ago, I read that the word “home” is one of the most powerful in the English language.   Almost universally, it evokes an emotional response, memories, or at least aspirations, of security and love.  Contentment. Belonging.  Adding on a suffix makes the word even more powerful: “homeless.”  Women who nest on the sidewalks at night in particular move my heart, reminding me of my own past.  Those with dogs crank the wrench tighter. 

Blue is one of those.  She’s a wraith with tattoos on her face that reminds me of an Old West character from the series “Hell on Wheels.”  I’ve known Blue for two years now, since her black lab mix, Minnie, was a puppy.  The two sleep wrapped around each other at night.  

Blue’s a good writer and has passed on powerful poems - when she has paper.  Her nature is literary.  She collects books others discard and sells them for money.  We have become friends of sorts.  But if she were a real friend, wouldn’t I invite her to stay in my apartment?  Wouldn’t I do more to help her find housing?  Instead, when I’m feeling flush, I sometimes give her small amounts of money to assuage my guilt.  I buy her lunch and Minnie dog food or treats.  Once, on a bitterly cold night last winter, I gave Blue my down jacket.  I still didn’t sleep well, knowing she and Minnie were curled up on frozen concrete.  

When I next saw Blue several weeks later, she apologized for how dirty the jacket had gotten. 

Right before the shutdown in mid-March, Blue tells me that she’s ill.  Doctors have told her she needs at least a six-week course of antibiotic treatment in a nursing facility.  
​
She doesn’t ask for money.  She asks me to help find a temporary home for Minnie.  Blue wants to make sure whoever takes Minnie will give her back when she gets well.  She understands that some would want to keep the dog instead of resigning her back to Blue’s care and a life on the streets.  She gives me permission to take a photograph of them both and post it on Facebook.  That night, the image inspires several offers to take care of Minnie while Blue gets treatment.  My old friend, musician David Roe – D.R. - makes the first.

At first, Blue goes by the musician’s house to check the vibe.  D.R. is not home and she leaves a bag of dog food as a promise she’ll return.  She later tells me Minnie settled right into a couch on D.R.’s front porch and didn’t want to leave.  Come on!  She told the dog.  You can’t stay now. 

On the evening when they finally have a meet-and-greet, Minnie at once connects with D.R..  The duck fat he offers helps.  Blue, whose strong intuition has kept her alive through the years, instantly trusts him, too.  D.R. offers her use of his shower and feeds her a good meal.  Then he covers the fare for her ride to the hospital. 

D.R.’s mostly retired now, but works all the same, volunteering at places that feed hungry people, like St. Mark’s church on the edge of the French Quarter.  “That’s what I’m doing the last part of my life – I’m feeding people.” 

That’s no surprise.  D.R. came to New Orleans in 1978, the same year I did.  We were both 21 and both musicians.  I arrived with enough cash to rent a cheap apartment.  D.R. did not.  He lived in a squat with some other kids, including a guitarist named John Abramson.  By May of that year, John had become my boyfriend and musical partner.  

John told me about that winter, the one before we met.  It was so cold in the abandoned apartment building that sometimes D.R. and the other squatters built fires in what had been the laundry room.  Both he and D.R. got sick with bronchitis.  At one point, John was wrapped in a sleeping bag on the floor of an empty room and felt death hovering. 

But they both recovered.  The weather warmed and the tourists ventured out from their hotels to linger in the streets, tossing dollars to buskers like D.R. or John.  The two became part of the thriving, convivial community of French Quarter street performers.  Both were able to get apartments – much more affordable in the days before gentrification. ​

 Later that year, John and I often traded the good money spots on Royal Street with D.R.’s lively jug band and other performers who became lifelong friends.  Any given evening would find a group of us clustered around a communal table at Buster Holmes on Burgundy, where 60 cents bought a big plate of red beans and rice with French bread and margarine. 

John and I snagged a roomy and recently-renovated apartment in the heart of the Quarter on St. Peter Street.  It had a wide balcony, where my German Shepherd, Annie, loved to sit and watch the street action below.  Wood floors.  High ceilings.  Because it was located above a notorious and noisy bikers’ bar,  Shakey Jake’s, it cost us $150 a month, the equivalent of $600 today. In the spring and fall, we could earn that in a few days of performing in the street.  Bars and club gigs paid $10 per musician per set.  Plus tips.  Depending on the time slot, we could work the standard four-set night and come home with $70 or $80 dollars each.  John and I saved up and bought our own PA system, allowing us to take more jobs in more upscale places.   All the musicians we knew prospered.  We called it "The Dream Life.” 
​
So while I had gone short stints without an address before, I’d never experienced an accompanying sense of desperation.  

​Until the summer of 1979, when I was 22.  
​

While the living was easy most of the year, from June to mid-September, the French Quarter streets grew quiet and empty.  In the late ‘70s, people with money to travel chose beaches or mountains as their destination in the summer, not the steaming swelter of New Orleans. Well-heeled locals split for cooler climes, too, like the North Carolina Highlands.  The musicians and service people left behind struggled to make rent and groceries.  

A few musician friends suggested that we try Boston in the summer.  It was a prosperous place, friendly to musicians.  Street performance was possible and bars were eager to hire fresh New Orleans talent.  John and I decided to give it a go.  We gave notice on our apartment. We’d be coming back in the fall with full pockets, and it would be easy to get another.  We used most of our savings and bought a used VW van to be our adventure camper for the summer.  John made racks for our equipment and built a bed on top.  I sewed little curtains and bought a cotton bedspread from India.  Annie had her own spot behind the driver’s side for a bed.  

The plan was simple.  We’d sleep in campgrounds just outside the city and drive in to play music most days.  We had $300 in savings - $1,200 by 2020 standards - to live on until we got some gigs.  We were prepared for anything.  

We thought.  

The van engine blew up in western Massachusetts, far from any town.  We spent most of our money having it towed.  After the garage owner inspected it, he decreed it would cost $400 to rebuild the engine.  They’d need all the money up front before starting repairs. We could leave the van there with our equipment, but there would be an additional storage fee.  

In the space of a few hours, we’d gone from being flush to having no place to stay, no savings and no sound equipment to get gigs.  

We brought only what we could carry  - our backpacks and our instruments, my violin and his guitar.  And Annie.  We stuck out our thumbs.  By that point, I’d hitchhiked thousands of miles, many of them alone.   But no one stopped that late afternoon.  A man, a woman and a large dog was not an appealing combination.  The three of us slept that night under an interstate overpass.  Or tried to. 

The next morning, we finally caught a ride into Boston, where we believed our remaining cash would at least buy us a room in a flop house.  We quickly discovered Boston health regulations forbade animals in any temporary lodging.  Some friendly hippies directed us to Boylston Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. That evening, we set up in front of a popular seafood restaurant, The Crab Net.  It had a constant queue outside, a ready-made audience.  

In New Orleans, we played with the guitar case open, seeding it with bills.  This time, I also made a sign and propped it in the case.  

We need a place to stay tonight.  
​
That first night, some students who shared a shabby apartment took us home.  We stayed up late, smoking pot, drinking beer and giving a private concert despite our exhaustion. 

And while I was used to the occasional cutting comment when we played in the French Quarter – why don’t you hippies get a real job? -  in Boston’s swank business district, the faces of prosperously-dressed passersby often turned scornful after reading the sign in our case.  Their hard, disdainful glares tried to impress on us a certain shame, a shame I accepted, one that stung and swelled larger every day.
 
But I think of my experience that summer as Homeless Lite.  We did have a safety net of sorts.  While neither John’s parents nor mine could have afforded the van repairs, they might have scraped together a few dollars to wire us.  We also understood the cost in reproaches would be more than a loan shark’s interest – and longer lasting.  

We desperately wanted to prove we could survive on our own, overcome challenges without help.  That was made easier because we were white and young and somewhat educated, with a degree of talent and a polished act – all of which gave us certain advantages we then took for granted.  And the time itself was a more generous one; people less fearful, more spontaneous. 

Mid-summer, a young man named David offered some temporary stability - we crashed with him a few weeks.  We tried to repay his generosity by offering money and cooking meals, cleaning his house.  Still later, two college students took us in.  Marcie and Pat shared a Back Bay apartment closer to Boylston Street and the Boston Common, where we’d developed a weekend following.  Staying with them, we contributed more, but our commute to work shortened considerably. We only had to walk a few miles each way carrying our instruments. 

Although we worked hard and squirreled away as much as possible, by September we were still $50 short of the $400 needed.  By October, it would be too cold to play outside.  The mechanics would need at least a few weeks to rebuild the engine. Marcie and Pat had been patient, but the two-bedroom apartment was too small for four people and a dog.  

The leaves were beginning to change color as we walked along the lovely residential area of Commonwealth Avenue, moving from our daytime playing spot in Boston Common toward our evening spot on Boylston Street.  We ran into Mark, a regular patron from the restaurant queue and a fan of our music.  He was only a few years older than we were, in his late twenties, but he seemed decades older in many ways.  Poised. Self-confident. Immaculately groomed in an artfully casual way.
​          
Mark invited us up to his apartment for refreshments.  Where was it? we asked. We had miles more to go that day and didn’t particularly want to detour before playing more sets.  Just on the next block.  We followed him, wondering how someone so close to our age could afford an apartment in the most expensive part of an expensive town.  Maybe he lived in a basement. 

We turned up the sidewalk of a grand historic brownstone.  Mark’s apartment was upstairs, with an astonishing view of the forested avenue below.  The vast apartment seemed like a movie set - polished wood, paneled doors, mantled fireplaces, late afternoon sunlight streaming in through enormous windows framed by brocade drapes.  Furnished with warm antiques and rugs, stacks of books beckoned from several tables, some of them open. None of my friends, none of my friends’ parents, lived in a home like this.  

Mark introduced us to his girlfriend, an elegant woman - again, just a few years older than we were.  She made us tea and served it in an antique china tea set.  I wondered if the set had belonged to someone in one of their families or if the couple had picked it out for themselves at a high-end antique shop. 

As we exchanged stories for the first time, Mark told us that he had graduated from Yale with a degree in Political Science, then gone on to Harvard for an MBA.  I didn’t understand exactly what an MBA was, but didn’t want to let on.  I’d never even met anyone who had gone to Harvard or Yale.  I don’t remember much about his girlfriend, except she seemed kinder than most sorority types I’d come across.  I seem to recall she’d graduated from an Ivy League school as well.  We gave the couple a short encapsulation of our predicament and said we were trying to get back to New Orleans before winter set in. 

“All you need is $50 to get your van fixed?” Mark said, a little incredulity in his voice.  He pulled out his wallet, opened it and handed John a $50 bill. 

Shocked, we insisted that we could only accept such a grand gift as a loan.  We promised we’d pay him back someday, when we got back to New Orleans and back on our feet.  I carefully wrote his name and address in the back of my journal before we headed out to play on Boylston.  I never saw him again.
   
A few years later, when I finally sent a check to Mark, it was returned.  Not at this address.  John and I were no longer a couple, but had remained friends.  We were both sad that we’d lost our chance.  If only we’d tried to repay him sooner. 

When the internet came into being, I tried to find him again.  Nope.  After Katrina, I idly Googled his name one day.  This time several listings came up.  He’d had a remarkable career as an international business strategist. 
   
When I finally got through to him by phone, Mark had no recollection of the $50, although he vaguely remembered John and me.  I tried to explain how much his loan had meant.  How his act of generosity in that terrible time had inspired me for three decades.  I was thrilled to be able to mail him a check, although he said he wouldn’t cash it.  He said he’d frame it instead and hang it on his office wall.  
​

New Orleanians treasure the weeks of the Cusp, spring or fall, when the days themselves provide all the climate control that’s needed.  The incessant background buzz of BTUs, part of the price we pay for year-round comfort, fades.  In between seasons, my third floor apartment in the Quarter becomes a giant breezeway. Most days now since the shutdown, only the sound of neighborhood renovation work filters in. 
 
This morning, cool air from the river pushes through my office on its way to the lake, brushing the back of my neck as I write.  The breeze carries the cries of the Screamer, who has been changing up her schedule lately.  Once again, I try to decipher her words, but the only clear ones are the curses.  

​Yet, the meaning of her message seems clear.    While the Screamer may be Peter Pan, she is also me - railing against random circumstances that can arbitrarily crush a spirit, against the impossibility of healing all wounds.  My mind is hushed only by the knowledge that a small and single kindness can sometimes change a moment, or a situation, and once in a great while, a life.

Rise, and if not shine, at least get moving.  Brushing my teeth I make a note to myself to wear a hat if I go outside.  I resolve to never again attempt to cut my own hair.  The front and sides are okay but last night’s experiment left the back pretty mauled.  How do I know?  Chris burst into laughter when he saw it.  Rupee didn’t judge, though.

Breakfast is homemade Satsuma preserves (thanks, Guy and Mike!) on a toasted bagel.  I’m eating on the balcony and it’s chilly, but that makes the coffee even better.  Not a sign of life on the streets below.

After checking email (still no word from the Small Business Administration), I turn to the Stewart Butler manuscript.  Today’s task: revising the chapter on Stewart’s crusade for trans rights.  Stewart took up that cause long before it was fashionable.  

In addition to annoying me, this gives me pause and I turn to the garden.  There, a few feet away from Touchdown Jesus is an obelisk that was created as a memorial to Yellow Fever victims.  Originally, that obelisk was at the mouth of the river where all incoming ships were stopped and inspected.  Those who had the fever were quarantined at La Balize.

Inside the store are some familiar faces.  There is Robert, who is always affable, checking the shelves.  At produce I run into Wayne, who lives a few blocks away.  Wayne is the Curator of Costumes and Textiles as well as the Carnival Collection for the Louisiana State Museum.  He also serves on the Board of the LGBT+ Archives Project.  

Lunch is leftovers, shrimp etouffee.  Outside the streets are still eerily empty, save the occasional Quarter Rat walking by. COVID Quarter Rats come in two basic varieties:

1) Those on a mission.  These people include joggers, grocery shoppers, dog walkers, and workers. 
 
2) The homeless and mentally disturbed.  Some of these people shuffle around aimlessly in a daze talking to themselves, perhaps blissfully unaware the world has come to a stop.

It seemed almost too much to bear when John Prine died last week, a man who made his living with his lyrics and lungs, attacked by coronavirus.
            
When I’m down, I look up - this time for the predicted pink Super Moon. But the stubborn sky was cloudy and the moon two nights on the wane before I managed a peek. The moon in France looks different somehow, more poetic, and I will never forget this one, though it was kumquat orange, not pink. Maybe pink would have been too perfect, too sweet like a Sloe Gin Fizz.

Over 10,000 deaths now in France, a statistic I look for first thing each morning the way I used to check the weather, or the score of some baseball game I couldn’t stay up late enough to watch.

My friend Bob Krebs sent me a National Public Radio link toPrine’s “life in 10 songs,” but I couldn’t get past “Sam Stone” whose kids ran around in other people’s clothes. There is only so much sadness you can drink straight.

People on Facebook and television keep talking about being bored, which strikes me as odd. Knowing you are not dead yet is not boring. Knowing that thousands have died is not boring. It’s not a good time, true, but it is not boring. Find a new way to describe yourselves.

I have been sad, angry, anxious, depressed, amused even, but not bored. I have felt useless, helpless, sidelined. But never bored. An old editor of mine used to say there were no slow days, only slow reporters. There are no boring days, only boring people.

Funny how the newspaper business had its own clichés. You would think it might be a cliché-free profession, but, sorry to say, no. If our mothers said she loved us, we checked it out. We comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. To assume made an “ass” of “u” and “me.”

If good writing is coining a future cliché, we also dealt a lot in established ones. We also put on a lot of airs, really, thinking ours the noblest of callings when, in reality, it was just the most interesting, at least for those of us involved.

When every day I watch the CNN images of those nurses and doctors suiting up to go into coronavirus battle I think of the truest cliché of all to describe journalism: It ain’t brain surgery.

I’m not belittling what I did for 43 years. I am proud of my profession and my peers and my body of work and the thought that sometimes, perhaps not often, some individual was entertained or enlightened or even prodded into thinking by my words. I definitely was not the enemy of the people, and people have many. But I was not a hero, either. Not like those men and women saving lives in their homemade and inadequate health-tech gear.

Not that wordsmiths can’t be heroes. When I consider a John Prine, or a Hank, my regret is I didn’t have words that were good enough, evocative enough, strong enough to make a real difference. 

We will always have Prine’s “Souvenirs” and Hank’s “Cold, Cold Heart,” for instance. They will comfort us for as long as there’s a foot left tapping on this ailing and exhausted earth. They will echo in the chambers of the human heart as long as one exists. What a legacy to write words like that. Words that last.

“All the snow has turned to water, Christmas day has come and gone
Broken toys and faded colors are all that’s left to linger on,
 I hate graveyards and old pawnshops, because they always bring me tears
Can’t forgive the way they rob me, of my childhood souvenirs.” 

A photo album:  The city's four Easter parades may have been cancelled, but that didn't stop Margarita Bergen and other New Orleanians from celebrating with style.  

Darlings, 

Easter 2020  was very special to me because I was not going to allow the pandemic virus get in my way, even though the annual Easter parades - including the Chris Owens Easter parade -  were cancelled. But I still lined up my beautiful chapeau and my new yellow suit (since yellow represents Hope to me) and invited my brother, Lorenzo Bergen, to join me watching the Mass being televised by WDSU from the St. Louis Cathedral.  Afterward we shared a modest, but healthy meal and once again we thanked the Almighty for his blessings and prayed for the sick and the bereaved.