New Orleans, Me and Gay Mardi Gras

After we had committed to our hotels and dates for last year’s writers’ get-together, I kept researching and discovered what else was going on in New Orleans within our time frame.

It was “Southern Decadence,” referred to as “Gay Mardi Gra,” injecting 100,000-150,000 people into the French Quarter (and city) for a week of festivities. After more research this year, in direct relevance to look up the “hurry-up” reason(s) to book ourselves for last year, I discovered in my emails and messages to the writers that our $59 room rate offer would probably be limited to only so many rooms at the Doubletree and Hilton Riverside hotels. That proved to be true. One of my 6S critics of two days ago and more, would have had everyone staying at a hotel costing 30 more dollars per night. So we booked, and I didn’t and don’t regret it. (And I''m also grateful I'm an archivist so I can set peoples' revisionist histories straight.)

I’m going, again. I’m going to New Orleans smack-dab in the time frame of Southern Decadence.

I’ve got a *better* hotel rate than $59, and am going to see some of the sights I missed, and using my 58th birthday as an excuse to travel, as if I ever needed an excuse to go somewhere I love to be.

Wanna know how much time I spend in the Vieux Carre (old name for French Quarter, pronounced locally as ‘VOO-kah-RAY) when in town? I go to the French Quarter to dine, the whole of my time commuting into and out of that sector of the city, to enjoy specific dishes at specific restaurants.

The Quarter is the city’s biggest tourist magnet, a free-for-all of boozing, bars, noise, crowds, lewd behavior and and all the trappings that keep me out of similar areas in any city.

There are terrific jazz venues outside the Vieux Carre. They’re on my must-see list for this trip (I happened onto them by coincidence last year) but I didn’t make it there last year. The Confederate museum was closed for heavy construction, remodeling. I’m all over the WWII museum and 4-D theater built by Tom Hanks this trip. I’m in a half-day cooking school twice during this stay. Two restaurants I targeted to hit are closed for summer vacation, but the dining-out list-- in New Orleans, as in San Francisco--always contains more opportunities than the aggregate of 3 daily meals. Breakfast, after all, is again included in my hotel rate.

How will I spend most of my leisure hours there? Well, as a birthday consideration, the innkeeper has promised me one of the property's few balcony rooms in a hotel nicer than last year's, and I’m gonna set up the laptop looking out those French doors while I sip espresso and work on my novel.

Hackety-clackety-rough-puff-poof! "Roll on, Mississippi," and roll out, black letters onto a white computer screen's background. Hello, again, "Cookie" ole friend.

Remind me not to call it a book, please. My goal is to write a novel. Not to publish a book. Will I try to get it published? Maybe. Maybe not. My goal is a terrific story, terrifically told. The AlphaGraphics store may be the only one who transforms it into what looks like a book, at great expense for the few copies I’d run only as gifts for my relatives’ enjoyment.

They’ve been satisfied with music I’ve composed and performed for them, music that’s never been published. It’s about finishing. It's about sharing something I've created to share with people about whom I care.

My trip’s about relaxation and enjoyment. Not the Quarter/Vieux Carre. Not the streets swollen with Southern Decadence revellers. My trip's about the charms of the city, herself. The Big Easy. The Big Sleazy. The Crescent City. Despite her many monikers, she has many more stately, Southern splendors yearning to impress all five of one's senses.

Oh, and if you're interested? This year's SoDec colors are "Fuchsia Pink, Black and Silver," which, to me, sounds like an Oakland Raiders' scrimmage with their wives. Bleeccch. Aesthetics, not gay-bashing, and it's juvenile to have to explain, but comforting  that the explanation is warranted for only for a select few.

Let the good times roll.