An advertizement for a brothel, from the original Blue Book, which was distributed throughout New Orleans in the Storyville days.

This tome, because it is a tome, is one of the most thorough exposés on the infamous French Quarter. Yes, it’s all here, the stories of Bienville’s founding of the troubled colony, the complaints back to the French monarch of the less than moral characters sent to populate and work the land, the Yellow Fever, race conflict, the pirates, and yes, the beloved prostitutes of Storyville.

The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld was published in 1936 and curiously ignores the intentional flooding of the poorer section of New Orleans in 1927 but includes stories about the American sector (just south of the French Quarter). It’s possible that this exclusion was due to the many years of research required to write the book, predating the flood. Asbury labored in the libraries, police stations, and even interviewed many of the participants of the View Carré’s inglorious past (I mean that as a compliment). Jazz is barely touched upon but it’s in the context of the 1930s so it’s forgivable.

What is most satisfying is learning the notoriety of the French Quarter is actually more brutal and tantalizing than anyone can imagine. Billed as the sequel to The Gangs of New York…, the author delves into minute details of the city. From specific names and addresses to the crimes committed and even illustrations from the Times Picayune (before photographs were included), the book is stunningly vivid and places the reader right in the thick of classic New Orleans activity. It not only teaches us about this great, wonderful, beautiful city but also lends the underworld history of America.

In the early 20th Century, E.J. Bellocq photographed haunting images of the women who worked the brothels of the infamous Storyville district of New Orleans. His influence is seen today, including in the photgraphy of Joel Peter Witkin.

Some of the pictures were intentionally defaced for reasons that remain unknown and by an assailant who may have been the photographer himself.

Tragically, Storyville was closed by the US Navy in 1917. If anyone wants to get me an original copy of a Blue Book from the era as a birthday present, you will be rewarded with love.

Oh god he's so terrible. But great.

By Carlos Detres

It took me a while to finish reading A Confederacy of Dunces. I won’t lie. John Kennedy Toole created who is perhaps the most repulsive, atrocious character in, not only in literature, but any other medium for storytelling. This character, Igantius J. Reilly bends all forms of decency with the kind of conviction that would make George W. Bush say, “Okay, that’s enough.”  Even Buddhists would find difficulty sympthasizing with Igantious J. Reilly. He is incredulous, bizarre, well-spoken, and obscene in an unusually un-obscene manner.

A Confederacy of Dunces is tough to slog through in the beginning because you will hate Ignatius J. Reilly. You will grow bored of the dialog between his mother and the mother of Reilly’s antagonist, Officer Mancuso. You may even put the book down for a while because you’ve lost patience. It’s okay. I’m with you but keep going. This is a snowball and Toole builds it bigger and rounder until its large rotund shape is ripe enough to toss. Let it hit you because the reward is laughter, heart-rending sympathy, and a satisfying ending.

The setting of New Orleans determines itself as the capital for unique characters and you will find them alive and depraved in Toole’s debut. Reilly’s interaction with the police, Quarter rats, local criminals, and gays is what one would expect from a character who takes pride in his work as a hot dog vendor while wearing a pirate’s costume and weilding a fake cutlass. He is a man seperated from 20th century New Orleans but by the end of the book, I promise you this, you will find yourself rooting for him.

The Sound of Building Coffins

Interview by Carlos Detres 

Poppy Z. Brite said Louis Maistros‘ novel was “easily one of the finest and truest pieces of New Orleans fiction I’ve ever read.” Since I’m prone to write some of the most cliché stories about my favorite city, I decided that, man, oh man, I had to have this novel and let my mind explore the  real New Orleans. 

Although the novel’s subject is very different from 100 Years of Solitude, one can read The Sound of Building Coffins and achieve a similar, bewitching feeling. The book weaves the complex and beautiful elements of New Orleans with mysticism and history. Just as in Marquez’s most notable book, I began to read Maistros’ again..from the beginning. 

Here, Louis and I discussed the contents of his book and what influenced it. 

1. The title is very provocative. What does it mean to you? 

It started as a joke that wasn’t very funny, sort of a gallows humor moment between my wife and I. 

In 2002, two major hurricanes—Isidore and Lili—were creeping up on New Orleans, one right behind the other, less than a week apart. It was a hyperactive storm season that year—but this latest one-two punch had everyone on edge. That kind of nonstop stress can either break you down or give you a nasty case of the giggles—sometimes both. On the night before Lili made landfall, we were standing outside our house, watching the wind bend the trees, and listening to the constant sound of hammering as our neighbors busily worked to reinforce windows and doors. It’s a very eerie sound, one you never get used to. We had decided not to evacuate this time, a decision we weren’t one hundred per cent confidant about at that moment, and in my resigned gloominess I said to my wife, “It sounds like the whole city is building coffins.” That analogy stuck in my mind—a variation of it eventually becoming the title of the novel. 

2. Your book takes place in the late 1800s and early 1900s, during the rise of Jazz music in New Orleans. Some of your characters actually existed, such as Buddy Bolden. How much research did you do for this novel and why this era? 

I did an absurd amount of research, to the point of obsession—though most of the book-related research didn’t make it into the novel in any recognizable way. Book research often manifests itself subliminally; by immersing yourself in a period you gain a heightened sense of familiarity that informs the characters and their surroundings in ways more subtle than you’d expect. One of the more helpful reading habits I picked up was going over old court transcripts of the era. In these documents, more than any other, I became acquainted with the naked reality of how ordinary people of the era spoke and thought. 

Some of my most valuable research had nothing to do with books. I listened to a lot of the early recordings. Really listened. I listened to the pressure and breath that went into each note, how those notes were bent or played straight ahead, I listened and detected nuances of joy and despair in the hearts of the of the musician or the singer, I listened in a way that put me in the room with the players; feeling the room’s size, its temperature, the heaviness or smokiness of the air in it. I listened so hard that I could smell the alcohol on the banjo player’s breath. I also got into the habit of visiting some of the old buildings from the era that still stand. Many of these are shuttered, but sometimes I’d find a way in, or I’d just stand outside and put my hands on the bricks until I felt I’d gained some kind of spirtual clue or base knowldege that I didn’t have before. I also looked at a lot of old photos, including crime scene photos and mugshots, like these. The eyes of these people, long gone as they are, have a way of speaking to you if you keep an open mind. 

Not all research is traditional library stuff, especially if you’re working on fiction. Research can be a type of séance, a way to mine a spirit through that human link we all share. 

3. The Sound of Building Coffins has many mystical elements, which include souls inhabiting the bodies of fish, the after life beneath the Mississippi River, and the bewitching effects of Buddy Bolden’s trumpet. Why did you approach the novel this way? 

For me the idea of a soul inhabiting the body of a fish isn’t anymore mystical than that of a soul inhabiting the body of a human. I’m not saying that the idea of rebirthing an unborn soul into the body of a catfish isn’t an outrageous idea, but the larger absurdity does seem to be the intermingling of spirituality with flesh and blood in the first place. I mean, if you aren’t a religious person, how in the world would you explain that? It occurs to me that the artistic method—be it music, literature, visual or other—may be our best chance of ever getting answers to those types of questions. So, when writing, I try to delve into these deeper human mysteries, hopefully in a way that is more fun and interesting and less preachy. 

Louis Maistros

4. New Orleans is regarded for colorful characters many of which end up in your book. How does this compare to your city of origin? 

I was born in Los Angeles county. I grew up in Canoga Park, a suburb of the San Fernando Valley. At the age of fourteen I moved to Baltimore—from there it was on to New Orleans, where I’ve lived for the past sixteen years. 

Both Los Angeles and Baltimore are great places with plenty of colorful characters—but nothing compares to the casual departure from reality that can be found in New Orleans every day. 

One of the problems in writing New Orleans fiction is that true-life New Orleanians are often so peculiar that even the most authentically portrayed fictitious representation of them can put a person’s suspension of disbelief in jeopardy. In New Orleans, what’s true isn’t always believable. In “The Sound of Buidling Coffins,” many of the oddest characters are based on very real individuals who I’d personally interacted with in some way. The character Marcus Nobody Special is so closely modeled after an elderly street muscian/storyteller (known to me as Mr. Ike) that, in my mind, there is little difference between the realty of Ike and the fiction of Marcus. When I read back those bits of dialog now, I hear Ike’s voice. 

5. There’s a chapter in your novel, which reads like a love letter to your adopted city. Could you explain this personal message? 

I think you’re talking about Chatper Fifty-Six, The River. That was one of the very few parts of the novel that was written after the big storm of 2005. The chapter was a love letter, but also a thank you note and a get well card. The city has always been a place where people have come to reinvent themselves, to find a new start. New Orleans itself even began that way, its original population consisting mainly of hardcase prisoners and other social rejects. When I first came to New Orleans in 1994, I was in a rock bottom state of mind and the city helped me through that. When I began writing the novel in 2000, I meant for it to be, in part, a grateful look at that cycle of hope and rebirth, that tendency to transform lost souls. Or, as it says in that chapter, “Here is where miracles come up from mud.” 

Some people are surprised to learn that the novel was written prior to Hurricane Katrina, but the city has always had this miraculous gift for regeneration. The Rebirth Brass Band had its name many years before the big storm hit. 

6. You’ve written jazz music into your book unlike anyone else. It factrors prominently in the exorcism of certain characters. Could you explain the influence of Jazz in your book? 

Thank you. I don’t think you can talk about New Orleans history without talking about jazz. Jazz is more than just a symbol or product of New Orleans culture, it is a kind of embodiment of our spiritual reality. New Orleans has always been challenged by hard times and struggle, but it has always managed to improvise its way through these seemingly hopeless situations by harnessing its collective passion for life. Sometimes that passion is born of joy and hope, sometimes it’s born of tragedy and despair. That is jazz, but it’s also the blues. Jazz isn’t just a type of music, its an expression of necessity. When I wrote the novel, those basic principles of rhythm, melody and improvisation were always in play. I couldn’t have told the story otherwise. 

Typhus Morningstar was based on this face.

7. The hurricane in the story actually happened. I felt the addition of the hurricane was a statement about Katrina. What message did you hope to get across? 

Actually, the hurricane in the story is made up—a combination of details from other storms of the era. To be very clear, the hurricane element of the story was in place well before Hurricane Katrina. Although I did add a few sections after the real-life storm, most of the storm-related content in the novel was actually removed after Katrina. The original manuscript was much longer, and much of what was cut out dealt extensively with the storm theme. After Katrina hit, a lot of that stuff felt inappropriate or exploitive. It made me uncomfortable, so I trimmed out some of the more difficult scenes. 

Remember, before Hurricane Katrina, fear of the so-called “Big One” was a daily part of our lives. Many of us didn’t think it would come during our lifetimes, but few of us were very surprised when it did. So the fact that the hurricane was written into the novel well before Katrina shouldn’t be too surprising. 

8. Why did you choose Buddy Bolden’s inclusion as a character? 

Buddy Bolden is a perfectly mysterious and mythologized figure in New Orleans and jazz history—and so he is perfectly suited to fiction, I think. There has been much said about him, but few actual facts are known. The great jazz historian Donald Marquis wrote what is probably the most definitive book about Bolden, but it is a thin volume, mostly dedicated to debunking falsehoods. There are so many holes in Bolden’s true story that will never be filled—it seemed an obvious choice to try to fill some of those holes with the kind of poetry that can be found in a novel. 

9. You wrote the book, revised it, and sent it off. What did you expect and are you surprised by the general critical praise it has recieved? 

I didn’t have any realistic expectation that it would be published, and was even somewhat fatalistic about that. I had totally accepted that the book would probably be just for me and a few close friends. The strangest part of being published was the realization that this very private part of my life—an imaginary world that previously existed only in my head—was now being read by thousands of strangers. I still have a hard time grasping that concept. 

Yes, the positive reviews have been surprising. My favorites are the ones where the reviewer has clearly “gotten” what I was trying to put across with the novel. There are some elements of the story that run so deeply and personally that I’m pleasantly surprised when others make a connection to them. These are the moments when I feel the book has really succeeded in some small way. 

10. How has your life changed since the release of your novel? 

Nothing has really changed. If anything, my perception of myself as a writer has altered—just a little bit. Before, writing was a lark. No one expected me to do it, or even wanted me to do it—there was no pressure, good or bad. Now there are people who would like to know what I’m working on, when it will be done, what it’s about, etc… It’s very nice that there’s interest, but now I’m worried about whether the next one will be as good as or better than the last one—things like that. It’s a little bit harder to enter that private creative world when there are expectations attached. Still, I’m very grateful that people are interested in my work at all. I understand that the bottom could drop out very easily 

11. Do you have any new projects in the works. If so, what are they? 

I’m working on a new novel called “Holy Meaux.” It takes place in New Orleans, 1963, and is about a bible-thumping, piano-pounding, junkie-pimp who gets wind of the Kennedy assassination before it happens and tries to stop it. Also, there are crows in it. Lots and lots of crows.

I wear this costume every year.

You still have plenty of time left to decide where to dress down into your sluttiest and goriest costumes. Every year we find ourselves doing the same shit with the same people and maybe ending up in a bathroom somewhere in Alphabet City with a bag of drugs and a new lover — but I digress. For this, we supply something new. A list to release your most macabre inhibitions while sucking the blood out of a stranger and sipping the marrow from your favorite drink. Delicious — indeed. Children and families need not apply.

5) Salem, MA — Hardly any city takes Halloween more seriously than Salem, Massachusetts — the site of the Salem witch trials of 1692. Blah, blah, blah — we’ve all read about that in grammar school but what you didn’t read about is that the residents of this village take their esteemed holiday very seriously. In fact, you can’t even get into a bar without a costume. Add nightly tours, graveyards older than grandma, and tourists from around the world and you’ll get that Halloween you’ve been craving for so long. Just get in the car and drive or if you’re too far for that, book a broom (har har).

4) Miami, FL — Unbeknownst to most of the civilized world is Miami’s penchant for an ass kicking All Hallows Eve. The streets of Coconut Grove’s Cocowalk are shut down for the night, allowing your drinking spree to continue unabated. If you’re looking to avoid the jetsetters and Miami’s version of the guido, then you’ll be in the right place. All of those glamor whores are off in South Beach riding the nose candy trail to the end of nowhere. Give Miami a go.

3) New Orleans, LA — When is it not a good time to go? The land of fine food, exquisite culture, and uber decadence provides yearlong reasons to visit, most notably on Halloween. As one of our favorite writers, Louis Maistros decreed, “Halloween is a perfect time of year to come. The weather is great, the crowds are small, and Halloween is more of a local artist-driven holiday — so it doesn’t become a big fat filthfest like Mardi Gras tends to.” If you’re not a fan of crowds but you’re a fan of this city then this is probably your best bet. Their costumes are reputed to be ridiculously good and the drinks are cheap.

2) Las Vegas, NV — The city of going-over-the-top has some of the best known Halloween parties this side of the hemisphere. With more money than God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Bill Gates, they are able to throw all of their capital into Halloween-blasting orgies of fun and still able to make money from it. That’s the brilliance of pandering to desire and substance. As Whiskey Dregs writer, Aryn DeKaye says, “It’s fun.”

1) New York, NY — There is seriously no other place in the world that does Halloween better than New York. You’ll find many cities vying for that title, promising this and that but…no. They don’t have the capacity or abundant facilities to even attempt the feat. The common problem here isn’t what to do but how to fit all of the things you want to do into one night. Luckily, promoters and revelers have figured out a way to counter this problem — make Halloween a month long holiday. With haunted houses of different stripes, parades*, parties, zombie conferences (see: Zombie Con 2009), pumpkin ale specials, scantily-clad waitresses and waiters working the late shift, you can’t go wrong. Forget about New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve is so 1999. If you want a real celebration, you come to New York for Halloween.

*Try to avoid the Village parade this year. There’s so much more going on than that. It is packed, cold, and even finding a station to exit from to watch the parade can prove to be a hassle. Tourists, you have been warned. Instead do what the counter culture does and go to a party hosted by our friends at The Danger. They produce the best parties of all time.

So many people, so many years, and so much intrigue and controversy including numerous wars, fought on the battlefield as well as in the courtrooms and on the streets of New Orleans. We have generals here, politicians, lawyers, doctors, as well as writers and artists, etc.; or generals, lawyers and doctors who were also writers and artists. Firefighters, police officers, shopkeepers, refinery workers, you name it, and their wives, mistresses and families, of a variety of races and cultures, now virtually inconspicuously a part of New Orleans’ culture, can also be found. I have ancestors here, as do many of us, and friends of these ancestors, people and families who, over more than a century and a half, have built not just a city but a whole way of life.

This is not a “City Of The Dead”, but one of the LIVING (hence the title).

Some of the old timers have stories which are, frankly, shocking when you first hear them, then kind of funny, such as how they would play in the cemetery as kids and move family vases around so that on holidays they could earn pocket money by “helping” to find and retrieve them.

This certainly wasn’t good for the cemetery, but some would do even worse things, such as “elbowing” name plaques, which are very fragile and made an extremely gratifying sound as they would crash to the ground and break into a million pieces…and I hear this story while I am going crazy trying to find names with very little to go on! Well, I guess it’s too late to try to put a sixty year old into reform school.

Another story reflects the working-to-middle-class environment which prevailed at the time, before people started moving out to the burbs. Most of the homes in the neighborhood weren’t air-conditioned back then, and in the summer families had to rely upon the high ceilings, fans, and transom windows to control the heat.”Shotgun” houses, with rooms in tandem and no hallways, afforded only general working space and even less privacy, so kids were encouraged to go out into the neighborhood (the term “shotgun” meant that you could stand on the front porch, shoot a gun through the house and it would go out the backdoor). After supper, as the evening cooled, the adults and younger children would lounge on their porches and tend to social activities, while the bigger kids would converge on their favorite hangouts. The cemetery was popular because it afforded numerous places to hide. I heard a story about how some of them would grease the streetcar tracks, then run the block to the cemetery to observe their handiwork with little fear of being caught. At the corner of Prytania and Washington Ave. is a spot where one can simply lean over the wall and have a perfect view of St. Charles Ave. In case you don’t get it, they were waiting for the streetcar to crash into something.

One day an older gentleman, who must have been in his eighties, came out to the cemetery. I noticed him wandering around, not out of interest but as if he were searching for something specific. So I asked him if I could help. Gladly, he replied. His grandfather’s tomb was somewhere in the cemetery but since he had last seen it as a child he had absolutely no recollection as to where it might be found. At the time the name and location listing was nowhere near being complete, but a little wandering around produced a resounding “Bingo!” – the term we yell out so that all searchers will know that the tomb has been located. He was delighted, which is very heartening, and immediately started going down the list of names on the tomb, describing members of his family with such enthusiasm that I was personally very happy that I was able to help. And he also gave me a wonderful story about his grandfather. I have heard many over the years, but this one is of particular interest. His grandfather had been a caretaker at the cemetery around the turn of the century, had owned a house outside of the Sixth St. gate, a few doors away from my family’s home (which I was able to verify), but the funniest part of the story is this: his grandfather had also operated a dairy and kept his cows, of all places, within the cemetery!

It’s amazing how, over time, all of these stories fit together to form a picture of how life was long before most of us were born. It’s doubtful, due to the period, that there is a photograph or painting which could be entitled “Cows Grazing in the Washington St. Cemetery”, and I have just a few close-to-firsthand stories describing this period in the first place.I have only lightly gone over the works of others so as to keep the integrity of the project’s originality intact. But the works of John Churchill Chase inspired me, a lovely man whom I remember vividly from when I was very young because he worked for many years at WDSU-TV here, the NBC affilliate, together with my father. Watching him draw just off of the newsroom and edit suites will always be a dear memory. One of his books, Frenchman, Desire, Good Children and Other Streets of New Orleans, was a great inspiration, along with the works of Mark Twain, George Washington Cable, and others who sought to document our, as well as their own, lives. I am honored to be a part of this tradition. Amongst serious historians we have a joke: There is only ONE river…you might call it something else, but WE call it the Mississippi! (this is a little like: My river can beat up your river!….very typical New Orleans).

But that’s what it’s all about; people…and their stories. I wasn’t trying to actively collect stories; it just went along with the effort to make the cemetery a safer place. A few of the stories are profound, most are of the everyday variety, but all are important. Some of my favorites come from the “little old ladies”, the lovely ones who would come, say, at least several times a year to visit a husband who had passed away, maybe, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. They talk about him as if it were yesterday, what he did for a living, his accomplishments, how he had been a good father and husband. Sometimes they would come with family members, such as on holidays, but often they would come alone, and I would spend as much time with them as I could, even when I had other things I needed to do.

But you know, and this is no joke, that after so many years of talking with families, that you get the impression that they might all have been married to the same man, their stories were so similar. And sometimes they would ask me to cleanup around their tombs for them, which I didn’t mind doing, if I had the time.

This one lovely lady (who has since passed away), has given me one of the nicest and most memorable stories to date: she would always praise me for being willing to spend the time there, how dangerous it had been, and how she had been afraid for a long time to come by alone. If she couldn’t see me from her car at the gate, she would drive around until she did, sometimes for twenty minutes or so. When she asked me if I would look after her coping for her, I told her in a Southern Gentlemanly fashion that I would be glad to.

Before she left she sat down momentarily and removed a metal “Sucrets” cough drops can from her purse, held together with a rubber band. She opened it, pulled out a fresh, crisp, five dollar bill, started to hand it to me, then stopped. She looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, took out a second bill, then handed me both, remarking, “You’re worth it!”. I now feel obligated to weed her coping for the rest of my life.

I was there when she was interred and made sure that both she and her husband were comfy, and will always wish that everyone could have such beautiful experiences in their lives…..

Editor’s Note: Sean Perry is the director of Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans. This historical location is in desperate need of a laptop, tools, things like garbage bags, and funding to continue maintenance.

Email: lafayettecemeteryneworleans@gmail.com

Website: lafayettecemetery.org

You could succeed in a debate that Jabbo Smith kept Louis Armstrong on his toes while the two competed for the best trumpeter of the Crescent City. But these musicians’ lives diverted after the late ’20s, with one derelegating himself to alcohol and decadence (one of our favorite past times) and the other was memorialized with an old slave hangout spot that was converted into a grandiose park, his name in large letters greeting tourists and residents to the verdant pasture.

Jabbo Smith eventually faded into obscurity in the ’30s and then worked his way to Milwaukee with occasional sojourns to New York City and settling down at an automobile company, becoming a working stiff. In the ’60s, Smith’s popularity recovered as old recordings were brought out of the archives. He continued playing through the ’70s and ’80s until he passed away on January 16, 1991 at the age of 82 but not before learning of his acceptance to the Coastal Jazz Hall of Fame.

Although the prime of his career was short, Smith managed an important catalogue of music that has influenced everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Don Cherry. Provided for you is a sample of his work. Enjoy and laissez les bon temps roulez. (by the way, this is our 100th posting!)

 I drove on to New Orleans in good spirits.  When I arrived, I got a job as a janitor        for $5 an hour at Mardi Gras World, situated against the levy in Algiers.  I lived out        of the back of the Cruiser in the parking lot.  Most nights around midnight I saw a          bum with short white hair.  He sat on the short peripheral mound that separated the        parking lot from the levy, writing on a little spiral notepad.  One night I introduced          myself, “I’m Tom.”

 He looked up at me with clear, ice blue eyes, “I’m Pete.” We shook hands.  His            little notebook looked like it was filled with poems.

 “Nice to meet you.”

 “Nice to meet you too.”

 That was the only time we talked, but he was around most midnights.  It seemed            like one day he looked around and didn’t like where he was, picked up and                  walked himself down to the levy.  He didn’t care that I was there, and we didn’t share a sense of camaraderie, but his presence was soothing like another glowing campfire in the wilderness.

   A half-mile down the levy was the ferry dock where I caught rides over the Mississippi into downtown New Orleans.  Right next to it was a little diner where I could only afford French fries.  But that was fine because the French fries were not ordinary.  It was one of those scenarios where the sweaty waitress and enormous chef are not who they appear, but wizards or saints or curators of secret ancient wisdom.  This was clear when I placed one of their French fries in my mouth—salt, salt, salt, oil, oil, oil, hot, hot, hot, a tiny crunch as the crispy outside broke in my teeth, and then the scalding, tasty oil, once trapped, trickled over teeth and tongue and the steam of fluffy white potato jetted out.  But perfection was not enough.  With a dousing of hot sauce in a nondescript bottle, the next fry became something else all together.  It was as if love had become a food and I found spiritual respite, if briefly, in a French fry.  The waitress and chef looked at me with knowing, smirking eyes.  I left that hole-in-the-wall peacefully once or twice a week, the screen door slamming behind me, my hands stained red with hot sauce.

   That week, we had to work ten hours a day to get July 4^th off on Friday.  I was walking around the area and found one of the older guys who worked at Marti Gras World and he invited me to hang out with him and his wife and their friend, which I thought was very kind of him, indeed.  His name was Hal.  We ambled around, waiting for it to get dark and for the fireworks to begin, he getting drunker by the half-hour.  Hal said, “You see that pier there?”

   I looked through some trees and shrubs and saw an old decrepit pier in the water, “Yeah.”

   “Around 1900, a hundred-and-twenty people gathered out on that pier to watch the fireworks on the 4^th of July.  As the fireworks were going, the pier collapsed and ninety people drowned.”

   “Jesus!” 

   “Yup-whole families drowned right there.”  I looked at the truncated pier.

   “Why couldn’t they swim to shore?”

   “In a situation like that people get crazy and don’t know what to do—probably pulled each other down.”

   I heard the creaking and snapping of the wooden planks and pillars mingled with increasingly frantic screams.  I saw the people grabbing and drowning each other in their mad and vain attempts to stay alive, pulling each other down into the darkness.  

Nina,

      Lying in the grass covered

            Rain

            Lying in your birth

            And rebirth

            Living in all momentary stillness

            Movement is movement

            And I died with my lips touching yours

            And something about life…

            I live and you live

                   forever

            Lying in the raindropsgrasssun

            Riding the storm storm storm

            Rain taste tongue

            Rain 

   In the following weeks I played my sax, got kicked off Bourbon Street, wrote motifs for the symphony I was working on for my music degree, played classical guitar, stared at ceiling fans, met artists on acid, beautiful women in posh hotel rooms, Blue Eyes—a black man with clear blue eyes, Willie the Blues Man and jazz artists, watched young mothers beat their children at the laundromat, gave their kids quarters for the gumball machines, mailed letters in the ghetto, walked across a forbidden bridge, rode the ferry back and forth across the river and worked at Marti Gras World changing light bulbs, polishing floors and painting signs.  I was also lent a vacant apartment by my employers, the Kerns, so I was doing all right.  I just sailed along in a state of relative normalcy.  I didn’t suffer too much from the circling dreams and memories and madness.

   In the midst of this, I received a call from my brother, Jake, one morning.  From Reno, he arrived in Algiers that same afternoon and we set out along the levy toward the magic French fry diner when the sky darkened.  I found out for the first time that Jake was petrified of lightning.  He explained in detail how lightening was always at the hull of a storm cloud.  Thunder rumbled.  Warm, thick raindrops landed on our heads and clothes.  Fat lightening came down, and we saw it hit a church antenna a mile away.  Then,

   POW!

   The lightening bolt struck the mast of a boat about fifty feet away from us.  Electricity crackled and ululated about the pole tzzzt!zzzz!tictzzzt! in braided blue threads and we squinted at it with our shoulders hunched.  Jake kept it together long enough to get to the diner.

   We continued across the river for Bourbon Street.  We bounced around here and there for a few hours and ended up in seedy strip club.  Sitting there I overheard a conversation between two of the dancers. One of them was going to dance that night for her first time.  She wanted to back out.

   “I don’t think I can do it.”

   “Yes you can Charlene…”

   “No, I don’t want to…”

   “Just do it the first time and then it gets easier-you can do it, it’s easy.”

   “No…”

   I looked at her pretty face and her long dark hair and then at her costumed body.  Her shoulders were slightly wrapped around her, and her arms crossed over her breasts, keeping her safe from the probing eyes of the sad male constituents, mostly middle-management types with nice suites, some who looked like they were on a mass collective business trip from Hong Kong or Tokyo.  The girl’s face was sad, reluctant and translucent.  In it I could see memories of the last year up to this point in an ongoing loop.  They scintillated from her eyes onto the room like a movie projector.  The images moved on the walls and drinks and customers’ faces and clothes and on floors, stages and dancers.  They were rendered blobs of light and shadow without definition.  I think I was the only one who saw the tiny pictures clicking by on her eyes like the little windows the projectors shine through at the theater.

   The rest of the night was very blurry but we ended up in a decent hotel room that Jake paid for.  We looked for stuff to do and walked to the aquarium on the boardwalk.  We watched young manta rays swim endlessly in circles with tragic intelligence and grief. 

   “They know they’re in there,” I said.

   “I know.  You can tell.  It’s sad.”

   My brother’s Catholic, so we walked from the aquarium to mass at a grand cathedral. I always imagined Paul Simon’s Richard Cory putting the bullet in his head on the sidewalk across the street.  The mass was boring.  A couple hours later, Jake flew home and I was alone again.

   I returned to work the next day.  That morning I said hi to the beautiful Asian artist I wished would invite me to do something.  “They just found a guy who hung himself,” she said.

   “Where?”

   “Right out back.”

   “Jesus. Have you seen him, yet?”

   “No, I just found out.  Some people found him up there about 10 minutes ago.  Do you want to go look at him with me?”

   I hesitated.  “Yeah, let’s go.”

   We walked through the long grass up the hill behind the art studio.  He was hanging from a rope tied to the top of tube-shaped ladder.  He was wearing a backpack bulging with books to make sure he died.  His broken neck bulged under his skin like his backpack.  His ears and the side of his head were purple.  He didn’t move.  You could tell he wasn’t more than fifteen or sixteen years old.

   “Did someone call the paramedics?”

   “They’re on their way.”

   There were murmurs of conversation behind me.

   “When’dja find ‘im?”

   “About 15 or 20 minutes ago.  They heard it happen,” Warren, my boss and head fixit man, nodded to a group of burned out looking hippies sitting on dirty blanket.

   “Do you know him?”

   “Naw.”

   “Should we get him down?”

   “I aint touchin’ im,” Warren said. 

   I thought about how the paramedics or police or firemen would have to touch him to pull him up out of the ladder and put him on a gurney, how his cooling body would feel on their squeezing fingers and hands, how he would sag like a bag of dough, and they would see his face purple and his swollen tongue and eyelids.

   “Do you think he’s still alive?” I asked.

   “I donno-” Warren said.  And still I just stood there.  I didn’t even think to get him down.  We stayed for a few minutes and walked back to work.

   Back at work Warren said, “Happens all the time around here.”

   “All the time?”

   “Well, not people hangin themselves, but the bums aint got no food so they go steal somethin from one of these houses, then the niggers kill em and throw em in the river.”

   “That happens all the time?”

   “Eh, few times a year,” he shook the extra water off his hands and dried them.

 During lunch break I walked to the French fry place where I thought how hot it was that day.  It was hot the day before at lunch and I drank a cold Coke in a glass bottle.  I wondered if that kid drank a Coke the same time I did.

[you can purchase a copy of this book from https://www.createspace.com/3348649]

• Can’t smoke anywhere near Queensborough Plaza but you can yell and threaten a police officer while he’s giving a ticket. Miguel and I were finishing a cigarette and a cop walked over and asked for our IDs. While writing our tickets, a man became unruly at the ticket counter and yelled and threatened the cop. The cop responded by being louder than him and waving his baton. What happened next? Nothing except that Miguel and I now have to pay 50 bucks for some bs.
• Can’t park anywhere at night. Marcus parked in the Lower East Side in a section that was accompanied by a very confusing no parking sign. Apparently, “no standing” means no parking and now that sounds obvious to anyone, however the times that were designated were not. There was a difference on the sign between “no parking” and “no standing” depending on what time you “stood” or “parked” the car. What happened? Marcus got a friendly $150.00 ticket. Nice!
• Can’t stand directly outside of a bar. What happened? Miguel, Marcus and I left the gallery bar and while deciding our next destination, a bouncer informed us that we couldn’t stand “there”. We were at least 15 feet from the door but no matter – we had to move.
• Can’t dance in New York. Why? While it is not strictly enforced, people are not legally allowed to dance in a bar unless the establishment has a cabaret license. We can thank Giuliani for being the town asshole and enforcing an antiquated law. Side note: Giuliani is a fascist and don’t let anyone tell you different. Rememeber that we live in America and not Mussolini’s Italy.
• Can’t smoke anywhere. Now I understand this, believe me I do but… C’mon now… Seriously? Nowhere??? Shouldn’t there be some kind of 70/30 law like the one enforced in Orlando? Orlando isn’t a haven either. Everything closes at 2AM.
• The city that never sleeps? What a lie! Everything is done for by 4AM… That means EVERYTHING. And because a liquor license isn’t granted for anything open after 4AM that means that you can’t go anywhere but home. City that never sleeps??? Give me a break. Lie, lie, lie.
• Too many guys and you won’t get into Lit. Lit is seriously one of my favorite bars – period. Drinks are reasonable. The music is great and after a certain time, one may partake in an unmentionable favorite activity downstairs in their basement. I really love this place but if you try to go in with too many guys (more than one) then good luck. You ain’t gettin’ in. So here’s what happened: Last weekend, my buddy and I after a good night of partying decided to go to Lit at 3 in the morning. The both of us are standing in line trying to seem as if we don’t know each other but when it’s time to go in, the bouncer looks at us and says, “Sorry, too many guys. Can’t let you in.” Lit is a place that I spend good money in all of the time and because of this bouncer, I couldn’t go in and enjoy the rest of my evening with cool drinks and good tunes. I love that place so much that I’ll still throw my support but I have to mention it here because it’s not just Lit – it’s everywhere. Have a cock? Good luck.

I love New York just like every one else but if you want to go to a city that revels in freedom, go to New Orleans. Somehow these people have been successful in maintaining a healthy night life without all of these damn rules. Not one of these rules applies there. If you leave a bar at 5AM the same bar will be open when you wake up at 10AM.

Honorable mention – If you’re interested in doing your own party - good luck. New York has a law against that too. Ask the hundreds of hard working promoters who have had to fight this city to do one freakin’ venue.