|
|
|
A cat in New Orleans
Tuesday, October 5 1999
Today Kim and I will be heading by airplane to New Orleans. We'll be taking a little commuter plane to Los Angeles and from there it will be a straight shot over a vast swath of fly over country (full of paranoid angry white men and their fears of black Chinese helicopters) to the city that care forgot.
For the number of miles traveled, it was an amazingly easy flight. First we took a small commuter prop plane up the coast to Los Angeles. The propeller was much noisier than a jet engine. But beyond that, it seemed to be gradually shaking the plane into pieces; I observed a complex formation of ripples in my coffee whenever I set it down on the fold-out tray in my lap. I'm not especially familiar with this flying thing yet, and every new kind of flying feels like a dangerous misadventure.
The flight over the bulk of the arid southwest passed without incident. I could see the whole of the Salton Sea, this time from the north, as well as the intensely irrigated lower Colorado River Valley. Somewhere in Texas the land was covered with a strange manmade dendritic land pattern that consisted of numerous parallel trunks with short alternating branches heading off at sharp right angles. All the branches terminated at fat round landmarks which I assumed must be some sort of well.
The bayous of southern Louisiana were as spectacular as ever. I took a few pictures but none of them came out very well. The amount of earth surface one can see from an airplane at cruising altitude is substantially greater than I'd imagined.
Kim's friend Lindsay picked us up at the airport in her Saab, which was experiencing brake light trouble. We were puzzled by the fact that no fuses were blown, but it turned out that she was the victim of a freak dual-bulb burnout.
We headed into the heart of New Orleans on the Airline Drive. I had my eyes peeled in hopes of seeing the infamous Airline Drive Motel, the site where Jimmy Swaggart got caught on videotape with a cheap prostitute, but evidently the place no longer exists.
Lindsay just bought a house in a shady part of Mid-City New Orleans. It's an old double-barrel shotgun shack that was bought for a song by an architecture student, almost completely restored, and then resold to Lindsay for 100 times as much, a still highly affordable price. Despite the bargain, living in such a bad neighborhood definitely has its price. For example, Lindsay doesn't even bother to lock her car; she knows the windows would quickly be broken if she did. Walks for her little dog Dr. Arlo Brown (a chocolate-brown Dachshund with a neurotic desire to lick people) never proceed more than a dozen feet from the front door. And the other day Lindsay found a hypodermic needle amongst the bricks and rubble in the shade of the pecan tree in the back yard.
When we came in to check out the fully modern architecture within, Jay (Lindsay's significant other) was playing some strangely familiar music on the phonograph. It turns out it was Kid Marine, a low-fi Bob Pollard project released this year in parallel with the hi-fi Do the Collapse. The album looked to be a decidedly humble homage to middle America, complete with mullet-hosting hominids on the cover. The music was excellent, especially after suitable mind-altering substances.
Kim and I were to be staying in a one bedroom apartment at Dufour-Plassan House, a large mansion a few blocks away in a much less dangerous neighborhood. We were actually renting the place from one of Lindsay's co-workers at the New Or1eans Contemporary Art Center, where Lindsay works as marketing director. Lindsay dropped us off over there for awhile so we could shed our bags and kick back and stuff. Though the apartment was well apportioned and had all the amenities, it seemed like it might well be haunted.
Later on we went on a few little social calls with Lindsay. One of these took us to the home of one of her similarly mid-modern retro friends. There was a tom cat there who had been shaved and I was amazed to see how horribly scarred the poor critter was beneath his fur. Leaving white tracts of scar tissue were numerous slashes and bite marks. With a normal coat of fur I wouldn't have even noticed what a mangled beast he was.
We did dinner at a happening place on Esplanade catering to the youngish local scene. Our waiter had the friendliness and bearing of a manager/owner, but Kim didn't think so. I tried to pay the bill with my VISA check card, and was amazed to find that they only accepted cash. The food (a pasta-shrimp concoction) was excellent, but in New Orleans there's nothing special about that.
Later on we were with Kim's good buddy, the ever-cheerful Matthew Hartesque Ed Nelson. We ended up at the Maple Leaf Bar on the collegiate west side of New Orleans. There amongst the fresh-faced college kids we came across Ashley and Chris, Kim's old college chums whose wedding we were actually in New Orleans to celebrate. We drank a bunch of beer and hung out in the forested outdoor patio area in back. If there were any more details I don't remember them.
The city of Los Angeles, as viewed through the blades of a propeller. As usual for LAX, we had to circle a few times before we had the go ahead to land.
That body of water on the right is Sabine Lake and it marks the Texas-Louisiana border. Louisiana begins as the contiguous landmass on the lower left. The Gulf of Mexico is at the upper left.
Grand Lake, Louisiana, is the body of water in the central left.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?991005 feedback
previous | next |
