Notes on New Orleans, Louisiana

It’s the names that do it for me: Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, conjuring up countless songs and movies. Somehow English place names – Coventry, Leeds, Birmingham, Sunderland or Liverpool – just don’t cut it. But, talking on the subject, an American friend had said to me: “What are you talking about, man? Liverpool, what the hell’s that, a pool of livers? That’s crazy, man.”

Anyway, Europe may have the buildings and the history, but the U.S.A. has the place names, the landscapes, the movies, the songs and the people. Its cities are exciting, dangerous, dynamic, always awake and always crazy.

I drifted down to New Orleans originally planning to stay just a week but ending up there for two and a half months, intoxicated by the sultry heat, spicy crawfish, coffee, sleaziness, romance, danger and irony of it all. There’s no need for crack when you can eat six raw oysters, down them with a Bud’ and walk around the French Quarter at 4am feeling like there’s no where else in the world. It’s said New Orleans has a strange pulling power, people come down for Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest and never leave. It’s a city to hang out in, do nothing in, listen to jazz or be a murderer and get away with it.

But The Big Easy isn’t big and it’s not easy.

My heart beat fast for my first two weeks there: I couldn’t relax. It may have been the copious amounts of coffee and chicory consumed (either at Café du Monde, where the waiters are either gay, drug addicts, alcoholics, murderers, child molesters or old Vietnamese colonels – New Orleans East has a Vietnam village), or Kaldi’s, just up the road, where homeless kids on acid hang out along with gays, goths and freaks). It may have been the headlines every day in the Times Picayune of at least five people having been shot the day before.

Or was the smell of coffee mixing with the smell of danger on every dimly lit street corner, mingling with the live music coming from every direction, twenty-four-seven. It didn’t calm me knowing New Orleans had just recently slipped to becoming murder capital number two of the U.S.A., pipped to the post by Gary, Indiana.

If only I had stayed just a week: I would have gone home with the city’s superficial impression as a non-stop party (there was a bar in New Orleans before there was a church). Seemingly always happening on Bourbon Street, that addictive neon vision of hell with its blaring bars, strip joints, pushers and hookers, tourists are adventurous if they leave the street, let alone the touristy French Quarter which is relatively safe, and white.

The French Quarter is stiflingly small, humid, crowded and claustrophobic, consisting of one square mile (the population of New Orleans is only 475,000, a tiny city with no hills, perfect for a bike), the streets arranged in a confusing (at first) grid structure of similar looking buildings: French-style apartments with wooden shutters, iron-laced balconies with hanging plants and plastic Mardi Gras necklaces, tacky tourist art galleries, voodoo and witchcraft shops, restaurants and gallons of bars. It has a heady charm and its buildings are well looked after, but there’s never any breeze and its sidewalks are smelly and dirty. Barely two hundred years old, for the tourists it’s called New Orleans historical district, and that’s all they need. Armed with cameras, camcorders and a plastic cup of $1 beer, tourists record the beautiful history-laden quarter, editing out any blacks, beggars or freaks who might accidentally get in the way. But what they don’t get is that the city is the people, not the buildings.

But if wasn’t for the tourists New Orleans would surely sink back into the swamps from whence it came, and Louisiana is the second poorest state in the US, after Mississippi. Yet ask any local what they hate most about the city and before they mention the crime, the violence, the housing projects or the police corruption they will emphatically say: ‘the tourists’.

I wonder how American cities survive with their mass of contradictions and ironies. I love you, I hate you. The mood of New Orleans can change so quickly, so drastically. The city has the power to change people too, if they stay there for long enough. From virgin to whore, pacifist to murderer, teetotaller to alcoholic, sane to crazy, innocence to experience, or indeed vice versa. But the seediest, most decadent, often uncaring, murderous city in the US is often strangely spiritual and magical. And it has very little to do with voodoo, witches or Anne Rice.

It can be intense, nasty and unfeeling or it can be beautiful, warm, relaxing, friendly and caring, a community spirit rising from the poverty. I watch the sun rise over the Mississippi river with a beautiful black eighteen-year-old girl on the River Walk, we’re surrounded by the homeless sleeping on the grassy bank (you can be homeless and happy here), an accordion player with a blank look in her eyes plays the accordion badly, then an old black dude passes us and says we make a pretty couple and it’s like a dream.

Or we’re at the Joy cinema on Canal Street which only shows ‘black’ films and every other black guy asks me for a quarter and I get the dirtiest looks and they say things to me I can’t understand but I’m sure they’re wondering what this skinny white guy is doing with this beautiful black girl.

But I think I leave New Orleans less sexist and racist than I’ve ever been. I visit some friends who live near the railway track on North Rampart Street, maybe a mile out of the Quarter. Black kids are playing in the street, a water hydrant explodes water to cool them down and they’re laughing and playing without a care in the world. I pass old black dudes smoking on their verandas on a Sunday afternoon and we greet each other as you do in the English countryside. I think to myself this place has always been here, always been the same. Untouched and decaying beautifully. Buildings and signs from the thirties and forties, left alone to rust and decay. In late spring the moss growing along the telegraph wires, plants creeping up the wooden houses, as if it’s in tune with nature.

But New Orleans is either a living dream or a living nightmare. The housing projects are definitely not on any tourist agenda. Coming up Basin Street from Canal Street, on your left is the Iberville housing project, on the outskirts of the French Quarter (a drunken tourist makes a wrong turn and risks death), a little further up the Louis #1 cemetery, a tourist stop off point, but only in packs because Iberville surrounds it and a little plague advises to enter at your own risk. It’s opposite a police station.

Desire is the biggest housing project in New Orleans. It goes on for miles, never ending, modelled after German concentration camps, I’m told. 100% black with only half the ‘units’ occupied, the other half burnt down or boarded up. This is where the killings happen – black on black, in the housing projects. The projects aren’t talked about. The people in them are left alone to kill each other. The streets which intersect Desire are like a bad joke: Piety, Annunciation, Benefit and Charity.

Beside the Florida housing project is a church, a liquor store and a huge billboard, black lettering on white: THOU SHALT NOT KILL, the NOT underlined in case you had read THOU SHALT KILL by mistake. In the space of a block you can go from housing project to mansions, good neighbourhood to bad and it makes no sense.

Behind Café du Monde, late at night, are held monthly dogfights, organised by the cooks who work at the café. The losing dog gets a bullet in the head, delivered by one of the cops, who are there to watch and bet.

New Orleans: I love you and hate you, and I know you love and hate me too.

– 1996; submitted and rejected for a Time Out travel writing competition.

Tuna Tunis

The Saturday in London had been a beautiful autumn day – a last shock of sun. The Sunday was cold and raining and when we arrived in Tunisia that night, it was likewise. Sunday in London engineering work had cancelled trains, so we had to catch a replacement bus from Putney to Kew Bridge, then a train to Feltham, and finally another bus to Heathrow. A three-hour wait at Heathrow, a delayed plane, and by nine 'o'clock, local time, we arrived in the rain of Tunis.

M said our hotel was like the movie Cocoon. More like The Shining, I quipped. A thousand shades of pastel, old people ready to die, inedible western buffet food. Coffee like mud, tea like rusted metal. All Tunisian food seems to come with tuna sprinkled on top – which led M to speculate maybe that was the reason Tunisia got its name – because of the tuna. It seemed possible. But then she had made me once believe the Boer War was fought over feather boas.

I woke on my birthday the next morning feeling like shit with flu, cold and cough and eyes that wouldn't open properly. The night before we'd gone to a little cafe round the corner from our hotel to get a coffee and gateau. The first question asked, inevitably, was how many camels I wanted for M. The second inevitable question was whether I wanted some hash. I took out my liquorice Rizlas to make a roll-up. Everyone in the cafe looked at them, then wanted a couple of leaves. I knew I should have bought more packs with me.

So far – we're in Sousse – the buildings are great. Old tumbling down French ones – but lots of new, funky, post-modern ones too. Buildings are going up everywhere, new roads too. Tunisia feels quite affluent, liberal and modern. At least compared to its neighbours Morocco and Egypt.

The hotels are like palaces and (in the tourist area) Sousse feels like a second-rate Vegas. Caribbean casino, restaurants, nightclubs, all neon-lit. Hotels line the beach front. The whole town feels like hotels and hassles.

No dogs but hundreds of skinny little dying cats everywhere. I want to do something to save the cats. As a gesture I take some fish out to the black cat by the pool area – only to be bombarded by about eight cats all screeching and fighting and the fish is gone in less than a second.

I thought I finished a roll of film then realised I hadn't loaded the film. Monday, wake up ill, again. Sousse all day. Tuesday, Kairouan. Wednesday – waiting for a very late bus most of the day. Arrived in El-Jem with ten minutes left to see the impressive amphitheatre – we get in half price but have to make way for a car advert being filmed in the middle of it.

The next day on a first class train carriage to Gabés. Everyone, aside from the shabby tourists, looks so well-groomed, affluent, proper. The landscape remains the same. Half the sky lit by the sun, half by the moon and in the middle, cloud. The lighter the skin, the more affluent the people. On Tunisian TV, everyone has light skin. On the first class carriage, everyone has light skin. Finally approaching Gabés. A two-mile stream of palm trees and industrial factories, chimneys spewing yellow smoke, carrots from the ground a luminous orange. I thought we were going the wrong way on the train for a while.

Taxi to Matmata nouvelle – stalling – going back. Another taxi – Matmata (old town). Pulled over by the police. It feels like a pilgrimage going to where Star Wars was filmed. Star Wars full of Muslim architecture and costume. We chatted and laughed with a restaurant owner then ate in his restaurant. We were overcharged; we didn't say anything but it left a sour taste.

Back at the hotel, the pensioners are dancing to instrumental versions of My Way... When I Fall in Love... John Denver. Pensioners on parade – it's not a bad life.

George Harrison died today: 30th November 2001. I thought I'd given up smoking, but felt light-headed and had to go buy a pack. One shop had sold out of cigarettes – it took me half an hour to buy a pack in all. When I came back his death was there on the news. Yesterday we'd talked about him; one of his songs had been in my head all day (My Sweet Lord). We're half an hour from where The Life of Brian was filmed – George Harrison's Handmade Films produced it.

It being Ramadan, there's a feverish rush about fourish, and by five everything is empty – the medina, the nouvelle ville – because everyone is inside eating. We tuck into our Briks – a thin pastry with a whole fried egg built into it filled with tuna (of course), onion, harissa and parsley – with gusto.

Of course, it's only on our last day that we find in our hotel complex: sauna, shops, table tennis, indoor swimming pool and gym. Not that we would have used any of them anyway. But still.

Sousse, Tunisia, 2001

Why is a Nando's ‘cheeky’?

There are various explanations for the origins of the British phrase ‘Going for a cheeky Nando’s’. Usually it dates back to someone on social media sometime in 2011 posting he was ‘going for a cheeky Nando’s with the lads’.

But there’s no explanation as to why it’s cheeky. My theory is it’s because they charge over £10 for a small piece of dry, burnt chicken and coat it in a hot sauce to disguise the fact that it’s completely tasteless. Combined with chips and coleslaw, you’re not looking at much change out of £20, for what is essentially the same as the chicken and chips you get at Chicken Cottage for less than £5. Great marketing, Nando’s. But pretty cheeky.

Previously on Barnfllakes:
Pet hates #3729: Nando's

Top ten Jeff Bridges films

Lists of top ten Jeff Bridges films tend to focus on his performances, rather than the films, hence Rolling Stone has The Contender and The Door in the Floor in their top ten, two films I haven't even heard of let alone seen. Even recent films such as True Grit and Crazy Heart feature great performances from Bridges but aren't great films. Film critics have such short memories. I'm focusing on the films themselves; his run of films in the 1970s – from The Last Picture Show to Cutter's Way (1981, but signifying the end of the 70s) – is almost unparallelled in modern cinema (De Niro's trilogy of films, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, feel self-conscious and laboured compared to Bridges' laid back performances). Jeff Bridges is currently featuring in the well-received Hell or High Water (De Niro has almost completely erased his performances in The Deer Hunter and The Godfather Part II et al by years of terrible comedies).

1. Fat City (1972)
2. The Last Picture Show (1971)
3. Cutter's Way (1981)
4. Bad Company (1972)
5. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
6. The Big Lebowski (1998)
7. The Fisher King (1991)
8. Winter Kills (1979)
9. Star Man (1984)
10. Fearless (1993)

Previously on Barnflakes:
A Jeff Bridges too far
Random Film Review: Fat City

Random Film Review: Captain Fantastic

Dir: Matt Ross | 2016 | USA

Mark Kermode, reviewing Captain Fantastic in the Guardian, makes the link between the film and the Elton John album of the same name, released in 1975. Though there were references throughout to high culture, from Glenn Gould to Noam Chomsky, I must admit I felt the spirit of Bob Dylan permeate the film and was surprised at no mention of the man – until the final credits, when a lovely cover version of I Shall be Released (sung by Kirk Ross) is played over the letterpress-style end credits.

The film, in its rejection of consumer culture and retreating into the wilderness, reminded me of Bob Dylan circa. 1967-1970, the period after his infamous motorcycle crash when he vanishes from public view and retreats to his house in bucolic Woodstock, NY. Here he produces albums tinged with the pastoral, the spiritual and nature: The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and New Morning.

Other music in the film includes a snippet from Glenn Gould's famous Goldberg Variations. Linking to this and perhaps more relevant, Gould's Solitude Trilogy is a fascinating series of hour-long radio shows he produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Service between 1967-77. Reflecting the theme of 'withdrawal from the world', the first show looks at the Idea of North, specifically the North Canadian wilderness. Experimental in style, with over-lapping voices (nurse, sociologist, anthropologist, prospector) sometimes speaking at once, as well as music and the rumbling of trains, it creates a unique collage of sound. Quotes from it, such as 'it's easier to be against something than for something' and the battle 'not against mother nature but human nature' could almost come from the film.

The second part, The Latecomers, looks at Newfoundland. Recorded in 1969, with the sound of crashing waves roars continually over the soundtrack and a male voice declaring presciently ‘we’re all victims of technology’ and in the future we will pay people to be idle. An alternative to work will have to be found, and we need to find a fulfilling life without having to punch a clock every morning. It was hoped that the next generation would be able to combine material and spiritual life.

The third episode, Quiet in the Land, deals with the Mennonite community of Red River, Manitoba. Janis Joplin's anti-consumerism song Mercedes Benz (recorded three days before she died) plays over the voices. It questions the American Dream, and looks at alternatives to consumerism. The Mennonite community at the time were moving to the cities and becoming more materialistic. Solitude and isolation are the main themes of the trilogy; Gould himself was a bit of a hermit.

Viggo Mortensen's character (Ben Cash) in Captain Fantastic reminded me of my brother – everything from the beard to his way of life (though not the six kids). But by the end of the film, Ben has let go his rather extreme existence, and reached a happily compromise – something I mentioned in my recent Peru post, where I'd been looking fruitlessly for a happy medium between travelling (fun) and working (boring) for twenty years.

The film has had mixed reviews, but for me (and my girlfriend) it was pure joy and inspiration.

5/5

Top 5 over-rated sex locations

1. Beach
Salt plus sand. One word: chafing.

2. Public toilets
Unhygienic.

3. Mile-high club
Too cramped and clichéd.

4. Office
All the sexiness of a hospital/morgue.

5. Car/car park
Uncomfortable/weird.

Top ten sister films

1. Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
2. My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988) 
3. Hannah and her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
4. Whatever happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
5. Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
6. Sisters (Brian de Palma, 1973)
7. Frozen (Chris Buck/Jennifer Lee, 2013)
8. The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
9. The Parent Trap (Nancy Myers, 1998)
10. Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

White clouds, dark skins

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Top ten Caroline songs

According to the Urban Dictionary, most Caroline's have a fine booty. I don't think I've ever fancied a Caroline but I have a friend who seems to have only dated Carolines. Even when he dated a German girl, that was a Carolyn. Caroline is the feminine form of Carl. No idea why it's been the subject of so many songs.

1. Sweet Caroline Neil Diamond
2. Caroline No The Beach Boys
3. Caroline Says II Lou Reed
4. Caroline Says I Lou Reed
5. Roses Outkast
6. O Caroline Matching Mole
7. Does Caroline know? Talk Talk
8. King and Caroline Guided by Voices
9. Caroline Fleetwood Mac
10. Caroline Aminé

In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead

Recent research conducted by scientists has led to the discovery that, even with 353,000 babies being born today (UNICEF's estimated daily average), 99.9% of the world's population will be dead 100 years from right now. That is, the population of the world will be completely different a century from now. Miraculously, the next population will do pretty much exactly the same things as the previous population. This sobering, yet somehow inspiring discovery, has sent shock waves across the scientific community, with some scientists wondering what the point of it all is, and others figuring it's actually quite exciting, and a great opportunity to fuck up the world as much as possible until the next lot come along. The current population of the planet is just over 7 billion; there will be a lot more when the next batch comes along, in 100 years time. So far, 108 billion people have existed on planet earth; presumably, most of them have died at some point in the last 200,000 years.

This comes hot off the heels of scientists declaring – somewhat late in the day – a new geological epoch, the Anthoprocene, which they want to backdate to the 1950s. So for the past sixty-odd years we've all been happily existing in the Holocene epoch (or 'recent' – it began 9,700 years BCE), oblivious to the fact that we've actually been living in the Anthropocene epoch, or 'new age of man'.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Aspire to be average

Top ten female film characters

1. Ripley Alien
2. Scarlett O'Hara Gone with the Wind
3. Varla Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill
4. Sally The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
5. Dorothy The Wizard of Oz
6. Princess Leia Star Wars
7. Sarah Connor Terminator 
8. Mary Poppins Mary Poppins 
9. Mrs Robinson The Graduate 
10. Annie Hall Annie Hall

Top ten river songs

1. The River Bruce Springsteen
2. River Man Nick Drake
3. Many Rivers to Cross Jimmy Cliff
4. Take me to the River Talking Heads
5. The River Tim Buckley
6. River Joni Mitchell
7. Ballad of Easy Rider Roger McGuinn
8. Watching the River Flow Bob Dylan
9. Down by the River Neil Young
10. Moon River Mancini and Mer­cer

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten river films