One Night in New Orleans

One Night in New Orleans

I started the drive from Birmingham early and I arrived in New Orleans early, around 3:00 or so.  I remember getting behind a car that was going 90-100 miles per hour through the majority of Mississippi.  Of course, I had reason to fear being stopped, but if this guy was going this fast, I figured it was alright to keep to the same speed, since he would get pulled over before me.  Someone had once told me the best way to avoid a speeding ticket was to speed behind someone else who was speeding.  This may have been dangerous and it didn’t really happen again for the rest of the trip.  But I made it to New Orleans in very good time, and that stretch through Mississippi probably had something to do with it.

It was pouring rain when I arrived at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.  A bell man took the bags I had specified out of my car and onto one of those brass-barred luggage dollies.  I asked for about seven bags, and I wonder how perplexed these hotel attendants must have been of me—one person needing six bags for one night.  I went into the hotel and the valet took my car and parked it underground or somewhere and that was another $25 or so being added to my room tab immediately.  The lobby was quite luxurious.  I checked in quickly, received my bags in my room, tipping all the appropriate people for the first time, as this was the first “fancy” hotel I had stayed in where they had valets and bell men, and went into my room. 

They had provided a sleep kit on top of the bed which was very fancy.  They offered room service.  They offered in-room movies.  They had Knocked Up, which I had tried to see about three different times the previous summer in Nantucket and Chicago to varying degrees of frustration.  It was weird, but for whatever reason there kept being problems with the theaters, or it had stopped playing without warning.  I decided I would probably order that later in the evening and order room service.

But then, around 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I got very baked in my room and decided to go down and explore New Orleans.  I had been there about seven years before with a couple friends for spring break our senior year in high school.  Though we were only seventeen, one of my friends and I managed to get some drinks despite not having IDs or anything.  It was a good time.  We spent the majority of that trip in the Latin Quarter and on Bourbon Street and one night we went on a vampire tour that was very entertaining.

But this time I left my hotel quite stoned and tried to find Bourbon St., instead finding blocks and blocks and blocks of apartments and random other things, but barely any stores or restaurants or bars or anything.  The Crowne Plaza was on Canal St.  I had exited the hotel and walked left, and then made another left, following some people who looked like they new the direction for fun things to do.  This was not a good idea.  I wandered around for a good two hours, but I did manage to find an almost totally empty bar/restaurant with a few heavily tattooed and pierced proprietors.  I had a hamburger there and it was very big and it was pretty good.  I left and tried to find my way back to the hotel.  When I finally did, I realized that Bourbon St. was directly adjacent to my hotel.  This made me feel very stupid, but then at least I knew it would be easy to find when I came back down again.

I went upstairs to smoke more and then I returned back down and went onto Bourbon St.  I got a drink somewhere and walked down the middle of the street with it.  Everyone was happy and partying.  It is a completely unique place in America.  There is no demographic for Bourbon St.  Everyone hangs out in the same area together and everyone has a great time doing the same things.  I feel like it must have been some kind of Gay Pride day, because there was notably a group of several men holding up signs denouncing homosexuality.  I believe they were called Brother’s Keepers and they seemed to look on the masses benevolently but then proceeded to chant the most ridiculous slogans.  I saw a few people stop to chat with them and it appeared that they were trying to point out how cold-hearted their stance appeared, but I do not think these men were swayed.  I didn’t say anything to them—just walked past them a few times and looked at them with an indefinable, bemused expression. 

I started to get drunker.  This was especially noticeable after getting a “hand grenade” which had been advertised as the most powerful drink on Bourbon St.  I asked the guy who made it for me what was in it and he refused to tell me the ingredients, saying it was secret.  I walked around some more, not really doing anything but drinking, having a cigarette here or there, not talking to anyone, looking at the Larry Flynt Hustler Club and considering going in, walking past a blues club where the proprietor saw me and told me to go in and dig the music, which I did for about five or ten minutes.  I was probably out there until about 10 or 11 o’clock, but I decided it was time to head back to the hotel.  So I did that and I ordered Knocked Up from the in-room movie system and I ordered room service and barely was able to stay awake for the end of the movie and in the middle of the night they slipped the bill under my door and I believe it was somewhere in the range of $190 but I am not sure and I have just requested an archived credit card statement from August, September, and October of 2007 in order to get to the bottom of these various discrepancies. 

I had planned that day to drive to Houston, and I left my hotel, but before I left New Orleans, I went to an outdoor mall type place to see the IMAX film Hurricane on the Bayou there.  I had been expecting IMAX footage of the hurricane that had destroyed New Orleans two years earlier but it focused mostly on the wreckage instead, which makes a certain amount of sense.  I got back in my car in a $10 parking lot and I headed towards Houston.