Category: Travel

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New Orleans & Jazz Heritage Festival 08

This past weekend several friends from around the nation gathered in the still broken community known as the Big Easy for the NOLA Jazz Festival. To a certain extend only one of the two iterations of this nickname are still true: The French Quarter is still one big open speak-easy, however, its no longer true that it’s easy to find work here.

I landed late on Wed, however, not late enough and endured a long 2 hours wait for some friends to come through. We checked into my corporate staple – the Marriott, on the boarder of FQ and the Central Business District. Without even claiming space we’re already out on the quarter looking for a hole to get some local grub and a few beers.

We make our way down most of the main strip of Bourbon and right past the tourist wonder of Port of Call to Saint Peters and hit Yo-mamas. $4 – 28 oz draft Abita‘s (the local amber brew), and the best 1/2 lb burgers sided with a fully dressed baked potato as big as your foot. Yo-mama’s doesn’t cater to that handgrenade or hurricane slaying crowd, just bar goers that like their drink strong, and their companions with no bull shit. We went back almost every night and ate here twice. Definitely love the Bull Fighter with extra jalapeños (however back at the hotel, the mates didn’t).

The wed night crowd was light but noticeably less douchebaggy or fratty but we still took down the quarter closing out several bars and getting a good feel for what’s going to be a party, what are the jazz spots and where do we go to meet the people wanting to stay on the strip but away from the tourists. We ended our night at the Old Absinthe House bar on the corner of Bourbon and Bienville; built in 1806 this is where Pirate Jean Lafitte and Andrew Jackson planned the victory of the battle of New Orleans on the second floor. No green fairy for us but the spot is great to get away from the frey watch those that do partake (we ended several nights here as well).

Starting late in the morning on Thursday set the tone for the rest of the week. We had some more friends come in later this afternoon so we went down to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop for some beers on the patio. Lafitte’s is the oldest functioning bar in the US and rumored to be the oldest standing building in the entire Mississippi Valley. Good mix of locals and like minded tourists… until the yuppiest of clans showed up chatting up their latest sailing adventures and next trips to Cape Cod we stayed for a few hours before the tide turned.

We sampled the hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s, which when you think of the stumbling tourists around the quarter, it’s hurricane’s their usually clutching to keep their tilt sideways. The drink is synonymous with O’Brien’s, created during World War II and one of the most sought-after tourist souvenir.

We witnessed some film cameras in and around the quarter catching the “reality” of Bourbon St. I found later they were there for a Central City show with Luda and Widespread.

The weather turned out to be perfect during the weekend (far from the T-storms predicted).

One of the primary requirements of any travel is getting good food and lots of it. In no particular order I sampled (around NOLA and at the Festival):

Fried Crab Cake w/ Smoked Tomato & Jalapeño Tartar
Soft shell crab po boy
Dozens of raw oysters
Oyster and Crawfish Po Boy from VertiMarte
Crawfish Etouffe
Pheasant, Quail, and Andouille Gumbo
Half the menu at Emeril’s NOLA
Cajun Jambalaya
Beignets and Cafe au Lait at Cafe Du Monde
Hot Sausage Po-Boy
Crawfish
Grits, biscuts, chicken fried steak, gravy and other brunch at Cafe Fleur de Lis
late night gyro at Ali Ba Ba’s
… Fortunately! no lucky dogs

Saturday, we picked up round trip bus tickets from a local hotel, which seems to be the best option getting there and started drinking on the way. The line to purchase tickets wasn’t that bad, and we saved on the ridiculous Ticketmaster over charge which I always recommend. There’s so many artists playing in over 10 tents or stages, you really need to spend at least 2 days at the festival to get the most of the music there. Saturday’s headliners were: Jimmy Buffett, Steel Pulse, The Roots, Bobby McFerrin and Marcia Ball. Jimmy’s stage area was packed and not accessable if you didn’t get there hours before his show. Steel Pulse and the Roots were off the hook. I also caught a few riffs of Kenny Wayne Shepherd but don’t remember any of the other great festival artists I heard.

The weekend before NOLA was hit by thunderstorms, rain and consequently caused serious mud and “fun” for many of the participants. Since we’d been here for 3 days, and mass consumption of alcohol has worn our stamina thin. The cooling mist of the auto tent and shade offered a few hours of relief as did the glorious food options.

That evening we rallied and caught the Parliament show which has been one of my top bands to check out live before they stopped performing. More than expected they were off the hook.

New Orleans is still feeling the effects of Katrina. The pain is hidden in the eyes but the life and spirit still carries on strong in the music, food, people and community. I’ll definitely be back for the festival and more food. Here’s a few more pics from the weekend.

“New Orleans is one of the last places in America where music is truly a fundamental part of everyday life. People get together on the weekends and parade through the streets just playing songs; 12-year-old-kids learn funk on the tuba; everyone dances. Life elsewhere in the world simply isn’t as celebratory. If we allow the culture of New Orleans to die by leaving its musicians marooned around the country, America will have lost one of its great treasures.”

-Damian Kulush of OK Go

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Just landed in NOLA

There’s a cool breeze tickeling my thin shirt in the cylindar style termanal C of the “Satcho” AKA Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve just landed and I’m chillin (literally, I thought it was supposed to be hot down ‘er) in cookie cuter stiff airport seats of the “lobby” waiting for a friend to land, and head into the CBD.

Why the lobby? Nothing is open. After 9 apparently everything in this terminal shuts down. Good to know on the next time around. I’m looking at a row of stores with books begging to be thumbed through, PJ’s coffee waiting for that percalation and across from the Jazz alley lounge where I thought I would be sipping down my first brew of the weekned in New Orleans…

I’m here for the 2nd weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and to tear it up for the first time with some friends from the east. There’s not much planned but a spot to sleep and the festival headlined by Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Buffett, The Roots, Santana, Steel Pulse and hundreds of other superbly tallented jazz musicians.

Here’s to po boys and dirty girls, schucked oysters and hot river boat casinos…

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NYC congestion pricing meets crushing defeat

This has been an on going issue in New York city for over a year. It’s had many revisions and names which don’t reflect the true nature of the project (Bloomberg’s pet project being probably the latest). The concept for those outside of New York is this:

New York congestion pricing is a proposed traffic congestion fee for vehicles traveling into or within the Manhattan central business district of New York City. A small part of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030: A Greener, Greater New York which is designed for the sustainability of New York City through 2030, planning for population and job growth and well as sustained standards of living (originally outlined in April 2007).

The congestion pricing plan cites comparable congestion pricing programs in London, Singapore and Stockholm already in place and would be the first such plan in the US.

As proposed, the congestion pricing zone is defined as the island of Manhattan (bordered by the East and Hudson Rivers) south of 60th Street (“Central park South” but was originally 96th Street). Provisions were made for free zones (the FDR Drive, New York Route 9A (West Side Highway and Henry Hudson Parkway included), the Battery Park Underpass, and the East River bridges). The charge would apply during business hours on weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Proposed fees would be $8 for cars and commercial vehicles and $21 for trucks entering from outside the zone. Transit buses, emergency vehicles, taxis and for-hire vehicles, and vehicles with handicapped license plates would not be charged the fee. Taxi and livery trips that begin, end or touch the zone would have a $1 surcharge. Vehicles would be charged only once per day.

The pros for this were:

  • Federal money allocated to New York for improved public transportation, reduction of auto traffic and congestion resulting in expedition of timely arrivals, and significant reduction of greenhouse gases and smog in Manhattan.

The objections of the plan (many of these by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver who opposed the plan and was able to kill it):

  • Congestion pricing would create “parking lots” in the outer boroughs and in NJ for people attempting to avoid paying additional money. This would result in more traffic and pollution to those neighborhoods. The plan would reduce traffic in Manhattan’s central business district, but no where else in the city, especially neighborhoods with high asthma rates such as Harlem, the South Bronx, and Bedford-Stuyvesant would not benefit from the plan. The installation of cameras for tracking purposes may also raise civil liberties concerns.

As a resident of Manhattan, the congestion pricing plan may only be a benefit to me in that when taking a cab, I may save a few minutes on my commute. Typically I take the train anyway so this wouldn’t effect me, however, with more people needing cabs and taking trains, this may create a situation where it’s harder for me to get a cab, and with more riders on the subways, the opportunities for delays go up also. What was not publicized much was that the taxi rates would go up again (a $1 surcharge) which would add costs to my commute.

I definitely oppose the installation on hundreds of cameras for “transit” surveillance purposes but I don’t buy the point that this effects the poor working class, because the people that can afford cars and commute to the city are definitely not poor working class – those are the ones that already park their cars at a outer borough subway stop and take the train or bus anyway.

The biggest congestion factor is the delivery trucks and their consequently parallel parking which cause slowed traffic and delays. By forcing a $21 surcharge, this will not deter the number of trucks in the city – this delivery cost will only be transfered to the customers and create higher cost of goods in Manhattan.

Thus I agree with Silver and the blocking of this congestion pricing. The pros to do this (for the money and limit pollution) are week and selfish to the Bloomberg administration. The MTA should already be forced to upgrade their transit offerings, and where the hell is this infamous 2nd Ave Subway going to get put in…

What I can foresee the end result of the congestion pricing and the added ridership will be something like the end scene to the Crocodile Dundee movie when Mick is trying to reach Sue in the subway, only 24×7 or something like this:

Or worse… get to this [click through for video]

BTW those are shot on the Yamanote subway line that circles Tokyo, Japan. The Line carries 3.5+ million passengers a day. Here’s an interesting video tour of the line (if someone knows the D&B track in this, please let me know):