On my other blog, I try to show my appreciation for an essay that local poet Bill Lavender has written. In it, I mention the part about Roxy and the cracker. Here it is:
You are welcome.
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Category Archives: French Quarter
I feel ghosts
From @AmandaSoprano. Nothing more to say.
“It’s August 29th. I feel ghosts. The ghosts of what New Orleans was. Ghosts of her lost souls. Ghosts of ppl still living who were prevented from coming home. Today is a whole fucked up All Saints Day unto itself.”
Policing the police
Thanks to MaCCNO for posting this today. An extremely important piece!
“I witnessed numerous instances of private patrols harassing French Quarter street sellers, so the French Market Corporation and other businesses that paid into these patrols could monopolize the historic neighborhood’s tourist market. Once, I heard that a New Orleans police officer issued a ticket to a street poet selling custom-written poems to tourists. I looked up the incident and indeed, the officer issued the ticket. When I searched for body-worn camera video, I discovered that none existed. Upon further investigation, I learned that the officer—who was in uniform, performing a police patrol duty and not guarding a business—was detailed to a private patrol. He was neither issued a camera, nor required to videotape the encounter.
I searched records for other officers similarly detailed to privately operated police patrols and found numerous instances of them issuing tickets for “quality of life” crimes such as blocking sidewalks. These were thinly veiled attempts to remove homeless people and artisanal sellers from the Quarter, so they did not disturb tourists or divert business from its shops and “street markets” such as the French Market, an open-air market near the banks of the Mississippi River.”
The Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans (MaCCNO) is a locally based non-profit that has worked at the intersection of culture, social justice and policy for the past 6 years. MaCCNO advocates on the behalf of the city’s musicians, culture bearers and performers. We collaborate with, organize, and empower the New Orleans music and cultural community to preserve and nurture the city’s culture, translating community vision into policy change, and creating positive economic impact.
Poppy’s Drag Brunch Heats Up
On Thursday August 9, I packed up my truck for my usual trip to Ohio. I started to pack it around 6:15 a.m. to try to beat the heat and the street parade of hustlers eyeing my stuff. Even with that, the sweat that ran down my back and arms from the humidity and baked in heat of the asphalt made it clear that there would be no relief. As for the guy who threw trash into my truck bed, I told him off and even though he ambled off the block with a finger raised over his head, I felt better. As Walt Whitman said, agitation is the most important factor of all.
That heat, the fact that I work from a laptop at home, and have a sister who has a generous nature and a comfortable home on the shores of one of the Great Lakes, means the pull to leave for a while is too great for me to resist.
But even though I am gone-pecan until the true fall arrives sometime in Mid-November with its wonderful slate of outdoor events and the arrival of citrus season, it doesn’t mean that New Orleans is ever far from my mind. I’ll continue to post about events and issues and have momentary pangs of homesickness too.
This is one event that I am sorry to miss:
Book signing with author Poppy Tooker
August 31, 2019 | 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
The Shop at The Collection, 520 Royal Street
Admission to the event is free. The book retails for $29.99
and supports Crescent Care.
Join radio personality, author, and culinary activist Poppy Tooker as she and some special guests sign copies of her forthcoming book Drag Queen Brunch on Saturday, August 31, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at The Shop at The Collection, the museum shop of The Historic New Orleans Collection.
Drag Queen Brunch (Rainbow Road Press, 2019) features gorgeous colorful photography by Sam Hanna of dishes (both ladies and recipes) in some of New Orleans’s most iconic restaurants and courtyards. With every turn of the page, Drag Queen Brunch brings readers to the next stop of an unforgettable time with Tooker and a bevy of rollicking drag queens.
The event is free, and coincides with Southern Decadence. The book will be available for $29.99. Refreshments from SoBou will be available for guests ages 21 and older.
A portion of the proceeds from Drag Queen Brunch benefit Crescent Care, a healthcare initiative established by the NO/AIDS Task Force and the Lazarus House.
The Shop at The Collection — which has expanded to nearly 2,000 square feet — is located in THNOC’s new exhibition center at 520 Royal Street and is open Tuesday – Saturday, 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. and Sunday, 10:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Customers may also shop online at www.hnoc.org/shop.
Poppy is my dear friend but even if that weren’t true, I’d surely tell you to go to her talks, buy her books, and generally listen in on whatever is in her ever-so practical, generous, slightly dangerous New Orleans mind. She WILL make you feel better about the two-showers a day temps and help you once again love the diverse creativity of our place.
Her commitment to the LGBTQ community has been so steadfast for decades you can be sure that her book and the brunches are both celebratory and deeply insightful to why the drag community deserves to be lionized as true artists. As for me, their work to bring glamour back to everyday life, living ones personal life in line with the political, and their constant education on behalf of the LGBTQ community are some of why I’d say drag deserves the big table. I am sure Poppy will have more.
I’ll be writing at the site below while I am gone in case you are interested.
River is remembering
“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory–what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.” –Toni Morrison
Ironwork: 921 Dauphine
One of my favorite wrought iron gates.
Ironwork: 704 Esplanade
