"First wish? One sidewalk cafe, comin' right up. I know just the place. "
- Roman Holiday
The New Orleans Diary, Part II
Written on Thursday, day before leaving, after presenting my poster. People had scattered to the winds and I was left with scraps and notes pinned to my poster as signposts of their attendence. So I catch the absolute last bus back to the hotel, throw on some shorts and head into the French Quarter to hit Cafe Du Monde one last time before going. No more introduction is necessary than that.
So here I sit in Cafe Du Monde, under the spinning fans and throaty hubbub of a crowd. My hands are sticky sweet fromt he hot beignets, the iced cafe au lait is a bitter afterthought in a styrofoam cup. I am caught by the sound of this place. Normally I find the sounds of a milling human crowd as displeasing and coherent as the mooing of cows. but not here. I think it is because this place has integrity. Most places I find crowds are purely contrived. Bars, tourist traps, WalMart. But unlike the rest of New Orleans, this cafe has avoided the sell-out. It has much the working of a real cafe, and not a tourist trap. Maybe it's because I feel weird ordering beignets and cafe au lait from an all asian-woman wait staff, but it makes the place more real. And I now feel grounded. Common. Cheap as dirt but belonging.
Outside play the buskers, a banjoer and a trumpeter wearing balloon doggies on his head. They play instantly recognizable cheap New Orleans tunes to hawk and prey on tourists and strut the bricks like the mangey pidgeons that pick and peck their way through the tables. When the Saints Go Marching In floats on fan and river breeze, and the trumpeter blows a B flat for two minutes to receive a round of common applause. Jackson Square is ringed by buskers and struggling painters and transvestite tarot readers, the daytime version of hustlers and conmen. This sentance is punctuated by a typically New Orleans lazy version of Amazing Grace. The sound is chopped by the spinning fans, so many in this place to be like Ricks in Casablanca. A breeze comes off the muddy Mississip. Less impressive in its dirty murk.
The first thing I noticed about Cafe Du Monde was the bricks of the floor. They are dusted white under the tables. I first thought that this was from the metal chair legs scraping the stone, or from ash or dust or other common causes. It wasn't until I got my beignets that I found out the truth. The sweet squared dumplings came piled inches thick with powdered sugar. I realized the white whisps and drifts that litter the bricks are discards and dustings of a thousand long eaten pastries. It lends the place a unique air, so much that I am fairly certain that no place else on earth could boast of such a contamination. The ground must be very sweet. And sitting here upon the aged sugar I feel connected to this uniqueness, that I stand on a summit of a special mountain and I wonder if I am the only one to marvel at the wonder beneath my feet.
I'm sure I must seem a disappointment to most. My last day in New Orleans and I spend my afternoon writing in a small book of blank pages in a cafe. But I can think of nothing better or finer. I am content and connected in a way I imagine Hemmingway must've felt, and I imagine I will hold this memory of this afternoon closer than all the debauchery on Bourbon Street. That avenue scares me. All the bars look like tourist traps, brightly colored and gharish and loud outside of normal bar fare. But this is counteracted by the fact that every bar is spaced by a strip club, the anti-tourist trap. The strippers have a tendency to come into the street to hawk and sell the club, recruit pedestrians, no cover, best time of your life. Hard push like car salesmen, dressing to eight and halves, adding to the technicolor acid humanity wandering de-laned Bourbon Street. It may be that that street caters to one particular unique minority, the kind that do not find it odd to see a gharish and ugly tourist bar next to a flesh pot. Bourbon Street sells to tourists, but a different class of them. For those few, that sub-population of toursts, Bourbon Street is a mecca. And perhaps it is that specialized quality, that focus and lack of broader appeal, that scares me the most. Anything that sharp and edged must be dangerous.
I will finish the last of my beignet and launch myself into the sunshine, and feel sad that I must leave this cafe behind. It is the one real place I have found in this city. Which is one more than usual. An oasis of truth in a land of fakery, and I truly feel a loss at leaving.
Outside play the buskers, a banjoer and a trumpeter wearing balloon doggies on his head. They play instantly recognizable cheap New Orleans tunes to hawk and prey on tourists and strut the bricks like the mangey pidgeons that pick and peck their way through the tables. When the Saints Go Marching In floats on fan and river breeze, and the trumpeter blows a B flat for two minutes to receive a round of common applause. Jackson Square is ringed by buskers and struggling painters and transvestite tarot readers, the daytime version of hustlers and conmen. This sentance is punctuated by a typically New Orleans lazy version of Amazing Grace. The sound is chopped by the spinning fans, so many in this place to be like Ricks in Casablanca. A breeze comes off the muddy Mississip. Less impressive in its dirty murk.
The first thing I noticed about Cafe Du Monde was the bricks of the floor. They are dusted white under the tables. I first thought that this was from the metal chair legs scraping the stone, or from ash or dust or other common causes. It wasn't until I got my beignets that I found out the truth. The sweet squared dumplings came piled inches thick with powdered sugar. I realized the white whisps and drifts that litter the bricks are discards and dustings of a thousand long eaten pastries. It lends the place a unique air, so much that I am fairly certain that no place else on earth could boast of such a contamination. The ground must be very sweet. And sitting here upon the aged sugar I feel connected to this uniqueness, that I stand on a summit of a special mountain and I wonder if I am the only one to marvel at the wonder beneath my feet.
I'm sure I must seem a disappointment to most. My last day in New Orleans and I spend my afternoon writing in a small book of blank pages in a cafe. But I can think of nothing better or finer. I am content and connected in a way I imagine Hemmingway must've felt, and I imagine I will hold this memory of this afternoon closer than all the debauchery on Bourbon Street. That avenue scares me. All the bars look like tourist traps, brightly colored and gharish and loud outside of normal bar fare. But this is counteracted by the fact that every bar is spaced by a strip club, the anti-tourist trap. The strippers have a tendency to come into the street to hawk and sell the club, recruit pedestrians, no cover, best time of your life. Hard push like car salesmen, dressing to eight and halves, adding to the technicolor acid humanity wandering de-laned Bourbon Street. It may be that that street caters to one particular unique minority, the kind that do not find it odd to see a gharish and ugly tourist bar next to a flesh pot. Bourbon Street sells to tourists, but a different class of them. For those few, that sub-population of toursts, Bourbon Street is a mecca. And perhaps it is that specialized quality, that focus and lack of broader appeal, that scares me the most. Anything that sharp and edged must be dangerous.
I will finish the last of my beignet and launch myself into the sunshine, and feel sad that I must leave this cafe behind. It is the one real place I have found in this city. Which is one more than usual. An oasis of truth in a land of fakery, and I truly feel a loss at leaving.
I do miss that cafe. With me, traveling is not so much seeing new things, but seeing how much things are the same. In which case, traveling becomes an exercise in depression, sadness at how homogenized the world is, that there is nothing unique that hasn't become cheapened and commercialized. But I finally found someplace that really is special and holds a special quality in me. I truly miss it.
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