One of my favorite restaurants

The first time I came here with my Mom a few months ago, we found ourselves somewhat stranded in the Garden District—hot, tired, and STARVING after a 2 hour walking tour through Lafayette Cemetery and what’s probably the more touristy part of the Garden District. By Magazine St. and unwilling to walk that much farther, we took a chance and walked into one of the first acceptable looking restaurants we saw: Coquette, a tiny café style place sandwiched on a street corner. It’s one of the best chances we took and I’ve gone back at like every possible opportunity since.

The food is basically a classy funky twist on creole food—so think all those amazing comfort food flavors-- shrimp and grits, etc.-- mixed with the fanciness and good taste of French food. Also, all their food is fresh and locally grown; basically, good quality, authentic, unique, DELICIOUS food. It's worth the semi-expensiveness. To better explain their unique style, when we ordered funnel cake for dessert, we imagined/expected something along the lines of the typical big hunk of fried dough and powdered sugar type of thing you'd get at the Fair. This is what we got: 

-Definitely recommend this place.

Just something generally great about New Orleans

A few weeks ago when I was walking to the free showing of 12 Years a Salve at Prytania Theatre through a typical Uptown New Orleans neighborhood, I passed this hilarious house that I don’t think I’ll ever forget—this was maybe the week before Halloween, so to put it in context nearly every house in all of Uptown was completely decked out in Halloween decorations.

Picture one of those hugely oversized, creepy old-fashioned architecture houses that characterize all of the Garden District. The front yard was FULL of showy Halloween decorations—like it looked like someone dumped three Party City warehouses onto these people’s lawn-- with hilarious pun tombstones, dressed skeletons, etc., etc. By now the only one I remember is a skeleton dressed in rock and roll hippie clothes with plaques like “the Grateful Dead" but my memory does this house NO justice, its decorations would definitely qualify it as an outdoor museum. I LOVE how seriously locals take things like Halloween; it adds so much to the funkiness of the New Orleans atmosphere.

Harvest the Music

                        Though New Orleans seemingly has less going on during the fall months than during carnival season, the Harvest the Music concert series offers a fun and free event every Wednesday at Lafayete Square. Local artists like Kermit Ruffins, the Rebirth Brass Band, the Soul Rebels and Irma Thoas all took part in this year’s festival. Every week during the series two bands perform from 4 to 8 and local vendors and restaurants set up tents with delicious food and diverse art and products. The open, outdoor atmosphere is definitely family friendly, though plenty of alcohol is available, too. Afterwards the musicians usually hang around for CD signings and pictures. This is definitely an event to check out at least once while in NOLA.

Arriving at Zion Hill

Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church is the type of place you have to be searching for in order to come across it. It is not the showiest, most extravagant building and by no means lures in visitors from around the city. Located just off the corner where Gov. Nicholls St. meets N. Robertson, it lies right in the heart of Treme, one of the oldest, poorest, and most historic neighborhoods in New Orleans. It’s in fact one of the humblest little buildings I’ve ever stepped foot in, but inside it is bursting with passion.

            While researching online the best places for Christian worship in the area, I came across a list of “Best Authentic Experiences in New Orleans” that advised visitors of Zion Hill, “Don't expect fancy robes or masses of choir members, just rooms and rooms full of spirit.” Though I knew I was bound to stand out as the only nonparishoner in such a local church, I was sold by this description and decided to make the trip.

After a friend and I arrived and took a seat in the back pew, Reverend Joshua introduced himself and offered us breakfast which we gladly accepted before the service began. A processional hymn was sung by the choir, a group of twelve or so members, mainly middle-aged women dressed in red and black. Their voices resonated beautifully in the small sanctuary, and each selection throughout the service had a soulful feel that I would never expect from a Protestant church back home in Connecticut. Throughout the service the music never stopped for more than a moment or so, and even when the offering baskets went around there was an upbeat jazz interlude rocking the whole sanctuary. The emotional highlight of the service for me, the part that I would relive over and over again if I could, was a solo performed by Brother Andrew Miller, one of the younger members of the congregation. He stepped up to the microphone without introduction and opened his mouth to let out the most beautiful and heart wrenching notes that poured out like honey and hung in the air. His voice seemed to ring on forever but it still was too soon when he finally stepped off the stage, carrying his last note with him all the way through the door into the men’s bathroom with a hand over his face. As the door swung behind him and the music faded I suddenly understood why there were tissue boxes placed on shelves along the walls, and I watched as the people around me reached for them.

  After the service we followed a line of people back into the kitchen area where we were served lunch and cake, and chatted with a few members who were very interested to know how we heard about their church. When we saw it was raining outside, the Reverend’s wife kindly offered us a ride back to campus, which we gratefully accepted only as far as the streetcar stop, then said our goodbyes and promised we would visit again. I couldn’t believe the warmth and hospitality that I was receiving from people who were complete strangers and had very little to offer.

What we can learn from New Orleans' resistance to chain stores

Before I moved to New Orleans,  I saw this Facebook post by a high school friend who was already living down here. I quote:

            “Dear God, I just wanted to go to a mall where I could find a bra that made my         boobs look amazing for K----‘s party tonight, but New Orleans says nooooooo,        you need to go spend a ton of money at some lingerie boutique on Magazine.”

            There was something excited inside me when I saw this. And now that I’m here, I see what this girl was talking about. Mind you, buying a new bra for a party is never a large priority for me. But just yesterday I was taking a walk around Uptown and though I would treat myself to something delicious. I was Maple Street where there is (in a row on the same block) a PJ’s of New Orleans, an independent Patisserie, and a Starbucks. On a Saturday morning, many people were out for coffee and breakfast at all of these spots. I realized that I had walked for 50 minutes without stumbling upon a Starbucks. I use Starbucks as an example because its such a global monopoly of a coffee shop, but in Seattle it’s a local thing. The stereotype of there being a Starbucks on every corner is no joke people. But here in New Orleans, on that cloudy Saturday morning in November in the corner of Maple Street, Starbucks seemed like a deserted sad little outpost. Mind you, that day I went into the patisserie because it was making the whole street smell like butter, so how could I resist?

            I wonder what the rest of the country could learn from New Orleans’ resistance to chain stores and change in general. On a semi-related tangent of coffee I need to talk about the first time I tried chicory coffee here. To be frank, I thought I was drinking a cup of dirty water, but now I love it to pieces. I am being converted.

That Time I Bought a Gris Gris...

I grew up in the secular Pacific Northwest. I never pride myself on this because I identify myself more with my hot-headed, superstitious Cajun heritage.  That is probably the number one reason I was attracted to New Orleans. So the minute I had a chance to leave my dreary enclave of a hometown, I chose to come to New Orleans, for college. I went to the Historic Voodoo Museum, which, before I went I thought “what a novelty” or “how kitsch,” but it was actually quite a destination. To support this tiny little gem of a museum I surveyed the gift shop. I paused on the gris gris. Gris gris are a West African tradition that transformed into voodoo tradition. They are little pouches, amulets, or charms that you wear on your person for a variety to intended outcomes. I bought one for creativity, because I had been feeling a little too academic the last few months, and one for love, because what the hell, I had been unlucky ever since I got to college. They were just little trifles, souvenirs, memories, or so I thought.

            On car ride back to campus, I got a phone call from the residential life office telling me that I had flowers waiting for me at the office. I was astonished, and if you knew me, you’d know that things like this don’t happen to me. I was all excited about this prospect of a secret admirer. But when I opened the note, the result was even better. The flowers from my father, who I hadn’t talked to for the last 3 months, and he sent them to wish me good luck for the play I was in. Love, in a very expected and wonderful way.

            That night in curiosity, I placed the creativity gris-gris on my desk. I then proceeded to break a writer’s block that had swamped me since I had arrived at school. I don’t know what to think about these occurrences. Other but take caution about where I take these gris gris with me now. 

On Seeing Bad Music in New Orleans

In order to protect the dignity of many, I will be mentioning no specifics in this post

            Last night I saw a very bad show. It wasn’t bad in the way that it wasn’t my taste, or that there were some technical mishaps due to the incompetence of some roadie. Actually, at the end of the night I was begging that it had been one of the above mentioned catastrophes rather than what I witnessed. I fell trap to the “this friend I know has this student boyfriend playing a gig in the warehouse district,” and also I was lonely and bored and in theory this felt like it would have been a good night out. Boy was I wrong. Every note was a quarter step below where it should have been. The set swayed between  covers of melancholic love songs to the dreadful “I wrote this song myself” Emo power ballad. Let us say that it was so supremely unbearable to be there that I spent the rest of the evening out on the curb, bumming a Lucky Strike off of a stranger and trying to make sense of why this was happening to me in what I thought was the Music Eden of the world. A seedy, soulful, wonderful Eden for music as it were.

            It was because these were music industry students, none of them from New Orleans…there is a piece of the soul that will never quite because they aren’t from here. I am not a local myself, though you have no idea how much I pray that I could have been. There is a rhythm to this city in everything that is undeniable and completely mesmerizing. I don’t mean to  be patronizing to those who played, and I do admit that I had a vendetta against one of the people I was with that night, so nothing COULD have gone right for me. But as I sat on that curb, their inexperienced, painful, out-of tune drones in the background, I blew my smoke to the wind, and the patterns it created in the misty New Orleans evening had a soul of their own. Staring at this…my night became worth it. 

I Went On Down to the Audubon Zoo...

If you've been around me for any length of time, you've probably heard me blabbing about how I work at the zoo, or about how much I love the zoo, or just something about the zoo in general. I just really, really, really love the Audubon Zoo! I've probably been to it about 80 times in my entire life, and I still haven't gotten tired of it. It's an awesome place to spend a day with friends, but also has a lot of history to it.

The Audubon Zoo was originally just a part of the neighboring Audubon Park. In 1884, however, the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition ("World's Fair") came to New Orleans, impelling the city to take ownership of this land. The fair was very popular with residents, and displayed many exotic animals and plants from all over the world that many people had never seen before. The fair brought interest in Audubon Park and a possible zoo. This interest caused the city of New Orleans to hire John Charles Olmsted to design the Park; Olmsted's family firm was credited with designing New York's Central Park. In 1916, a flight cage of exotic birds was added to the park, sparking demand for a full-scale zoo.

Leaders met these demands by adding primates, mammals, and deer. Eventually, residents of New Orleans wanted to see an elephant. Reportedly, the schoolchildren of New Orleans raised enough money for the city to buy its own elephant. A sea lion pool and aquarium were added soon after, both of which still stand (although the aquarium is no longer functioning) in the current zoo. In 1930, during the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration took over the zoo, continuing to expand and improve the zoo. One of the things the WPA installed in the zoo was "Monkey Hill", an artificial hill built to show the children of New Orleans what a hill looked like, since they are rare here.

However, in the 1950s, money ran out and public interest in the zoo declined. The zoo became known as an "animal ghetto" with horrific, tiny, concrete block cages and no stimulation for the miserable looking animals. In 1970, the zoo was told to "clean up or close up" by the United States Humane Society. In 1973, Ron Forman, the current president of the Audubon Institute, became the president and spearheaded a movement which turned the direction of the zoo around 180 degrees. The exhibits were renovated to become large and more like the animals' natural environments, the aesthetic quality of the zoo improved vastly, and the zoo once again drew interest from the public. During this time, several new and popular exhibits were added. Ron Forman later created both the Woldenburg Park, the Species Survival Center, the Aquarium, the IMAX Theater, and the Insectarium, all the time improving the zoo with new exhibits such as the Louisiana Swamp, Jaguar Jungle, and expanding the zoo's conservation program to preserve endangered animals.

Today, the zoo is ranked as one of the top zoos in the country. Some of the attractions include the Asian Domain, which is currently undergoing construction and expansion. When finished, the animals in this section will include the highly endangered Amur Leopard, the white tiger Zulu (whose also-white brother Rex recently died from cancer), Sun Bears, a mixed-species Babirusa and Asian Small-Clawed Otter exhibit, an Orangutan exhibit, and a new, huge, state-of-the-art Asian Elephant exhibit for the two female elephants, Jean and Panya.

Some other attractions include Discovery Walk, a walkway where people can encounter and touch animals held by staff, and the Cool Zoo, a water park built for children. In the Primates section, there are Gorillas, Golden Lion Tamarins, Howler Monkeys, Orangutans (until their move to Asian Domain), and many more. In the back of the zoo, there are the original columns and statues from the original collection of animals, including the Sea Lion exhibit, which still holds several female California Sea Lions. There is also a Reptile House, and a "Dinosaur Encounter" designed for children.

In the African Savanna, one can encounter Red River Hogs, several types of antelope, White Rhinoceros (including the oldest living one in captivity), Wildebeest, Ostrich, Zebra, Aldabra Tortoise, and Giraffes (which you can feed!). Also in this section is the famed Monkey Hill, which, although currently closed for repairs, is a popular place for children to play and climb. The petting zoo will also be moved here when the renovations are completed.

Next is the award-winning Louisiana Swamp section. It is very authentic and stays true to the culture of the Louisiana swamp. There is a large lagoon filled with alligators and a black bear exhibit featuring the three bears Eddie, Betsy, and Camille (the latter two named after hurricanes). There is also a Cougar exhibit, North American River Otters, Bobcats, two types of Foxes, and two white Alligators. Immediately after the Swamp is Jaguar Jungle, which has, true to its name, two Jaguars (Yaqui and Ixchel). Also within this section are Spider Monkeys, Giant Anteaters, Sloths, Toucans, and Macaws. The last large section of the zoo is the South American Pampas, which is a long boardwalk overlooking an exhibit filled with Tapirs, Guanacos, Rheas, King Vultures, Capybara, Flamingo, and many types of birds.

The vast array of animals in natural-appearing habitats is what makes the Audubon Zoo so great to me. The animals are typically very active (of course, this depends on the weather) and engaged in their surroundings. The facilities themselves are very good as well; there are several restaurants which serve surprisingly good food, and benches and restrooms are never too far away. The staff is friendly and engaging (at least, I hope we are!).

Overall, I love the Audubon Zoo. It's like a little sanctuary for me, a home away from home. I've spent probably too many hours here, but I can't get enough, and totally recommend this awesome place to everyone.

Met Floyd Mayweather this past weekend at the New Orleans Pelicans game against the Charlotte Bobcats, which we won, that was exciting.