N'awlins

I'd always wanted to go to New Orleans, and I was able to pop over for a short trip last weekend.

Downtown New Orleans looked a lot like downtown Oakland, with a touch of New York mixed in. But the French Quarter was as beautiful and charming as the everything I'd heard, with lovely balconies:


I even saw a genuine southern wedding party complete with pastel polyester outfits, feathered hats, and (get this) women fanning themselves with fancy hand fans!


I think the first sign of what I was in for was that people were walking around (even downtown) with plastic cups of booze. Just sauntering around with it all nonchalant, the way I carry my iced coffee around in Oakland.

After some wandering around and some delicious food (crawfish are the best thing EVER), night fell and it was time for a stroll down Bourbon Street.


I saw familiar sights:


And unfamiliar sights:

We stopped into a bar for a couple of drinks, which cost more when there's a band.

This system promotes extreme drunkenness among patrons.

The band was pretty good:

What was interesting to me as a Californian, where smoking is a shameful, dirty, hide-behind-the-dumpster-in-an-alley type of behavior was that all of the musicians were smoking and drinking throughout the entire set. This was impressive from an athletic standpoint, I would assume it is very difficult to sing quickly at the top of your lungs and play an instrument while simultaneously smoking and taking shots of liquor, but then again I've never tried it.

Not to be outdone, my purse got extremely drunk on large, brightly-colored drinks:

And met a lot of new people. Every other bar patron we met on Bourbon street was not a local; we met nice couples from New York and Germany who chatted pleasantly with us until two very large men from Northern Ireland men decided it would be funny to tell us all off-color jokes tailored to each of our respective countries of origin.

We hit the road again. Keep in mind that my purse was very drunk at this point, and that's where my camera lives, so if any of these photos seem either blurry or in any way offensive, that's probably why. This state of inebriation seems to be a prerequisite for a stroll down Bourbon street. There are teensy bars just asking you to carry a drink along with you:

So there's no danger of walking even a block in a thirsty state.

I thought maybe I'd like a huge drink to go. I've tried German beers and seasonal beers and even fruit flavored beers, but this seemed pretty unappealing:


So instead I opted for a huge strawberry daiquiri to go:


From a little drink shop with an appealing "terrifying clown" decorative theme:

As you can clearly see, the frozen drink dispensers are lined up in a row, more voluminous and varied than even the banks of Slurpee dispensers at the convenience stores in Hawaii.

For those who like a cartoon-colored drink but prefer to chug instead of slurp, this pretty girl was distributing shots served in test tubes in front of the shop:

So... test tubes? I mean, who figured out that those were convenient for rapid alcohol-to-bloodstream transfer? I imagine a very wild night at some laboratory somewhere leading to this particular bit of ingenuity.

Armed with my very large pink drink (proper anthropological methodology requires blending in one's surroundings) we ambled along toward the Hustler club. I had seen on television, of course, the types of activities that occur on Bourbon during Mardi Gras, but I hadn't realized that the same kinds of things occur on random evenings in late July.

For anyone unfamiliar with the custom, this handy sign provides a mathematical explanation:

I found the anatomically optimistic (if not entirely accurate) drawing particularly helpful in understanding the subtleties of this concept.

How it works is this- charming gentlemen such as these:

crowd onto balconies above the street in search of ladies passing by. When this occurs, they note her arrival with words and gestures of appreciation and encouragement:

If she stops and engages them in conversation, they request a visual inspection of her feminine charms, for which she will be rewarded with plastic jewelry:


In this way, ladies may "earn" many tokens of adoration in an evening. In addition to the main two groups of people participating in this custom (the bead throwers and the bead earners) there are peripheral individuals who participate in their own special way.

Here at the Hustler Club, you can see a row of fellows on the sidewalk who did not care to pay the cover charge to enter the club and therefore have the opportunity to be among the bead throwers above.


They simply stand below in an akward yet enthusiastic row waiting for something to happen:


I knew I wouldn't be participating in any bead-earning (particularly considering that they are available in almost every shop for a couple of dollars per bundle), so I headed over to stand with the row of men below the Hustler Club balcony.

I was the only female. We stood there in a row, me and all of these guys, with our cameras out. We all had a sort of guilty, nervous look on our faces, they for obvious reasons and me because I wanted to get some good shots of them while they got shots of the girls.

We talked to this independent filmmaker:

who explained that he was getting some great footage, which he might try to sell to a documentary film company such as "Girls Gone Wild" but would probably just be keeping for his personal collection. Then he did an attractive little hyena laugh.

We also talked to another guy with a huge expensive camera who explained that he works as a freelance photographer professionally but happened to be passing through the city that night and decided to come out and take some photos for himself. I tried to get a shot of him but apparently professional photographers know how to stay out of a shot.

There was also this father-son team having a bonding evening.

I opted not to talk to them based on the extremely unappealing nature of the conversation I overheard them having with one another.

But fear not, women were not the only only ones being objectified:


Nor was it limited only to females and their impersonators:


There were also other interesting characters out and about, though they didn't appear to be having as much fun:


There was a guy sitting on the passenger seat of his motorcycle chatting with friends when a girl ran up and gave him an impromptu motorcycle-seat-dance:

They were complete strangers but he was friendly with her anyway.

Some people were walking around wearing enormous beads, and I had to wonder what exactly they had to do to earn them, as I'd seen a few women almost completely disrobe for a strand of small beads. I asked to take a photo of a guy wearing huge beads, but the moment he assented his friends appeared out of nowhere and jumped into the frame. To get the full effect of this photo, you'll need to scream "WOOO!!!" at the top of your lungs, preferably with the smell of stale booze in the background:


There was this gal, who appeared to be bored:


But apparently had a flashing light affixed to her clothing:

What is that, a safety measure? Is she directing traffic? Did she hear that people participated in flashing each other on Bourbon Street and misinterpret the meaning?

Lest you think that all of the patrons of Bourbon Street on a random Saturday evening in July were incredibly unattractive (each in their own special way), there was this cute bride having a bachelorette party:

And yes, this bride-to-be with the prophylactics and little plastic genitals on her veil had the absolute least vulgar outfit (by a long shot) of the four or five brides-to-be I ran into throughout the evening.

And then there was this lone beacon of morality making an optimistic attempt to convert the drunken masses with this sign taped to his back (please note this was taken around three in the morning):

I like that he has a plastic cover on his sign to prevent its being ruined by spilled beverages.

Somehow we made our way back to our hotel without flashing anyone or being born again, although my completely inebriated purse hardly remembered how we got there.

Fortunately, New Orleans has coffee with chicory and fresh hot beignets that will soothe any hangover, even one made of brightly colored mixed drinks from to-go cups: