Lots of Pickling

New Year’s Eve, 2014

We were walking down Royal Street in the general direction of Jackson Square when we came across the first good omen of the last day of the year.

A man we had seen a few times before plays amplified guitar. At night he works in the alcoves at the entrances to shops after they close. This morning he was on the sidewalk next to Cafe Beignet.

The tempo was faster than I would have expected but he unmistakably was picking one of the most gracious pieces of music ever written, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” a Bach composition for the organ.

I gave him a donation and we stood across the street to listen. Then, damn, if he didn’t finish that and segue into “Sleepers Awake.” Hot damn, Bach in the morning. Hell, Bach at any time.

A couple of blocks farther along we came to a Dixieland band. The singer was a woman with blue hair who used a small megaphone and sounded a little like Betty Boop. This was whorehouse jazz, and one song had a wonderful off-color, bouncy style. All I remember was the end of the chorus, Betty Boop singing something that I later learned (by the miracle of modern Google) is a Ma Rainey song:

“You low-down alligator,

Just watch me, soon or later,

Gonna catch you with your britches down.”

Then we came to a road block: horse carts, a Mardi Gras float, mounted cops, cameramen, city officials, lots of people lining the streets. It had to be one of two things. This was either the disorganized setup of the Sugar Bowl parade or a riot drill. 

Joanna buttonholed someone wearing a name tag and confirmed that we were watching the randomness before a parade.

The musicians, magicians, fortune tellers, and maybe pickpockets too were out in force, as usual, at Jackson Square.

We went to someplace new for lunch, Muriel’s, across the street from Restaurant Stanley. We sat at the bar in back, where you don’t need a reservation. The jars of garnish were lined up, but one, a little bigger than the others, I didn’t recognize. It looked like string beans. So I asked.

And that’s what was in the jar—pickled string beans as garnish for a Bloody Mary. So I had one of those. Joanna had a very good plate of eggs Benedict, but I decided to keep it vegan. After all, I had string beans.

I am not a big fan of Bloody Marys but this one was very good, and very sharp. Turns out, it not only had Worcestershire and black pepper in the mix, but also horse radish and Tabasco. Maybe lemon juice too.

We strolled down Chartres Street because I was looking to see where it crossed Frenchman, where there is a bar called d.b.a. that Kate recommended. But we didn’t get far when we came to Harry’s Corner. I may have mentioned before that, to acknowledge my support for the beverage industry, they name bars for me all over the world. There’s one in the Singapore airport, another on Via Veneto in Rome. I have visited a few others, too, I am sure, but maybe stayed too long and don’t recall where they are.

This wasn’t like Harry’s in Rome, or even the one in Singapore. It was a dark, local dive that only took cash. Just having drunk my lunch, I wasn’t ready for anything heavy. So Joanna and I split an Angry Orchard cider. 

Frenchman Street crosses Chartres just outside the French Quarter. You cross Esplanade Avenue, which is the edge of the Quarter, and Frenchman is a block beyond that. Esplanade is a scenic tree-lined boulevard with lots of ironwork on the galleries.

Frenchman looks like a newly gentrified street being given over to bars that appeal to people under 40. According to my tourist map, the neighborhood is Faubourg Marigny. We didn’t stop in any of these bars, but walked up the street past Washington Square, a park where a lot of young people were hanging out, or camping out. It was like old home week. I could smell cannabis in the air.

I can’t remember if the Christmas house, the photo of the day, is on Chartres Street or on Dauphine. You can’t see it in the photo, but just behind the window is a mannequin dressed up in a lighted bra.

The rules of the house are posted on the front wall: No loitering, no crack selling, no cat selling.

When we came to Dauphine Street, we decided to take it back to the Quarter. Frenchman doesn’t run parallel to Esplanade, so we could get ourselves good and lost if we weren’t careful. 

When we got back to Bourbon Street, it was already filling up with foot traffic. Lots of people in Ohio State and Alabama red. Both schools’ colors are red and white. Could that make for confusion on the field? Maybe somebody would throw the ball to the wrong guy.

We stopped into the Bourbon O Bar, which is in the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. I ducked in there mainly because I needed to use the men’s room. But we wound up staying to share a couple of mimosas and watch David Niven for a while in “Around the World in 80 Days.” 

We went back to the hotel to change. Since I had brought it, I was determined to wear the tux on New Year’s Eve. Five is a little early for a tux, but who was going to notice? Besides, we were having dinner in a sports bar.

Joanna ordered an extraordinarily tasty and thoroughly Confederate dinner: A huge pork chop with sauteed sweet potato cubes and collard greens. The collards had ham, cider vinegar, and a bit of heat in them. The sweets had a little bit of resistance left when I bit one. The pork was tear-jerkingly good.

I had a dish that had been on my radar since our first visit to Ole Saint: rabbit pot pie. This came in a small bowl under buttermilk biscuit dumplings. Very savory. As in eating chicken or fish, I had to be careful of the little bones.

I had that with a NOLA India pale ale called Hopitoulas, which is full of bitter flavors. Even some craft breweries lose their nerve and water down a beer, but IPAs generally run strong. Many have an alcohol content above 5 percent, and that adds interest, too.

After dinner, we went back to Naughty Street, which was packed. Half the people were wearing something red. Every once in a while, even during the day, you hear somebody shout “Go, tide” (the Crimson Tide of Alabama). Others are too drunk, so they just growl.

I’ve heard a lot of them talking in bars, and it’s a kind of a college reunion for them.   

We got to the Blacksmith Shop for a Campari, which I took with me. There was barely standing room in the bar.

The men’s room, however, was fairly empty. The ladies’ had quite a line. 

So I was the only guy there peeing into a trough when a strange lady walked in. She saw me and stepped back. She must have judged me safe enough and stepped in again. “I’m sorry,” she said, and I think she meant it. “But I need to pee.”

Go ahead. There’s nobody in the stall.

I must really be getting old. Strange young women think nothing of walking past me to share a men’s room. And it doesn’t break my heart.

At one point, we saw the lady on the trike, my dance partner from the other night. This time she was in a black flapper dress with fringe, short enough maybe to break some kind of  record. She was working on a pint of something and well on her way to needing to replace it.

Next stop was French 75. This is a small, old-fashioned cocktail bar connected to Arnaud’s on Bienville Street. Kate recommended that we try the cocktail that the bar is named for: Courvoisier cognac in Moet & Chandon champagne with sugar and lime juice. It tastes as terrific as it sounds.

Lillet Cobbler, made with an aperitif wine, blackberry liqueur, and lime juice was also very tasty. We shared two of those before we left.

I also ordered a cocktail that mixed rye with God knows what. That was not my favorite. Joanna took one sip and let me have the rest.

We made our way slowly back toward the hotel. There was no way to hurry. the horse cops were out. The State Police were out. All kinds of cops on every corner.  But they didn’t do anything but maintain order. Oh, the horse cops intimidated a few people out of the way.

But they didn’t even interfere with the grass-green weed wagon, when it stopped in the middle of an intersection to dispense a couple of joints out the driver’s side window.

The vans prowl the Quarter, and maybe elsewhere in the city, and advertise products like Purple Urkle and Herojuana. There’s more than one van, and they also deal wholesale in pound quantities.

I can’t figure that one out. Maybe it’s performance art and there’s no cannabis at all. Maybe it’s oregano. 

Tonight one of the strip clubs opened its front curtain and a pole dancer shook her bottom at the street.

We got back to the hotel in time for one more Campari and soda. Then I went upstairs to sleep.

I opted out of watching the ball drop in Times Square or the fleur de lis fall in Jackson Square. I’ve seen the ball drop before. I saw it get stuck once, but to this day am not sure whether or not it caused the old year to extend a few seconds longer.

Besides, I was going to have to pay for all this wretched excess in the morning. My bad karma has been building up. So I needed a good rest to prepare for a showdown.

Love to all.

Harry