Aiport ’10

The last time I spent all day in an airport, it was on purpose. Well, kind of. It was my first big solo adventure, and I was flying to Thailand with big innocent eyes and a pristine copies of Lonely Planet and The Beach. I could only afford a very cheap flight, one that involved an 11-hour layover in Helsinki. I think I slept and ate weird Finnish snacks and went to the Prayer Room just for some peace and quiet. Heady times.

I’m spending 10 hours at New Orleans International by mistake. Well, kind of. My original plane was cancelled, and via a series of teasing announcements about when its replacement might leave, American Airlines have managed to seduce its passengers into hanging around. It’s just been obnoxiously annoying.

I just came through security for the second time, having had to recheck my luggage, having had to retrieve it from luggage services (a whole other ordeal in itself involving ticket desk officials huffing and puffing even though it was the only thing that could be done), where the cases had been unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the concourse like a pair of drunken friends, left to the ravages of anyone who passed by should they choose to abuse/kidnap them.

I carry a lot of electronics, and though I’m happy to have my bags inspected, the second time, with all the unwiring and taking apart and unpacking and repacking in a willy-nilly fashion, is a bit tedious. The girl next to me was crying as the TSA had confiscated her twenty dollar jar of artisanal mustard. “At least eat it!” she wailed, the TSA guard looking at the jar like it contained a pickled baby.

I once witnessed John Cusak at Chicago O’Hare attempting to get through with a jar of green slime that he claimed was hair conditioner. Even his thespianic charm couldn’t sway the obsidian, unblinking TSA agent.

Through masterful trickery and prestidigitation, I have managed to blag two food vouchers, so at least I have 30 dollars to spend. You can’t use them for booze, so I may just try and get the Smoothie King operative to make me a smoothie the likes of which the world has never seen.

Something I’ve learned about airports: even if people have hours to wait for their flight, they crowd around the gate it’s supposed to leave from. Power sockets are overrun, people are jammed into unforgiving chairs, children run feral among the exhausted bodies, their parents too spiritually crushed to control them.

There are – usually in the terminal extremities –  rolling tundras of empty gates, where you can have entire benches to yourself, charge your electronica with alacrity and lounge in the unhurried silence of the bathrooms. These gates smell of marshmallow and Buddhist monks serve you tea, the cooling breeze causing the windchimes to gently play calming lullabies.

At 9pm it will have been 10 hours of my finite life spent doing virtually nothing. I know that planes break, and I sometimes love doing virtually nothing, but on my own terms and without queuing so much. MY GOD the queues. Every time it’s announced that something changes, 200 people go up to the desk to rebook their flights. It’s an hourly event. We look at each other with resigned smiles.

I walk past the Creole Grill, scene of many a swig-faced breakfast, carbing and greasing and caffeine-ing up to make the hungover flight to wherever seem that bit less unpleasant. When you’re sober, it has no obvious appeal. It’s about as Creole as an Innuit’s pet rabbit.

Rumour is that more food vouchers will be dispensed. I see people’s eyes flicking around for signs of a stampede. I must steel myself. A forty-five dollar smoothie is at stake.

Surreal Magnolias

There’s a diner across the street from the apartment. Let’s call it the Schmagnolia Grill. Sometimes, out of convenience, or hangover-related necessity, R and I find ourselves – with ill-advised optimism – going there for breakfast. We’re big fans of the restorative powers of banana milkshakes, so we usually take our own bananas along, so that they can be assimilated into the restaurant’s own vanilla milkshake production process.

Here’s the thing about the place. It is staffed by people who not only appear to be on their first day on the job EVERY TIME YOU GO IN, but who are also frantically trying to familiarise themselves with the very ideological concept of “a diner”, serving customers and making the items on the menu. EVERY TIME YOU GO IN.

It’s like you’re entering their own personal nightmares, where they are really a mechanic or a florist and they have been, for reasons unknown, kidnapped and forced to work a day in a diner. Foreign concepts come thick and fast, they grasp at ideas previously beyond their ken, and bewilderment, even with the most basic of procedures, reigns.

It took a conference of four people to agree how to make a banana milkshake, involving changes of station at the counter, consultation with management and, probably, questioning the very philosophical nature of fruit itself.

A basic breakfast order is taken. Then questioned. Then taken for dissection by the breakfast ordering committee. Then returned. Checked. Taken away again. Double-checked verbally (even though, given the open kitchen, the order is manifestly already being prepared), and finally bought to you, with minor adjustments that they saw fit to make on your behalf.

There are three people in there beside us (one an obvious serial killer, all twitchy legs, thick glasses and ordering steak at 10.30am), and it still takes a panicked whirlwind of frenzied discourse, fevered altercations and a deranged symposium to make hash browns and sausage.

A mid-meal request for coffee is met with a look that suggest I had just requested a range of small children’s organs to choose from. I mean, they’ll make and serve it, but all the time their eyes say that they’re questioning why someone would ask for such a thing.

I saw three different glass shapes suggested for our banana milkshakes, even though milkshakes are on the menu, and the addition of banana doesn’t really require a change of receptacle. In the end, the shake is served in one and a half cups.

If David Lynch ran a diner, this is what it would be like. You half expect the short order chef to be one of a pair of Siamese twins (instead it’s a old woman with her hand bandaged up), or for the waitress to turn into an Alsatian as she questions how you want your eggs for the fourth time.

It’s not even cheap.

But we only have ourselves to blame.  Every time, we go in with blind faith. This time it’ll be different. They’ll just take our order and make our food and we won’t enter some dreamlike state where it all happens like we’re moving in treacle, talking Swahili to the staff and demanding rare and exotic foodstuffs that they have only heard tell of in fairy tales.

Yes, we go back. Because we never learn. Because we are lazy. And because, well, we really like banana milkshakes.

All worked out

My final conversation with a New Orleanian on leaving for a few weeks turned out to be one of the more surreal, and as you can imagine, that’s up against some pretty stiff competition.

Willy is an amiable young man from the West Bank, and had the misfortune to be sat next to me on the New Orleans-Chicago flight I took on Monday morning. I was probably one of the few people on the plane that was annoyed it was taking off at all (as always when I’m leaving NOLA), so I was never going to be the best company.

Despite my conversation-repellent body language, he nevertheless broke the ice, saying he was going to Chicago to see his family and asking me where I was from as he’d “never heard a weird-ass accent like that before”.

What followed was maybe the most disjointed conversation I have ever had, a case of verbal pinball that left me spinning, but amused. Here’s how it went:

Him: “Where do you live now?”

Me: “New Orleans sometimes, but I’m based in London.”

“London, England?”

“Yes.”

“Can you get Courvoisier there?”

“Er…what?”

“You know. Courvoisier cognac.”

“Oh. Yes. I think so.”

“Do they have brothels there?”

(I mishear this for “brothers”) “Er…what?”

“You know. With prostitutes.”

“Oh. Yes. I think there are some. They’re not legal, though.”

“How close are you to Amsterdam?”

“About a 45 minute flight.”

“They have them there, right?”

“I guess.”

“Do you have highways in London?”

“Um. Yes. We call them motorways.”

“Nice. Those brothels in Amsterdam are legal, right?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s decriminalised.”

“Yes. You got someone picking you up in London?”

“Er, no. I take public transport to my flat.”

“Man, you’ve got it aaaaaaaaaaaall worked out, haven’t you? All worked out. In advance.”

“Er, I guess so. I’ve done the journey a lot.”

“And you’ve been to Amsterdam?”

“A couple of times.”

“Man, you’ve got it aaaaaaaaaaaall worked out, haven’t you? All worked out. I work for Wolfgang Puck.”

“Oh, that must be great.”

“Yeah. We got soups, pasta, burgers, salads, sandwiches, chicken salad, veggie pasta…(goes on to list what sounds like the full menu of a Wolfgang Puck outlet). You should try it some day.”

“I’ll try and do that.”

“Man. I’ve GOT to get me a plane ticket to Europe. What do you pay?”

“Well, it varies a lot depending on when you travel. It’s usually between…”

“I’m going to Amsterdam. For the Cour-vois-i-er. Man, you got it aaaaaaaaaall worked out, ain’t you?”

“Er…I…guess…”

His curiosity sated and seemingly satisfied at how much I had worked out, he retreated into his magazine and didn’t speak the rest of the flight. Which was a shame. I had so many questions.

Lost vagueness

There’s something very satisfying about taking a holiday from somewhere you’re visiting, but being in New Orleans feels less and less like “visiting” all the time. But so it was that for Thanksgiving week, I traded one ‘Sin City’ for another, heading to Las Vegas for the first time.

It seems weird, leaving this hub of decadence for an out-of-town blow-out, but I suspect the cities have some kind of informal trade agreement, and Las Vegas residents come here when they want to get poodle-faced drunk and act like a tourist in unfamiliar surroundings. Where else are they going to go? Topeka, Kansas?

I liked Las Vegas a lot, but I think it was more to do with the company (8 of us bouncing around the city with little thought for real life or bank balances) and experiences rather than the city itself. Taking a helicopter over the Grand Canyon. Seeing the Cirque du Soleil ‘Love’ show. Crashing a late night karaoke bar. These are the memories that have been percolating through the gassy waters of my memory swamp since we got back.

Vegas touts its hedonism loudly – “Come and do shots as you throw a seven at the craps table and walk off into the night, pockets bulging with banknotes, legions of exotic strangers vying to be invited back to your hotel room,” it says, waving at you while wearing a weird shiny suit and gesturing suggestively with matchplay casino chips.

But in this city, the fast living involves every choice being to some extent choreographed, tightly controlled and charged to your room at buttock-clenchingly high prices. The experience – as exhilarating as it may be in parts – is a generic one. It’s a prescribed Las Vegas Experience, queue on the right to buy tickets and yes, that’ll be 19 dollars for your frozen margarita, don’t touch anything and thanks for playing.

But if Las Vegas is a theme park of indulgence, New Orleans is more like a national park, where hedonism can be seen in its natural habitat, gratification is allowed to develop organically, extravagance enjoys a healthy conservation programme and eccentricity is not an endangered species. You know, free-range hedonism.

As always, it was great to come back. Even a four-hour layover at LAX at You’re Kidding O’Clock an overnight flight that put us in the airport at 6am couldn’t spoil the way I feel every time I land at the airport. The crappy piped zydeco music, the smell of the greasy breakfasts being churned out by Cajun Grill…they are as a balm to my spirits, and as the cranky old cab lady argued with us about the best route home, I smiled and drank in the sunrise coming over the West Bank.

Decatur? I hardly know her…

So mention New Orleans to almost anyone who doesn’t live in New Orleans or visit regularly and the only real point of reference they have in terms of places is the French Quarter, and specifically Bourbon Street.

“What’s it like down Bourbon Street?” they will say. “I have absolutely no idea,” I will reply.

The heart/colon of the French Quarter is by far the most high profile street on a global level, thanks apparently to its mix of neon, beers big enough to take a footbath in and house bands in awful bars playing Journey at volume levels usually associated with commercial aviation.

This seems strange, considering the number of iconic New Orleans experiences to be had on its parallel street to the south, Decatur. I know that having a hurricane cocktail at Pat O’Briens and urinating on the guy in the inflatable grenade costume outside Tropical Isle are important, but Decatur Street has it all.

Now, I’m not saying it’s perfect. I once accidentally licked the plastic curtain that passes for a doorway in The Abbey, a place that the phrase ‘dive bar’ could use as an image consultant, so I know about the iffy hygiene in some places.

But. Look at the big picture. Some of it terminally touristy, but indulge me. Coffee and Beignets at Café du Monde. Artwork of varying standards being produced live. The best view of the Cathedral. Jambalaya at Coops. Golden Joan of Arc with her flaggy posing. Late night shots and photo booth at Mollys on the Market. Shopping for tat in the French Market. Carriage rides. The most annoying living statues in the Quarter. The swifts’ evening chorus. House of Blues. Breakfast in a Go-Cup from Envie. Greeting the dawn from any of The Abbey, Rubyfruit, Tiki’s. That’s a workable New Orleans day without even leaving the street.

Um. I forget my point. I guess what I’m saying is that if a future government forces me at gunpoint to live on one street in the French Quarter for the rest of my life for reasons that never really become clear, I would choose Decatur. And if that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

Evening sky monster

The French Quarter isn’t exactly famed for its wildlife. A safari tour of Decatur Street, for example, would only really include a few dogs on the end of the gutterpunks’ withered leads, the odd stray cat, roaches of course, and if you’re lucky, a plump rat whose tail you spot as it dives back into the drains. There are a few screaming banshees, of course, but we tolerate them as they’re usually spending money in the t-shirt shops.

It pays to look up, though.

A few years ago, I was in western Denmark for a few days. On the final day, my host suggested we head out into the countryside to watch some birds. Now, I’m no orniphobe, but I was somewhat resistant until she said we could take a picnic, including wine and beer. Now, that’s the kind of twitching I could get into.

A short drive from the town, we sat in a quiet field, the sun just beginning to set. “What are we looking for?” I asked. “Just wait,” she said. “You’ll see.”

As I cracked open a can of beer just to temper the dryness of the bread, a number of small black clouds began to appear on the horizon. They were moving quickly, and, more disturbingly, making a noise.

As the clouds came nearer, they conjoined, and within minutes, all we could see was a huge black swathe in the sky of hundreds of thousands of starlings. They danced around the sky, blocking out the sunset with their aerial ballet, sometimes breaking into groups, sometimes amassing like a giant black sky monster. Slowly, the immense flock got lower and lower, and then finally settled in the field. It was one of the most astonishing natural displays I have ever seen.

You can see a mini version of this at the upper end of Decatur Street. As the sun sets, hundreds of what I’m naively assuming to be the same bird appear over the sky scrapers of the CBD, and hover in the sky above the Quarter, changing shapes and texture as they slowly descend. Most people are too caught up in their frozen daiquiris to notice, but it’s spectacular.

As they get near the clump of trees that sit in the island between Decatur and N St Peters, they filter into the branches to sleep for the night. Suddenly they are just gone, like someone pulled a plug and they got sucked into a wormhole. The only way you can really tell that they’re there is the racket of their bedtime chat. Whatever the opposite of the dawn chorus is, I guess.

It’s worth stopping by to see, and if it takes a beer to persuade you, too, then luckily you’re in the right place.

Bread and butter

It’s the mundane things that emphasise the differences. I just went to the supermarket for bread, milk, butter and cheese. Hard to imagine a more prosaic chore. Going to the supermarket to count lettuce leaves or measure the diameter of tins of peaches I guess would be more boring, but if anyone is doing those things, I suspect they are doing them for pleasure rather than out of obligation.

In London, I wear headphones to the supermarket because the 20 minute round trip is so incredibly incident-free that if it didn’t have its own soundtrack, I would probably just pass out from tedium half way there. If I’m lucky, I’ll have an encounter with a charity canvasser that doesn’t end up in a socially awkward square-off, or I’ll see one of the free newspaper distributors get their hand caught in the closing bus doors as they try to offload one last copy to the ambivalent commuters. That’s the best I can hope for. It’s not that it’s a bad way to live – I don’t have to pick my way gingerly through an unswept minefield or anything – but it’s pretty boring.

I just made the same 20 minute trip in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I don’t wear headphones because the cacophony of music blaring from every angle makes it impossible to listen to anything else. I step out of the apartment, and there are two senior citizens doing what resembles ‘the twist’ to the muzak playing from the gift shop next door.  They have drinks in their hands and it looks like they’re having the most fun since the day the war ended.

I squeeze past several Ghost Tours with their spook-ay for pay guides, past a couple of low-key banjo buskers and past tens of colourful art galleries. At one corner, a couple of musicians (a violinist and a guitarist) have drawn a crowd – I suspect they were an inspiration for a couple of characters on the TV show Treme, and they’re in their pomp with a captivated audience.

Two blocks to go.

This takes longer than expected as there’s a parade. What I love about New Orleans parades, and golly only knows there are enough of them, is that it’s not always clear on first inspection what the hell is going on. It could be a birthday, the end to a convention for professional dog groomers, a graduating class or a funeral. All parades involve brass bands, dancing and sloshing go-cups. The trumpets eventually segued into ‘Here Comes The Bride’, and I spied the newlyweds, beaming into the flashing cameras of dozens of onlookers.

I then bought bread and milk and cheese and butter.

At the register, I was about to pay and someone shouted to the girl at the till that her mother was on the phone. She shouted back that she didn’t have time to take it and that she would call back, but to ask what her mother wanted. There then followed a five minute relayed conversation (“Wait, ask her again what the hell she means?”) that could have been over in a third of the time had she just taken the phone call. It’s cool. I’m not in a rush.

On the way back, I passed it all again, and ran into two friends passing on bikes and saw a couple spontaneously break into song to accompany a lone guitarist. A drunk guy on a stag weekend fell into some bins. A barker successfully persuaded some tourists to try some seafood in his restaurant. I waved to a bartender I knew through the window of a pub.

I got back to the apartment and closed the door. No need to provide a soundtrack to this city – it has tens of soundtracks to accompany your every move, together with a cinematic cast of hundreds of charmingly weird characters. No need to bring your own colour to something as everyday as buying groceries…the French Quarter will do it for you.