“[New Orleans] is capable of moments unlike any moments you’ll ever experience in life…Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don’t mean to sound flippant, and I don’t mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they’re artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you’re note quite sure that is happened or that you were parts of it.” – David Simon

It is Halloween Night, and I’m standing on Frenchman Street, located on the border between the French Quarter and the Fabourg Marigny. my fingernails are painted black, my hair gelled in spikes. My friend Nic is wearing a studded leather dog collar, his girlfriend Abby towering behind him in a pair of thigh-high latex boots with six-inch platforms. The block is packed with Frenchman hipsters, dressed like pirates, gangsters, Ghostbusters, Teenage Music Ninja Turtles, a requisite drag queen or two. On an empty gravel parking pad to our right, a gaggle of young women, don fairy wings and dance in formation like a Greek Chorus. Up the block, where Frenchman meets Decatur Street at the mouth of the Quarter, the Second Line horns ricochet off the slumped over bars and brick rehabbed warehouses, a parade of lubricated costumers trailing behind, arms flailing to the bleeps. Neon signs and flambeaux torches flicker, casting shadows over the the bulging throng. One reveler stand in the middle, by himself, masked as a Dia de Muetros skeleton. His face and torso are hidden under a paper mache skull… Continue Reading →