New Orleans 2003

Friday, October 31st

I didn't get out of my room until after 10 in the morning, so I missed breakfast. I figured I'd catch something on the way, or perhaps at the show itself. Shuttle to the airport and then to Canal. I figure the show will be over near 11:00 pm, and that Halloween ought to be interesting afterwards, so I set a pick up of about 3:00 am on Canal, so I don't have the same problem I had previously on Bourbon. Tried to arrange pick-up only, figuring I could save some money, but in order to do that reservations must be made 48 hours in advance, or at least that's how I understood it. Still, I should'a made such a reservation for sunday night, but didn't think of it til I was on my way.

I'd checked the map before I left, and while I considered taking the shuttle to the concert site, and then decided one of the regular buses down either Canal or Esplanade would be the ticket, I knew that Esplanade led directly to the park (With Canal, I'd have to make a turn at City park Avenue). I was still somewhat convinced I could make the walk despite yesterday.

The shuttle dropped me off on Canal, near where I believed the Voodoo Fest shuttle would be leaving, but I decided I wasn't taking it, so I started walking in the wrong direction, as usual. I got my bearings straight before long, and headed to the French Quarter. From Canal I would cut through the Quarter to get to Esplanade. Once there, I saw the bus beat me to the stop, so I decided against waiting and walked all the way down Esplanade to the park. Took about an hour plus.

I entered the park from the front where the New Orleans Museum of Art is located. Kinda got lost on my way to the site (there were no signs in this area mentioning the Fest), and wound up on a golf course. Ran into a southern gent (white suit and hat) enjoying a cigarette near his car, and he pointed me in the right direction. It was still a long walk, but I finally found the signs and followed them to the right area. As I got closer, I could hear some nice live bluesy music coming from the site. Now, I was getting excited. George Clinton & P-Funk were scheduled to play today, and even though I'd seen them 4 or 5 times already, and had ruled out any future concerts by them I was looking forward to seeing them again. I was also curious to see how Fitty Cent was live, and wondering who else was playing live today.

None of those questions nor expectations would be answered or met today, however. I was denied entry because of my digital camera. It was insane. Here you have a nationally advertised show obviously geared towards tourists from around the country as well as locals and you deny entry to people with the one item they're almost certain to be carrying if they're from out of state. Now if one is situated at a hotel nearby, then this is not a whole lot more than an annoyance. My room is 15 miles away, though, and there's no way I'm making that trip. If the concert promoters or whomever is responsible for this policy felt that strongly about it, they would've been wise to set up an area to check forbidden items to be returned to their customers as they left the show. But there was none of that, so I left the park pissed. By the way, they didn't keep cameras out. There are a number of ways to bypass security in situations like these and many of them were utilized.

Aside from distance and time, another reason not to drop off my camera was that it was Halloween, normally the best time to have such a device. I headed back down Esplanade, and stepped into a cemetery I spotted on the way to the park. The story behind these "cities of the dead" was that many graves were built on marsh land, and had a hard time staying underground. so residents turned to an old European tradition of keeping the remains of departed loved ones in above ground crypts. I probably spent a couple of hours here, I dunno.

Walked all the way back to the Quarter and then down to the Riverwalk Mall near the river, of course. It's a mall like any other, except there's Jazz playing over the sound system. I went there to pee. There's one thing malls are good for; personal waste disposal.

Went and did my e-mail thing and hung out on Bourbon for a while. I moved back to Canal where that media thing from yesterday was continuing. The parking lot of the Windam Hotel hosted a screening of the movie, Motel Hell projected on the side of the building from a DVD. I didn't come in at the begining nor did I see the end, because the disc was faulty and kept skipping, and had to be ditched entirely. What I saw of it was pretty interesting, though. I was never big on slasher movies, but this seemed pretty funny. I may check it out in the future.

Wandered some more till I was back on Bourbon to stare at the interesting folk and have a coupl'a slices of pizza. This particular place also served daquaris (there were a few pizza & daquari places), I was tempted at first to try one, but decided against it, because the pizza wasn't that good. I intended to get a soda at some point, but when I ended up back on Canal I found myself getting a couple more of those Sky Vodka drinks. Electrick lemonade. A little expensive at $5.00 a pop, but what the hey. and at least it wasn't as strong as yesterdays drink.

In the spot in front of the wall where I'd seen parts of Motel Hell earlier was a stage, which would soon be occupied by a band, called Gorge Fok. I'm not sure I've spelt their name right, but they're from Houston, Texas. A rock band fronted by a singer/trombone player, with two drummers, and either two bassists and a guitarist, or two guitarists and a bassist. they were pretty damn good, and I thought they had a pretty unique sound, even though someone in the audience compared them unfavorably to the Butthole Surfers. I thought it was pretty cool watching the drummers go at it with both drum sets facing each other even though, I had trouble at times keeping up with the rhythm.

A couple of the band members including the lead singer/trombonist took a break and let a really bad rapper, and a rhythym guitarist join the band for about two or three songs. He called himself MC Tracheotomy. The name sounds damn familiar. A stand-up comedian? Awful, and the sorta stripper/dancer girls didn't help. I'm not crazy about dancer/band collaborations. It took the band a while to recover after the guy left the stage, but eventually they did, doing a Grand Central Station. Everyone grabbed a percussive instrument and marched off stage while the dancing girls came back (this time I didn't mind). Actually some stayed on stage while extras handled extra percussive duty, it was then that I realized that I was one of maybe three people in the audience with no affiliation to the band. I'm pretty sure the woman who thought they sounded lke the butthole surfers must've been a friend of a friend.

After their set I left. I would've bought a cd, but I figured I'd find them on the net, and get one later on.
I did some more walking and then had enough. Got back at about 4:20 am.