By Fyllis Hockman
It's a city where anything goes, where everyone feels comfortable. A city of contradictions. It's a city that's part Left Bank, part island getaway. A town where tacky sits comfortably with tropical vegetation on the same barstool and Bacchus, blues and beignets share the same plate. A place of historical substance wrapped up in flights of fancy. Where sophisticated fashion walks down the street hand in hand with a takeout cup of beer.
New Orleans is more a feeling, an atmosphere, an essence than a brick-and-mortar town, even if some of those buildings are still in decay limbo since Katrina. It's a city of comedy and tragedy, decadence and elegance, sacred and profane. New Orleans is not a politically correct city. There's no middle class and no middle ground. It's a place that celebrates rather than shuns its eccentrics, of which there are many. From Royal Street and its art galleries and antique shops to Bourbon Street, home to strip joints and T-shirts, it's this heady mix of gumbo flavors that draws people to New Orleans.
Before I left for my trip, I asked three friends what comes to mind when they think of the Big Easy. Party town, they said, Mardi Gras, of course. Cajun food, oyster shooters. Music, jazz. So, I sought out three personalities who perpetuate these images of New Orleans to get their take on the town they lovingly call home.
I asked Sophie Lee, a jazz vocalist and part-owner of the Three Muses restaurant and jazz club, what folks should know about the New Orleans music scene. "When people think of New Orleans and jazz, they're just skimming the surface," she said. "Jazz goes beyond the traditional sounds most people associate with the name. There's also the brass-band variety and blues and zydeco, Dixieland and bluegrass, gospel and improvisational. There's even bounce — a newer, higher-energy form of hip-hop that not everyone knows about — and you can hear every variant somewhere in the city."
Most people coming to New Orleans are drawn to Bourbon Street, but really that's more honky-tonk than music immersion. According to Lee, Frenchmen Street is where the good bands hang out. There are close to a dozen clubs within a two-block radius, and you're as likely to be mingling with locals as you are tourists. After all, says Lee, "New Orleans is a music town even if no one is visiting."
And, of course, it's also a food town. Michael Broadway, also known as Hollywood for reasons that became more and more obvious as our conversation progressed, has been a master oyster shucker and resident showman at Acme's Oyster Bar, a restaurant that itself opened more than 112 years ago, for 44 years.
The oysters are the same wherever you go in the city; it's the shucker that makes the difference. As Hollywood explains it, "The difference between an oyster opener and a shucker is the whole presentation — shucking oysters as performance art."
Claiming that he can talk about anything with anybody — that shucking and jivin' is how he rolls — he makes it a point to know what's going on in New Orleans and the world.
"I know what's happening in town and out of town," he said. "Where to go for the best music, the best desserts, the best anything in the city — and outside it."
But as much as New Orleans is known for its food and music, it's Mardi Gras that defines it — at least once a year. And what defines Mardi Gras are its masks. If Hollywood is one of the city's master shuckers, then Dalili can be called a master mask maker — and he counts only three of them in the city worthy of that title. Most of the other masks, he claims, are either mass-produced or Chinese knockoffs.
Stepping into his shop-studio, Mask Gallery, is like entering a masquerade marketplace. The vast variety of masks ranges from fanciful to substantive, a whole court full of jester masks to a veterinary shop of cats, cows and owls. Some are full of feathers or glitter, others represent nature, abstract designs or multiple two-faced versions of the comedy-tragedy theme. There are as many different kinds of masks as there are types of jazz.
Queried as to his own favorite masks, Dalili replied, "The ones that are sold, or those that I haven't made yet. Some people bring in their own designs for me to construct, and I tell them that it will look nothing like they imagine, but they are usually happy with the finished product nonetheless. If not, no problem. I make what I like, and I know I can sell it, even if not to them."
And masks are very personal.
"They take on their own spirit once they're put on, and the wearer takes on the identity of the mask," Dalili said. "Masks bring out the true personalities of the person donning them because people think they're invisible."
Mardi Gras is full of invisible people.
Although wearing Halloween masks, eating oysters at a raw bar or going to a hometown music club are always fun, doing any or all of them in New Orleans takes on a whole new dimension of experience that just can't be duplicated elsewhere. New Orleans, no surprise, is a unique city, and while you're there, anything goes.
WHEN YOU GO
For more information: www.neworleans.com or 504-566-5011
Fyllis Hockman is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
New Orleans, Louisiana, dresses up its signature iron balconies for Mardi Gras celebrations. Photo courtesy of Victor Block.
View Comments