A Brian Liu Production

With today being Mardi Gras, more specifically Fat Tuesday, I'm reminded of the fact that it's exactly 15 years ago when I was in New Orleans for my only Mardi Gras experience.

The circumstances of the planning of this trip were of course extremely last minute. Two weeks before we actually left my friend Brian Liu called me up and was like, "Hey, if we go to Mardi Gras this year do you want to come?" These types of plans came together very easily and very quickly for Brian. It was easy for him to connect an idea with execution and rally significant ranks of people to turn a plan into reality. I mean, everyone has PLANS but not everyone can make these plans happen with the degree of regularity that Brian experienced. This was one of Brian's great talents. Within a couple days there was a list of people coming, plans to rent a minivan to get everyone down there and a place to stay while we were there. Another friend of Brian's had wisely decided that Mardi Gras in New Orleans was not for her despite being a resident of the city and had instead planned to be in Houston. Her apartment was therefore available and Brian had arranged for the 6 of us to stay there all week. Myself, Brian, Devon, Jen, Q and Jen's friend whose name has long since receeded into the recycle bin of my memory.

I remember when I broke the news of my week-long absence to the staff at Fifth Colvmn. Jared, Chemlab head honcho and label figurehead, paused and said "Cool, well have a good time, man", not sure whether to give me a hard time about it or not. Brian McNelis, our management guru and music industry strategy wonk was somewhere between pretending to be annoyed and actually annoyed since I was only telling him about this trip a week before it was actually going to be happening. In theory, since I was paid as a consultant I could technically do whatever I damn well wanted without any real resistance from anyone.

It was mid-morning on the Wednesday before Fat Tuesday when Brian and the minivan showed up at my group house on Lanier Place in Washington, DC. With my bag packed I was the last one to be picked up and found a seat in the back for the roughly 18 hour drive to New Orleans. We drove straight through driving and navigating in shifts while others slept. We consumed mass quantities of junkfood and played some of the same CDs (Tragically Hip, Velvet Underground, Deadeye Dick, Cowboy Mouth) over and over again. How we managed to make this trip without an ipod I'll never know. The following morning we arrived in Mississippi dirty and tired and ready for life to begin again beyond the minivan. I felt so relieved to finally be so close that when we stopped for breakfast at a diner just off the highway in Mississipp I hardly noticed the mean, bitter, evil looking residents of this backward state who were giving a delirously tired Brian the evil eye for his being different (Asian) and loud.

New Orleans itself was unlike any other city I had ever been in before. It was old and grand with a unique style and history divergent from the older eastern seaboard cities I knew as well as the newer, culture-less western cities. We found Brian's friend's apartment and dropped off our bags. On this trip we would truly be living a charmed existence especially when you consider how little money each of us had. Q, was an ex-coast guard academy student and had remained in touch with his coast guard friends. With many of them stationed in New Orleans at the time we had a standing invitation to join this group of coast guard servicemen and their families all week long. We were invited to the houses and apartments of various coast guard servicemen and women who hosted us. They took care of us so well that I'm afraid I didn't appreciate it like I should have at the time. Our hosts had cook-outs and barbecues at least once a day to power us through the week. I couldn't belive how this city was willingly shutting down all week to celebrate this holiday. Every day seemed like a Saturday as no one appeared to be working.

The weather in New Orleans was beautiful until Fat Tuesday. The locals remembered that the previous year had also been rainy on Fat Tuesday when they saw the forecast.

For the first time in my life I found myself drinking an alcohol/cranberry juice mix out of a plastic water bottle at 9am. When I first started drinking at this early hour my first thought was that I would get sick not from drinking too much but simply because my digestive system would reject these large quantities of alccohol at such an early hour.

Despite the rain, however, the parade was terrific. Beads flying everywhere from the floats on down to the bystanders. With no real rain gear to speak of our group donned trash bags after we cut holes for the head and arms. This wardrobe choice combined with sloppy drinking helped us end our week in style! By the time lunchtime rolled around I felt beat - but not tired. Dazed, confused and just coasting. Our last coast guard hosted event was in an apartment with a private courtyard in the French Quarter near the end of the parade route (Mardi Gras revelers were encouraged to follow the parade route after the last of the floats had passed). It was a beautiful place and our ranks were finally showing a little worse for wear. After essentially drinking and partying all week with these people and not really seeing any of them in rough shape from overindulgence I was surprised to find that they were finally getting worn out on this day to end all days. I guess that was what one was supposed to do in the days leading up to Fat Tuesday - party hard but with some restraint and then let it all hang out on Fat Tuesday.

Go Your Own Way

It's no secret that those who live in NYC have their own unique brand of attitude. Many folks who live or are from NYC refer to this as simply a "New York Attitude" without getting into specifics. Specifics. That's what I'm here for. This attitude is hard to sum up succintly but this little anecdote may help.

Again we return to subway life. Nothing is more emblematic of life in NYC than what happens underground. People's true colors shine through and in close quarters, no less. Perhaps this is because all New Yorkers, regardless of race, income or education level are at the mercy of the subway and this is at times frustrating. What New Yorkers do when confronted with this frustration takes many forms. Some lash out when seemingly unprovoked. Others keep their thoughts to themselves while trying desperately to stay in control while still others take action.

At the 86th street subway station (home of the 4 and 5 express trains as well as the 6 local) the express trains often experienced a "brief" interruption in service. This interruption would be communicated to customers usually in two different ways. One, through unintelligible public address announcements and two through the stretching of very flimsy pink tape across each and every pedestrian entrance to the express train tracks. Perhaps the flimsy nature of this tape made their intent somewhat hazy or their message not as forceful because passengers would often see this tape and simply remove it and then proceed to the express train platform to wait for the express train that would not be coming any time soon. Why did this happen? Did New Yorkers, simply fed up with pointless service delays lash out at the system on thier own feeling that they could will the express trains back into service? Perhaps through New Yorkers' unique street smart ability to see through bullshit, these passengers simply saw this pink tape "blocking" the express train entrance as nonsense or the equivalent of someone on the street trying to sell them stolen goods. Maybe they were thinking "No, this is bullshit. No way the express traing isn't running right now. Let's just go down to their platform, I'm sure it'll come."

But whatever the faulty logic that informed these actions what really ends up happening is mass confusion on the downtown (or uptown as the case may be) side of the station when other non-suspecting passengers followed the other passengers with finely tuned MTA bullshit detectors who removed the pink tape, to the express train platform to wait for an express train that wouldn't be showing up for another 36 hours. It's at this point where those who follow end up waiting pointlessly while they hear the local trains that they should be taking stop and then leave the station. At this point sometimes eye contact is made between passengers and then the brave ones make the first move and say after about 15 or 20 minutes of waiting, "Are the express trains running today?"

No one ever seems to know the answer to this important question and the original remover of the flimsy pink tape does not own up to his/her transgression. Once the truth has been realized all passengers make their way back to the local track. However, the tape is still down and no one has fixed it (No one has the told the MTA staff about this either)! Once the first batch of misdirected passengers figures out that the express trains are indeed not running at the moment, another batch of lost passengers will try waiting for the express trains without sucess. Those who are more observant will see the flimsy pink tape on the ground of the entrance to the express trains and wonder before doing anything if the express trains are actually running or if the people of New York had decided to take matters into their own hands.

Fresh Pine Scent!

New York is a city known for many things - one of which is the strange but always pungent smells that emanate from the numerous open sewers, street level dumpsters and sidewalk garbage cans that seem to cover the entire island. So strong are these smells that they can frequently make you wretch and dry heave if you inhale too deeply. As a pedestrian in this city you quickly adapt and learn to simply not breathe through your nose when appropriate.

With this huge quality of life issue dogging most New Yorkers it's often "refreshing" to discover a street level experience that actually presents you with a pleasant olfactory sensation. In Yorkville, the Upper East Side neighborhood in which I used to live, just such an experience would occur around Christmastime. In this neighborhood on 2nd Avenue between 90th and 91st streets was a rather large Christmas Tree market set up on the sidewalk. This particular block was ideally suited for this purpose because there was a park on the west side of 2nd avenue on the grounds of the Ruppert Towers which eliminated the problem of excess foot traffic from block residents competing with shoppers looking for that perfect Christmas tree. As a result of this rather light foot traffic, the market could extend halfway up the block on 2nd Avenue without preventing people from passing through on foot. The market itself consisted of trees lining opposite sides of the sidewalk allowing pedestrians to pass through even if they weren't in the market for a tree. For the 3 or 4 week period directly before Christmas I would deliberately pass through this market on my way home so as to enjoy the rich pine smell that these trees created. If you closed your eyes and walked a little bit slowly (ok - a LOT slower) you could imagine yourself hiking in the Adirondacks or snowshoeing in the Del Water Gap. When walking through the tall, 6-foot+ high trees not only could you smell the fresh pine but also you could not see the traffic on 2nd Avenue or any of the bars and markets/delis that dot the area. The smell combined with the visual impairment caused by the trees really transformed you to another world free of the oppression of the city just for a few moments.

Neighborhood residents never seemed to mind that this market was taking up valuable real estate on a crowded city street. Perhaps it was the collective spirit of the season that caused people to warm up to this idea. Or maybe it was the Christmas-inspired temporary sense of dislocation that people enjoyed.

No Way Man!

In the time that I've moved from NYC, the city has seen many changes, economically, culturally and otherwise. In '01, the nationwide real estate boom hadn't quite begun but in NYC the market always seemed robust. A gradual upward trend in real estate put the pressure on many small business owners who were increasingly finding it difficult to pay the rising rents that their landlords were pushing on them. Many of these small businesses were nightclub owners and music venues. So many of them are gone from the NYC music scene today including Tramps. This 1000 person-sized venue located around 17th or 18th street on the west side was not as famous as the other venues that have gone under in the last few years (CBGB, The Bottom Line and others) but it did bring in music fans with challenging and talented bands and artists. One of these bookings looked back nostalgically to the baby-boomer hippie era of the 1960's and professed to be a half-assed Doors reunion. Half-assed because, of course, Jim Morrison had been dead nearly 30 years at the time and (according to the bill) not even all of the 3 surviving Doors members would be performing with Ray Manzarek having pussied out for some out-dated notion of artistic integrity and it "not being what Jim would've wanted". Nevertheless, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore were scheduled to appear with, I believe, Robby Krieger's son on bass, another keyboardist and with vocal duties shared by all.

Years earlier I had actually seen Ray Manzarek perform with beat poet Michael McClure at 15 Minutes in Washington, DC. This gig with the other two surviving Doors members would allow me to say that I've seen all of the 3 surviving Doors members perform live. The only negative would be that before the Krieger/Densmore group took the stage I had to endure some kind of fake Allman Brothers reunion group with Dicky Betts and sons. Not being a fan of the Allman Brothers this set would be a little painful. And painful it was. It seemed like this damned group would never get off the stage. Maybe they were stalling because of some logistical issue or problem with the Doors-related group. I wasn't sure.

Finally, Betts and Co. wrapped up their languorous set and the stage went dark. With some darkambient cum hippy rock theme as their entrance the Doors-related group took the stage to rousing applause. Krieger - looking frazzled and stoned as usual took his place just off-center stage (still a little uncomfortable front-and-center without Jim around?) and addressed the crowd. With hair looking like he had just stuck a fork in an electrical socket, Krieger introduced the band, his son on bass, i-don't-remember-who on keys, a backup guitarist and then - a drummer. But not Densmore. Whafuck? Where was the guy? I was attending this gig with a friend of mine from Arkadia. An older aging hippie himself by the name of Henry Blaukopf. Henry laughed ironically and said to me, "What is this - Densmore's first gig in nearly 30 years and he can't show up? This is bullshit."

Indeed it was bullshit. But I remained steadfast. Densmore would take the stage at some point. There's just simply no way they could bill the show as Krieger and Densmore and not have both of them up there for most of the set. But I've been wrong before and it looks like I was going to be wrong again. Song after song was played by what was now just the Robby Krieger band without Densmore. They did Light My Fire - which was of course penned by Krieger - a couple other random Doors tunes and then the set was over. As the crowd was applauding waiting for an encore (apparently not caring that Densmore wasn't present) I turned to Henry and said "I'm just going to leave. I have better things to do with my time." I had simply lost my patience and had reached the end of the line.
"OK. I'll see you on Monday", Henry responded.
I left very disappointed and frustrated. How could this happen? Where was the guy? Trapped in some paranoid-delusional acid flashback? Maybe the ghost of Jim Morrison told him to say in the green room and stop disgracing his memory. Whatever it was it was bullshit and I thought about asking for my money back.

Back at work on Monday, Henry approached me and said that Densmore had showed up after I left. Like maybe he and I had bad blood that I didn't know about and Densmore was just waiting for me to quit the place so that he could take the stage. I acted exasperated when Henry told me but part of me believes that Henry just made up the part about Densmore actually showing up so as not to make him seem silly for staying through an encore of the Robby Krieger Band.