Newspaper Page Text
LETTER FROM NEW ORLEANS
I checked into the Royal Orleans last night at 11:30 p.m.,
ordered a pork sandwich, a Heineken and pecan pie with ice
cream from room service—I was too busy cleaning the house
and putting kids to bed and packing to eat at home—and
watched a welterweight named Barto get beaten up over 12
rounds by a relentless kid from from Ventura County: Victor
Ortiz, I think. They called him Vicious Victor, with "Vicious"
on the front of his waistband and "Knucklehead" on the back.
The legs of his trunks incorporated both American and Mexican
flags. They put a six-foot diameter sombrero over his sweat-
drenched half-Mohawk just before the decision. His coach had
been chattering at him in manic Spanish between rounds, but
when Larry Merchant interviewed him, he spoke English like a
teenage Anglo megachurch attendee from Oxnard. He thanked
God and he thanked his church, and he graciously acknowl
edged that Barto, the reigning champ who had apparently been
shit-talking his challenger all week, was a heck of a fighter.
Barto, less eloquent, more winded, was asked to provide a
philosophical exegesis of the replays of his numerous beatings.
He rubbed a glove over the back of his head: "He was just the
better man," he said.
In the morning I jogged downriver on Chartres, then to
Frenchman into the Marigny and Bywater, marveling at the lit
tle working-class shotguns under a dingy grey sky, doors peep
ing open with residents facing the day, past a purple house
festooned with signs proclaiming an affiliation with Zulu, past
the house fluttering with Rastafarian flags, past the house
with the four-foot Virgin Mary dominating the window, and a
little framed and faded picture of what looked like an Italian
head-of-household circa 1962, with a rayon tie and a slick
half-pompadour and thick glasses, the kind of guy who might
have worked the collection plate at a neighborhood mass, and
past a weedy lot with a professionally printed sign put up by
do-gooders declaring: CRIME HAPPENED HERE. Below that was
a lined place to write in the type of crime.
Someone had written, in bold uppercase: FRATRICIDE.
I came back up Touro Street and zig-zagged through the
Quarter, iPod shuffling randomly, but in weirdly perfect sync
with the environs, through Ethiopian jazz records, the Duke,
some old mambos, Luanda singing "Get Right with God." I
took in Bourbon Street backwards: by Esplanade, residents
in housecoats spraying vomit and scuzz off their stoops and
sidewalks with green garden hoses. Then Rainbow flags and
the Nelly Delly and the boom-boom meat-market nightclubs
all quiet in the morning. Then the low growl of the industrial
vomit-cleaning machines up by the strip joints and karaoke
bars and purveyors of Big Ass Beer. Bourbon in the early morn
ing has a smell that is both rotten and inexplicably citrusy—
from the rotting high-fructose corn syrup in the toxic novelty
drinks? Or some weird secretion from the human bile duct that
should not normally exist outside the body? Or some plume of
invisible stress and anxiety-related pheromones from a mass of
strangers seeking collective oblivion in the cheapest and taw
driest of ways?
Anyhow, on the side of the Royal Orleans two NOPD beat
cops were leading away a housekeeper in her grey uniform,
her face pale and horrified. In the elevator an out-of-shape
guy in gym pants was on his way up to the workout room with
a squat woman with a ponytail in lycra leggings, clutching a
48-oz. plastic water bottle. With strange, elastic vowels of the
New Orleans neighborhoods he said, "She's so stupid. What was
she thinking? Who walks around New Orleans in flip-flops when
they're four months pregnant?"
Back out on the street, and on the way here—at CCs on
Royal—The Picayune put Nic Cage's mug shot above the fold.
Apparently he lives in the Quarter. Over the weekend he was
allegedly loaded and on the street, where he allegedly roughed
up his 26-year-old wife, who allegedly had their kid in tow. The
one-column headline read:"
Quarter
Takes Cage’s
Escapades
In Stride.
The italicized deck pulled a quote from a Quarter resident:
'People come here to cut loose.
So what if he drank too much?'
Aisha Leuwenhoek
-I RONGRILL
ARTS AT THE ARBOR
SUMMER MUSIC SERIES
Wednesday, May 4
Rachel O’Neal
Wednesday, May 11
Reptile disfunction
Wednesday, May 18
Rachel O’Neal
Music Every Wednesday through the Summer
Starts at 6:30pm
SPONSORED BY
Arbor t
IRONGRIUL
706.543.2418
THE ARBOR ON MITCHELL BRIDGE
11 55 MITCHELL BRIDGE RD, ATHENS
Outdoor
Downtown
mosadaleotber.com 546-5014
Hmnm...One Day She Will Have
A Little Shop
In A Charmingly Quaint Village.
They Will Be Kind To All Their Visitors
Offer Them Fabulous Gifts For
Their Mothers, Complimentary Gift Wrappin
Cold Drinks fi Treats
While They Browse,
Valet Parking s Car
Washing, Pedicures,
Dog Walking s Trash
Reaoval Services...
Ease Our Mothers Worries
Ptoase Like Us i
Don* Forget VOUR Mama!
on Mother's Day
Sunday May tth
706.543.8425 open deify nativeamerica@bellsoiJtti.net , j
BODY
PIERCING
Provided by Virtue
&Vice. Inc.
Athens’ Own
Randy Smyre
& Bethra Szumski
Association
Professional
Piercers Board
Member
kwasoir;pamanqwonqer. T com
Restaurant
The Food is Our Reputation
Nevd Price on
Lunch Buffet
*5.95»-,
7 bays a Week
at Peking Eastside Location Only
DINE IN • TAKE OUT • DELIVERY
706-549-0274
Major Credit Cards & Checks Accepted
Green Acres Shopping Center • 1935 Baraett Shoals Rd.
MAY 4,2011 FLAGPOLE.COM 9