New Orleans! Too!

This is a pretty fabulous place to be.

Food/drink/music update:

I may have had the best breakfast of my life today at a place called Surrey's Juice Bar on Magazine Street: a spicy crawfish omelette stuffed with avocado and brie, and covered in pink crawfish scallion cream sauce; fresh buttermilk biscuits, strong and bottomless coffee, and a shot of wheatgrass to help it all go down. Think about the man-hours it takes to catch and shuck those crawfish. A lazy mindset would kill it all. It's like a perfect micro-lesson in human industriousness leading to better things for mankind: even though it would be easier to not go crawfish catching, and just have some toast and spam instead, the motivation to go out there and do it lets us have the best omelettes on the planet. Live life to the hilt.

Dinner was from a place called The Quartermaster, chosen not because it's a legendary destination or anything (although the beans, BBQ brisket and potato salad were good enough to bring tears to the eyes), but because they delivered to the bar that I'd ended up at with people from the Galactic concert at Lafayette Square. Galactic was awesome. One of the trombonists from the Rebirth Brass Band (Corey Henry?) was with them, then Cyril Neville got on stage, and then they had an elementary school marching band (who were fucking awesome) join them too. So much dancing! So much groove! I danced and danced with this smoking hot lady before some man pulled her away, then another girl came and made out with me on the field, right after a bartender dude welcomed me to the city with a free, strong, fresh mixed margarita, and right before some dude I was dancing near decided I should share his bowl with him. This is a friendly city. If I can get my hands on a bicycle, there will be no stopping me. I should learn how to skateboard -- that would be the ideal way to get around, because you could still taxi back to where you're going at night.

Apparently I pass for local enough around here; the cabbie last night asked what way I wanted him to take to get back to where I'm staying, the cute girl at Surrey's asked if I wanted to come out to somewhere tonight (can't -- going to see Kermit Ruffins tonight at Vaughn's), the dude at the hostel even asked where in town I usually live. Ha! Apparently I also pass for gay to anyone of that persuasion--I think that it's my new ridiculous facial hair (I decided to go funny-looking after losing my job, cuz hey, why not, but I think that it looks gayer than I'd thought). And people here are super direct! Worse than me! A guy says, "Hey, come say hello. I'm Christopher." I introduce myself and he says, "it's nice to know you. I'd like to get to know you better." I was like, "I think we probably know each other about as well as I'm gonna want to." Ha! This is an awesome town.

Time to go jump in the hostel's salt-water pool to cool off, shower, and hit the town.