Having been in New Orleans for about 2 months now I am convinced the “special” people are always referring to when they talk about NOLA is the kind that includes a short bus and a helmet. To say that the folks are hillbilly dip-shits and the practices of the deep-south are fucking stupid is a god damn understatement. While the options are numerous I’ve isolated a few of the top contenders.
The Service Despite being known as a food destination of sorts (and don’t even get me going about how bad and out-dated some of the food is) I think someone failed to notify management to accompany said good food with good service. In my short time here I have seen managers neglect the appearance of the establishment (floors so gross you actually stick to them, general managers who are often actually the chefs, walk into kitchens smoking while mopping their sweaty face with the same towels they proceed to wash the tables with – if they wash them at all). I’ve watched while entire restaurants remain un-cleared for hours on end, guests go ignored upon entry, hosts swat at roaches with the very menus they hand you, hell, I had one server finish her shift in the middle of our meal with no replacement while another bitched us and fellow staffers out for no other reason than for their own amusement. My service snafu du jour is one we experienced recently at an Indian restaurant in Uptown.
Upon arrival we were begrudgingly greeted by a server as we seated ourselves wherein he huffed “buffet only.” I don’t do buffets. As we got up to leave the server said “Oh, fine. Here’s a menu. Hurry up.” That should have been cause enough to leave but, no, we stayed. We had to practically beg for service while the 4 servers were too busy leaning against the bar to be bothered actually serving anyone. It seemed we were the only ones to order from the menu presumably because no one knew there was even an option. The other guests fetched and cleared their own plates and occasionally someone would be by to refill waters. More than that however, the few exchanges that were to be had between staff and customers were done in such an apathetic, rude manner, it was a wonder they were even still in business. In fact, the only time they moved with any gusto was when they cleared the table. That is they swooped in and pulled the butcher paper, beverages, and haggled over the 1$ tip (bill was only 8$ cuz we decided to leave after 2 aps) while we were still at the table. But that’s not even the “special part.” As we went to leave we noticed a guest book near the front of the door that had a litany of service complaints written in it. Instead of removing the book, editing the pages, or, I don’t know, maybe actually addressing any of the service issues they instead wrote responses to each of the complaints. The same tiny cursive handwritten message followed each assertion of bad service. Pages of “good food but bad service” were met with the same passive aggressive retort; some pretending to be other customers while others were written from the perspective of the staff.
The Roads One might think roadwork in Minnesota is arduous but at least they actually do the work up north. There are holes so big you could fall into them and the patch work causes more damage to your vehicle than the issue they supposedly covered. They’ll begin a massive road project on a main thoroughfare on a busy Saturday afternoon and then not return to it for weeks. They have a series of one ways all going the same way for blocks (oh and the one-ways sometimes change directions – still a one-way but now going the other direction), street signs are not there, arrows are posted the wrong direction, some stop signs are on the left side of the street, walk signs are upside down, you can’t turn left (instead you have to go down a block or more and do a u-turn) and the way some streets are designed you’d think they outsourced it to the St. Paul Irish.
The Drivers Bad roads are all the worse when you add in the atrocious drivers. Not just bad, they are the worst I’ve ever seen. Driving, it seems, is the only thing here they do fast – not just fast but reckless. The monstrously oversized SUV cabs bomb down the narrow streets of the quarter and blast their horns as if you were doing them a personal disfavor being on the roads yourself. They speed and yell and god help you if you’re on foot, bike, or scoot – they just don’t see you. They don’t yield or stop either. Stop signs, as it seems, aren’t seen either or, rather, probably just ignored. In fact most drivers fail to stop instead favoring the “California roll,” a half pause-part yield that occurs about mid-intersection. Honking is recreational, using turn signals are unheard of, lights are optional and drunk driving is required. The latter two we discovered personally the other night as we were nearly run over by a clearly intoxicated driver without lights as he rolled through the intersection going the wrong way on a one-way street. All this, by the way, occurred at the intersection in front of the French Quarter police station.
We saw this particular asshole a few times bobbing through the quarter before we crossed paths again a few blocks later. This time, like the last, it was a near miss and J started his spitting, yelling, hand gesture, man-tantrum routine. (This, to be noted, is an exercise in futility because they didn’t notice you when they ran you off the road and don’t notice you damning them to hell shortly thereafter. Some of the pedestrians get a kick out of it though.) Anyway, on this fine occasion the driver did notice. He pulled up right next to our moving scooter, rolled down the window and scavenged in his passenger seat for what we thought for certain was going to be a gun; we weren’t far off (neither was the gun). The slurring, squinty eyed driver places a cops cap on his head asks accusatively if we had a problem. “I didn’t think so,” he mumbles as he takes a pull from the can of beer tucked “discretely” into a paper bag, runs a red and rolls into the CBD.
The Crime Corruption is a word almost synonymous with NOLA but the crooks are as “special” as everyone else here. Their acts of crime and corruption are as often as dumb as the crooks that accompany them. While the list of acts are countless, in our short time here $150,000 “accidentally” fell-out the back of an armored car, several hundreds of thousands of dollars were found in the freezer of a local politician (now nearly every member of his family have been indicted), and several new yet unmarked cop cars were taken from the lot – driven off with the very keys delivered to the office manager just the day before. Oh, and the arrest of a Nazi skinhead was quite amusing. It was a nice touch watching the white officer slam his head into the car (another “accident” I presume) while the idiot spewed all sorts of hate speech and accusations. But my favorite, thus far, is the story I was told by a neighbor while we were watching the neighborhood boys wallop a purse snatcher. She explained that during a recent purse-snatching incident herself, a Good Samaritan came to her rescue and, subsequently, stole the bag himself.
The Tourists Before I go and blame all the idiocy on the locals let’s be clear: the tourists are equally and confoundedly fucking dumb. Alongside the locals, they over-drink, drive badly, and misbehave - all the time! Among the top of my list of dumb-ass behavior: the beads – hey fuck head it isn’t Mardi Gras, feather boas and bad hats are never a good idea or flattering choice (not to mention they make you a mark), whoopin’ and hollerin’ for no reason is simply annoying (especially the white folks, you know who you are!) and lame. I am not amused when you run in front of me, stick your ass in front of my moving bike, nor do I want to show you my tits. And the photo taking... It's not that I don't take pictures, I always have a camera, but do you really think you’re gonna snap some shot that hasn’t already been seen a million times? Do you really have to keep taking my picture? That blurry-blob flipping you off in the corner of your “inspired” shit is me, ya fuck. Try to consider where you’re pointing that thing, will ya?
Hey, public puking and urination is not OK but the one thing I’m most confused by is why do you have to sit on my stoop? I see this all the time. Strangers -- locals and visitors alike -- plop their big, ugly, drunk-ass down on someone else’s porch. Would you rest/sleep /pass-out/party/puke/picnic/hang-out on your neighbor’s porch back home? No? Well then don’t do it here. Hey, ya fuckers – people live here so go fuck/fight/piss or whatever in the doorway of your hotel room.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many interesting things to do and see here in NOLA. With only 2 months under my belt I’m sure to find more, but in addition to all of the good things there are a hell of a lot of bad, stupid, inexplicable shit that cause me to scratch my head and ask why? Before I start to go off again on the myriad of totally ridiculous things that are NOLA I should take a look at myself and ask what the hell prompted me to get on the short bus for the long ride to the deep-south.
A FEW OTHERS:
• Marble mouth
• Few to no computers in city hall. It was explained that they had been doing things the “old-fashion way” for so long they didn’t see a need to allocate the funds. The 1 hour and forty-five minutes it took one 500 pound government official to process jut one permit dictates otherwise.
• Card catalogues at the library.
• References at the library (ex, 13 year out dated tenant rights reference with missing pages).
• The gentleman’s puddle test; this southern hospitality thing is a myth. Sort of like Minnesota nice.
• A glut gutter punks
• Moldy people
• Hipster doofus galore (ex, the mailman in capris or the bald man with the tiny ponytail)
• Shit, everyone’s practically a cliché – every group represented
• Throw your garbage anywhere
• Give me a dolla
• The markets “They were horrible before (K) but now they’re just bad.”
• The rain puddles are more like piss, puke, or chemicals.
• Mumilard DJs that play the fucking records on the wrong speed.
• No one pulls over for the ambulance, fire trucks or cops.
No comments:
Post a Comment