Episode Three - He Can't Do Anything, He's a Civil Judge

This episode starts out with a gag-inducing shot of Bunk's cellulite-ridden ass cheeks as he rails some exotic dancer he picked up from one of his Bourbon Street strip joints (referred to by the other musicians, in typical New Orleans patois, as a "jernt").

So check out these strip clubs! They go from classy

to not so classy

to depressing

to suspicious

to just plain weird

This last one is the home of Chris Owens. Chris Owens is like 80 years old and still does her thing.

Here's the Old Absinthe House, another place where you can find whores at all hours of the day and night.

Or maybe those are lawyers. Same thing really.

Here's where we got to see Batiste drunkenly croon that he doesn't stand a ghost of a chance with the violinist.

and right across Royal Street, here's the corner where Batiste got his ass handed to him by New Orleans' finest.

This is in the middle of the Quarter, on Royal and St. Louis.

The gun store on the left is the one you can see illuminated behind Batiste as he's complaining about not having a bag for his bone.

It's a pretty cool place, sells antique muskets, rifles, swords, coins, keys to plantation slavehouses...

From the exact spot where the beating occurs, you can look down Royal and see the front steps of the Louisiana Supreme Court.

It's a grand old building with a lot of history and a ton of recently completed renovations, and not a few detractors who think it's a huge, oppressive, eyesore of a building that does not fit with the rest of the quarter.

Caddy-corner from the gun store is the Royal Orleans hotel.

Some friends and I have come to the conclusion that the plotline with the musicians--Annie and Sonny--bears a troubling similarity to the story of Addie Hall and Zach Bowen.

We'll see how it pans out, but in the meantime, know that the Royal Orleans was where cops found Bowen's body after he threw himself from the hotel roof, confession note in his pocket.

Here's the house where the murder happened, on Rampart (upstairs from the voodoo museum). Rampart Street forms one border of the Quarter, the furthest from the River. The other bounding streets are Canal on the upriver side, Esplanade on the downriver side, and the mighty Mississippi on the river side.

In New Orleans, because the streets have such an irregular shape to them---see my previous posts about the spider web---people don't really say north, south, east, or west. Instead, everything is relative to the river: up, down, lakeside, riverside. Uptown is up from the CBD; Claiborne is lakeside of St. Charles.

Hence, the "Lower Ninth" is lower than the "Upper Ninth" because it's the section of the Ninth Ward that is downriver.

The exception (of course there's an exception) is for certain streets that run up/down, like Claiborne for example. The portions of those streets that are found upriver of Canal Street are prefixed "South," and the ones on the downriver side are called "North."

Anyway, if you follow St. Louis down along between the Royal Orleans and the Supreme Court, you'll get to the Napoleon House, which I think Davis might have recommended to the tourists when he was at that hotel gig.

Very old building, cool bar. Get the Pimm's Cup, it's their specialty. Or have a bourbon and coke, that's mine. Or a daiquiri.

Daiquiris are shitty grain liquor frozen drinks that are awesome during summer, mardi gras, shrimp boils, whenever. You can buy them from drive through stores that are like goldmines of white trash.

LaDonna's brother in law is a Civil District Court judge. In Orleans Parish, unlike the rest of the state, there are two court systems: Civil and Criminal. I already posted a picture of the Criminal courthouse, known as Tulane & Broad. The Civil courthouse is simply called CDC.

It's part of the government complex at the corner of Poydras and Loyola, in the CBD.

Look at Saints owner Tom Benson putting his name on everything. The Superdome is behind all of those skyscrapers. The building on the right is City Hall, from which good old Ray Ray Nagin is finally leaving tomorrow, having termed out. He's replaced by Mitch Landrieu, son of former Mayor Moon Landrieu, brother of US Senator Mary Landrieu and CDC Judge Madeleine Landrieu. I think Mitch looks like that one mutant from Total Recall.

One final note---back in the first episode, Chef Desautel mentions how she refuses to serve Chinese crawfish in her restaurant. There's a lot of that in this city---like Davis giving Tower records shit for being a big corporate shithouse.

Last week, the enormity of a BP oil rig explosion---beyond that of the poor people killed in the explosion---became clear. Shrimp season has been suspended due to the millions of gallons of oil belching into the gulf as I write this. Stores are all out of shrimp, usually bountiful and very cheap. Head on shrimp, 16 count, go for like $5 a pound at the local supermarket; much cheaper in Plaquemines parish or elsewhere along the gulf. Now, they're hard to come by. I never thought I'd be so sad looking at a pile of empty ice where my shrimp should be.

Hundreds of people and businesses will be affected by this spill. Add in the restaurants that will be forced to cut the seafood from their menus, and it becomes thousands. These places won't serve Thai shrimp. They'll make a point not to, just like Deshautel.

Thankfully, crawfish live in muddy inland waters, so they won't be affected.

Bonus crawfish berl shots: