If you visit New Orleans be warned - when one light turns red, the other direction turns green immediately. I mean, IMMEDIATELY. So don't be running those red lights.
You can always tell the tourists, though, because they tend to follow the rules.
It's funny how posts can spark a memory. New York and New Orleans are the two places I most feel like an intruder as a tourist. Except one time in New Orleans.
The winter after Katrina we read that several of the hotels had reopened, but that they were in danger of closing again because no one knew they were open, and they had no customers. My girlfriend and I loved New Orleans, so we booked a great deal on a hotel, hopped in the car, and drove the 700 miles down in one day.
I was pretty fatigued when we got there, and when looking for the hotel I crossed just as the light changed to red, almost getting hit from the side by a driver who had timed his light perfectly on the cross-street. In a panic I turned the wrong way on a one way street, drove a block, and pulled over with a pounding heart to ponder my next move. I didn't have to ponder long because police car quickly pulled up behind me. It was turning into a bad night.
But once the officer ensured that I was just tired, not drunk, he became animated and expansive. "You're the first tourist I've seen all week," he said. He told me to just drive the wrong way up to the next light, and if anyone objected, tell them officer Hector told me to do it. "Thank you for visiting our city," he beamed, and he patted the top of my car like it was a long-lost puppy.
That set the stage for the whole week. Impeccably dressed little old ladies would cross the street to say "Thank you for visiting our city!" Bartenders gave us free drinks and said "When you get home, tell them we're still here." We had with us a little stray rescue dog that my girlfriend had recently adopted, and when a streetcar driver saw us eying the empty streetcar with the dog in tow, she came out and said "No animals are allowed on the streetcars, so if you decide to get on make sure that little dog is down in your purse where I can't see it (wink). Thank you for visiting our city!" Even the crabby waitresses at Cafe Du Monde were nice. Sort of.
It was like visiting the quirky but genial small town in a romantic comedy. But with better music and food.
I missed Mom. OTOH, the pups are now curling their tails. Right now they're enormous heads on tiny unsteady bodies.
to organize some kind of fannish convention and call it Rubicon.
That's the name of the convention in Sharyn McCrumb's
Bimbos of the Death Sun.
There is also a Vampire Castle as part of that line, Jilli.
grabbyhands
also reads the sell-text, gets to "Enter Vampyre’s castle and rescue the world from eternal darkness!"
That ... is funny to me for a LOT of reasons, but I will merely say that someone I no longer speak to and very actively avoid goes by the 'nym of eternal darkness.
But I do want a LEGO vampire to sit on my desk!
He told me to just drive the wrong way up to the next light, and if anyone objected, tell them officer Hector told me to do it. "Thank you for visiting our city," he beamed, and he patted the top of my car like it was a long-lost puppy.
Awww! (files the name officer Hector away for when pulled over by the police.)
New York and New Orleans are the two places I most feel like an intruder as a tourist.
I think that locals aren't suspicious of tourists per se, but tourism in general. For example, folks think Bourbon Street is gross and its popularity is baffling and the misconceptions around Mardi Gras are always annoying. Tourists who spend all their time in the FQ getting drunk are usually not the most interesting folks, but encountering a tourist out in one of the actual neighborhoods (Garden District does not count) is usually a very friendly affair.
New Orleans folks, I've found, are super cautious about "outsiders". In many ways, and on many levels. There's currently a post-K repopulation of young white professionals, some of whom who claim to love New Orleans, and then proceed to bitch about everything that makes it special (noise, music, black people, fatty foods, re-routed traffic because of 2nd lines, etc.) See also: the temporary closing of the Bywater institution, Bacchanal, when a recent transplant homeowner complained about the music noise and the parking.
But I do want a LEGO vampire to sit on my desk!
I think I need the swamp creature.
What are people doing this weekend? I need to burn some vacation time, so I am taking a 5 day weekend. Saturday is haircut and errands, Sun-Tuesday is a spa and casino in Reno, and Wednesday is staying home in my inside pants.
DH is away on his motorcycle trip until Sunday night, so I am skating, working, cleaning the house, doing laundry and gardening. Really hard to imagine a more tedious list.
Father's Day (bacon and french toast; going to WF in a couple of minutes to procure bacon), farmer's market, maybe the Natural History museum.
Casper painted a painting for mr. flea for Father's Day, in acrylic on an actual canvas, with a title taken from the last chapter of Trumpet of the Swan. Dillo painted a wooden birdhouse. Yes, we visited Michael's this week.
