lagniappe
And that was just the beginning of a few days full of lagniappe—the little extra bits of magic revealed as you wander this town. Here, the good stuff finds you.
After a day of panels for the Do It With Drupal conference (Drupal is what drives my recent project, Knight Pulse), I headed to Lüke—echoing my friend Brian‘s excellent order: the cochon de lait sandwich (we all started with oysters), we discussed what’s next in the open web with Chris.
The next morning, I ambled over to Cafe Du Monde, admiring the bright paintings on the sidewalk across the street,
before committing to serious sugar melting into warm, fried bits of beignet goodness.
I watched the Creole Queen make her way down the Mississippi as the gulls hopped and swooped on the sandbar;
then returned to the hotel for in-depth presentations from Brian, Chris, and other smart people I like—Heather Champ’s session (below, she’s the Community Manager for Flickr) was my favorite, as her deadpan comments competed with the chanting ACORN conversion gathering in a neighboring hotel ballroom.
That night, I walked into the Bon Ton Cafe and discovered the full complement of Lullabots (the respected Drupal advisory group that put together the conference) at two tables.
Happy to toast the conference’s success with them, I also learned that Lullaboter Jeff Robbins is married to Jen of Cooking with Rock Stars, a really wonderful cooking show vlog I’m a fan of (such a small world).
And I attempted to convince Lullaboter Liza Kindred to become a food blogger and buy a kitchen blowtorch (not necessarily in that order)—as well as learning about how Lullabot came to be and more about the Drupal community, of course. What we ordered:
Saturday morning I headed in the general direction of the Bywater area, watching for art on buildings,
following walkways to unicorns in the sky,
leaping next to a shredded American flag,
above piles of boarding,
and white cotton waving on barbed wire spirals on the way to Elizabeth’s,
a neighborhood restaurant with “real food done real good.”
That’s not orange juice, and that’s not just bacon—it’s praline bacon (for the uninitiated, pralines are a signature pecan-sugar confection in the American South), next to poached eggs over fried green tomatoes and cheese grits.
Messages are scrawled and painted all over the area, and wondering if I should retrace my original path, I heeded this sign’s advice and took another route.
Hearing voices, I came upon the Bywater Art Market, which happens on certain Saturdays and is worth intentionally beating a path to,
before following those celestial water meter covers through the Marigny district and historic streets, where astrologers called out at me and shoppers were ducking into doorways.
I decided to walk the length of Magazine Street, through the swell areas and those where green wasn’t pouring out into the sidewalks;
and I stumbled into the New Orleans Photo Alliance Street Fair, where music was playing, art was displayed, and creators in this local community were laughing, happy in this blue heaven…
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Posted Sunday, December 14th, 2008, 8:03 pm * Filed in Art, Food, Photography, Travel. * Tags: diwd, elizabeth's, Food, kristen, kthread, new, orleans, taylor. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
