My apologies to my faithful readers for my blog hiatus; all I can say is that I’ve been so busy with my duties as a tour guide that I haven’t had the time to write about them. My days are spent researching, studying, writing scripts, practicing tour routes, coffee talk sessions with tour guide friends about tour ideas, on the streets guiding tours, sometimes eating, & finally sleeping. I’m exhausted, but I’ve been having a blast & I’m ridiculously excited about new tour prospects coming ‘round the bend!!
So, where to begin is the question? For those of you that know me personally, you know I’m an infamous list maker & I do appreciate a good bullet-pointed list. So, to catch you up without writing an epic length blog, here’s a list of all the fun nola stuff that my tour guide license has gotten me into over the past month or so & has kept me from staying up into the wee hours to post blogs (of course, I’ll have to refer to my calendar to make sure that I don’t forget anything)…
- Louisiana Bicentennial Lecture at Nunez Community College; learned a hell of a lot about the arduous process of making Louisiana an official state of the U.S.
- watched the Ken Burns Jazz Documentary (in preparation for Tauck’s Jazz Experience tours)
- FOC’s Hidden Treasures in LSM’s storage facility (the old “pasta factory” above Irene’s): special showing of paintings form LSM’s collection not on display in any of the museums
- Jazz Presentation by a fellow FOC tour guide & FOC’s music guru, Dave Thomas…learned a lot about jazz rhythms & beats, plus the birth of jazz in my hometown
- a fantastic French Quarter tour for FOC…I had a great couple from Australia that I’ve kept up with via facebook since the day they took my tour, a few Canadians, & even a couple of Americans. We stopped in at my fellow tour guide’s apartment on Chartres & Dumaine to take a peek at his charming courtyard, talked a lot about hurricane Katrina & nola food. Even though I ran over the 2 hours, all of my guests were real troopers & stuck it out with me until the very end!
- then the serious prep for Tauck’s Jazz Experience tours started…emails flying from one tour guide to the other with research about jazz musicians, old nola neighborhoods, such as Storyville & the Treme, walking the tour routes on the streets with other tour guides, sitting down & working out scripts for all three different tours (“Roots of Jazz”, “Jazz in the French Quarter”, & “Treme: Jazz & a Story of Survival Today”)…that was exhausting…especially since it was all volunteer work, “what the hell was I thinking when I signed up for these damn tours?!” is all that I kept asking myself in the weeks preceding the big event.
- my very first Saints game at the Superdome EVER!! A tour guide friend has season tickets & told me before the season even started that I was going to have to join her for a home game. She’s determined to convert me into a footfall fan. I wore the only pseudo-Saints clothing I have, a black tank top with, “504 ever” in gold (504 is the nola area code); the shirt’s from Dirty Coast. I have to admit, I had a great time, the energy was contagious & I actually learned a good bit about football (not that I can remember any of it just a few weeks later). And, the Saint’s won, I’m pretty sure I was their good luck charm. So, WHO DAT! Geaux Saints!!
- watched Faubourg Treme: the Untold Story of Black New Orleans documentary (also in preparation for Tauck’s Jazz event tours), a really well done local film, I recommend checking it out
- watched “Jazz Funerals” documentary at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park in the French Quarter; it was a fun collection of old second line & jazz funeral footage
- visited the 18th Star exhibit at The Historic New Orleans Collection; there’s some interesting items to celebrate LA state’s bicentennial…an old Blue Book (the essential guide to all that was offered in Storyville), a letter from Jelly Roll Morton to a Supreme Court judge complaining about not getting royalties for his songs & much more. The exhibit is FREE & open to the public during regular HNOC hours, so no excuse not to check it out!!
- sadly, I missed the first Freret Market of the season, too busy preparing for tours &/or catching up on sleep. But, you bet your ass I'll be there this Saturday for the November Freret Market (it's held the 1st Saturday of each month from 12-5pm)
- Art for Art’s Sake with a few friends down Magazine St.; although I started late, I still managed to pop into a few galleries, Octavia Art had a great show & we found a terrific & affordable antique/vintage shop called, Medium Rare (my new favorite place to purchase gifts). Of course, I also had to get a ridiculously fabulous hat covered in feathers for myself...AND, an old K&B hurricane tracking chart (that's going in a frame for sure)!!
- sadly, I also missed St. Augustine Church’s 170th Anniversary mass in the Treme with Trombone Shorty among other great nola musicians (this is the oldest African American Catholic parish in the country). I hear that it was an amazing celebration.
- Jazz People photo exhibit at Tulane’s Newcomb Art Gallery; all black & white photos, mostly taken in the 1950’s, from Tulane’s Hogan Jazz Archives, these photos are usually never on display, so it was a special treat.
- finally, the big event, Tauck’s Jazz Experience tours…3 days, 3 tours, some good food, some great music, a lot of nice (mostly older) folks visiting nola, & complete exhaustion!! After the last tour on the last day, I got a very dirty martini at the Sazerac, in the Roosevelt Hotel with FOC’s Special Events Coordinator & another FOC tour guide. Boy did I earn that cocktail & it tasted goooood!
- the very next day after the last Tauck jazz tour, I headed to Poche Plantation with some of my fellow tour guide gals for an afternoon tea party…all decked out in our most fabulous hats. It was a hoot, there was a hat competition, of course, & a fashion show of all late 19th century garb, bubbly, & even a comedian.
- FOC’s October monthly tour guide meeting…all were still recovering from Tauck’s Jazz Experience tours & now they needed guides to sign up for the Ghostly Galavant on Halloween weekend. I had to take a break, of course, I’d enjoy the Ghostly Galavant festivities, but couldn’t commit to guiding a tour or dressing up as a famous nola ghost…that was just too much for me to handle.
- my first visit to the cemeteries at the end of Canal St…Dispersed of Judah, St. Patrick’s #2 & Oddfellows Rest (just 3 of many more in that neighborhood). Plus, the Hurricane Katrina Memorial in the old Charity Hospital Cemetery. I was helping a friend prepare for a new tour of these cemeteries, learned a lot & it paid off this past week…
- a driving tour of nola for a friend’s boyfriend during is 1st nola visit…along Bayou St. John, out to the lakefront, through city park, down Esplanade Ave., around the Treme & into the Marginy on an absolutely beautiful day.
- attended a monthly “tour guide discussion group” meeting at Latter Library, a great old mansion on St. Charles Ave & my lovely neighborhood public library. The topic was culinary nola, learned about some current culinary French Quarter tours & some interesting facts about chickory & beignets.
- a practice run in front of a camera for my little NOTV spot on the Cabildo to be filmed tomorrow afternoon! That was surreal, watching the footage back of myself. And, I know that I talk with my hands, but seriously, I’m like a storm whipping through a conversation. A little nervous about tomorrow’s shoot, so cross your fingers for me…and what the hell am I gonna wear?!
- MY FIRST PAID TOUR!!!!! As I mentioned earlier, helping my friend prep for her tour of those cemeteries at the end of Canal St. paid off, I meant it both literally & metaphorically! She wasn’t available to do that tour last Friday, so she referred the owner of the small tour company, Tour-New-Orleans, to me & the rest is history. I had a group of 20, all from a wedding party (I was surprised they were going for a cemetery tour, but they seemed to really enjoy it). I got a great tip, which I wasn’t even expecting. So, I guess I’m a pro now?!
- after my cemeteries tour on Friday morning, I had to run back home to finish up my costume for FOC’s Ghostly Galavant. So, my dining room table became arts & crafts central for the weekend. I made a mini cabildo cupola & attached it to a vintage hat (early 20th century style). Earlier in the week, I’d taken a trip to Buffalo Exchange in search of a “gown” that looked like it was from the early 20th century. I asked one of the employees & she brought me over to a bin of brand new arrivals, the leftovers from Tulane’s drama department!! I struck gold, found the perfect dress for just $30!! The girl helping me had studied costume design in college, so she was just as thrilled as I was, we called it a Halloween Miracle! Anyway, the Cabildo became part of the Louisiana State Museum in 1911. So, my costume is in honor of the 100th anniversary. I even made a sash (sorta like Miss America) that says “100 YEARS”.
- FOC’s Ghostly Galavant started off with a big party at the Cabildo on Friday night, so my costume was ready just in time for the party. I took the streetcar over & got some great reactions from the crowd, not that anyone knew what the hell I was or had ever heard of the Cabildo. So I did do a little tour guide lecture & educated some of the random riders on the streetcar while headed down to the quarter. Needless to say, my costume was a big hit, once I got to the event, the partygoers certainly recognized the Cabildo’s cupola immediately (as they should)! There was food & drink, music, & we were free to wonder the museum…a great space for a party.
- The rest of the weekend, FOC hosted “ghostly French Quarter tours”…making stops at the Cabildo & lovely courtyards to meet famous nola ghosts of the past (Governor O’Riley, Napoleon, William Faulkner, Pirate Jean Lafitte, Madame Josie Arlington of Storyville fame, Alice Heine, the real first Princess of Monoco, & Judah Touro, an important Jewish philanthropist). I tagged along while a friend guided the tour this afternoon. The tours were a great success! Got some excellent photos of all our ghosts & then had a nice glass of wine & a nosh with all my tour guide gals at the Sylvain.
So, I guess that catches y’all up. Can you imagine if I’d attempted to write all that out in paragraph form?! I’ve gotta go practice my bit on the Cabildo in the mirror now, work on getting myself to stop waving around my arms so much…that’s a rather ambitious goal. And, of course, I must get my beauty sleep for the camera tomorrow. Plus, it’s Halloween, so I’m schlepping my costume down to the quarter with me & meeting up with friends in the evening to check out the Halloween walking parades. I see more good pictures in the near future.
Also, I can NOT wait until Thursday, another tour guide friend has created a great nola culinary tour for Tastebud Tours (based in Chicago, but opening a branch in nola). He’s taking as many tour guides & other friends as he can on a test tour run. And, he’ll be recommending other guides for this new tour…I’m at the top of the list, soooo want to do culinary tours!!
And, I’ve been hearing from more & more people that there is an interest in a Historic Jewish tour of nola, & no one does one. It’s time to corner the market, so I’m creating one…it’ll be posted on Tour-New-Orleans website as soon as it’s ready!!
I promise I won’t neglect y’all as I’ve done these past two months again. I enjoy writing these blogs, probably more than most of you enjoy reading them.
