Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  3.1: Dr. Bob’s Airstream, Bywater, 2005 (preKatrina).

  3.2: Dr. Bob’s surfboard gate, Bywater.

  3.3: UCM Museum filling station, Abita Springs, 2006.

  3.4: House of Shards and Bottle House, UCM Museum, 2006.

  3.5: Terrance Osborne mural on the Hilton Riverside, Convention Center Boulevard, 2005 (preKatrina).

  In these mom-and-pop places, a high priority on good food and the social aspects of eating are the main reasons one has the feeling of sitting in the chef’s own home or at a church congregation’s Sunday picnic. It is about the conscious creation of what it means to be immersed in an unself-conscious atmosphere. This attitude and practice is in keeping with Glassie’s definition of folk architecture. In the aftermath of Katrina, the local advocacy organization Common Ground recognized this important part of the city’s folk culture and set out to construct an “urban farming” site in the middle of the city.10 This “farm” is located adjacent to the site of a butter factory in a semiabandoned industrial corridor a mile from the central business district. This area was heavily flooded, and, to date, a number of schools and community groups have assisted in the effort. A mural was painted in April 2006 by the artist Dimitri (Fig. 3.6). This colorful mural’s themes are rebirth, self-sufficiency, street marching bands and second lining, and the grassroots assistance being provided by Common Ground. (Second liners are the people who march alongside, in front of, or behind a parade, typically as an impromptu expression of sheer exuberance and joy.) Food is at the thematic epicenter: a large kettle and a fire are depicted in the lower-right corner. The mural is visible from the Earhart Expressway side of the site and from the nearby Broad Street overpass.

  3.6: Common Ground mural, Earhart Boulevard, 2006.

  3.7: Mural on H&P Bar.B.Q. Masters, Elysian Fields, 2005 (preKatrina).

  3.8: H&P Bar.B.Q. Masters, 2005 (preKatrina).

  Home cooking is a theme taken seriously in the signage of these places. H&P Bar.B.Q. Masters, on the corner of Elysian Fields and North Rampart, is a small diner housed in a former dry cleaner’s establishment. Upon first glance, its exterior is nondescript, but closer scrutiny reveals the great care and detail of a hand-painted sign. Near the entrance is a large painting of a family enjoying a meal of beef and pork ribs, fried chicken, drinks, and sides of barbecue beans and potato salad. The scene is convivial (Fig. 3.7). This sign, unfortunately, together with a second sign mounted nearby on the same face of the building, are overshadowed by a large Truck Stop Turn Left directional sign affixed to the roof (Fig. 3.8). The overall visual effect is jarring. Presumably, the owners received remuneration for renting out their roof. An ad hoc, mumbo-jumbo exterior is a theme in this and related off-the-path eating places. Sadly, the painting disappeared after Katrina, and the diner did not reopen.

  At Big Cat Ernie Ladd’s Throw-Down BBQ, on South Broad Street across the street from the Orleans Parish Prison and Municipal Courthouse, the gregarious Big Cat himself is shown in the sign. He is busy in his kitchen. He portrays himself as a member of the city’s culinary royalty, occupying the throne of “B-B-Q Master” in New Orleans. Neighborhood restaurant owners in New Orleans such as Big Ernie and the H&P Bar.B.Q. Masters seek to establish their own reputational imprint. Sadly, the high-water flood mark of eight feet all but obscured his majesty at work (Fig. 3.9). Nonetheless, his pride and sheer determination to succeed, one hopes, will remain undiminished in post-Katrina New Orleans. At L.A.’s Café, at Josephine and Magnolia Streets, Uptown, the sienna exterior and bright blue awning are the first features that grab the eye. Its exterior color palette is based in Latin and Caribbean folk architectural precedents. For this reason, L.A.’s stands apart from its surroundings. A meticulously hand-painted mural on the front façade depicts a dinner-table setting. A large pot of crawfish étouffée is shown steaming on the table beside a bottle of wine, a wine glass, and a plate teeming with a variety of ingredients, or “dis ’n dat”—delicious home-cooked New Orleans soul food (Fig. 3.10).

  Nearby, at the corner of Josephine and Clara, Shatlines Place beckons patrons. This bar and the adjoining lateral shotgun residence are also painted a striking hue: sky blue. Similarly, this establishes an identity apart from the monochromic hues of its immediate residential neighbors of modest double and single occupancy shotgun houses. The art-deco-influenced round windows on both façades are of interest in this respect. The color scheme leaves no question about which part of the building is the bar and which is not (Fig. 3.11). Both the L.A. Café and Shatlines are proof that the traditions of mom-and-pop corner bars and hybrid corner bar–restaurants remained alive and well in the black neighborhoods of Uptown, preKatrina.

  3.9: Big Cat Ernie Ladd’s Throw-Down BBQ, Mid City, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  3.10: L.A.’s Café, Central City, 2005 (preKatrina).

  The tradition of family-run eating and drinking places dates from the city’s earliest neighborhoods, in both black and white sections of the city. Liuzza’s by the Track and Liuzza’s in Mid City are venerable eating establishments, 1930s-era mom-and-pop neighborhood po-boy eateries, as is Frankie and Johnnie’s Uptown, along with Mandina’s on Canal Street. The interiors of these places are vintage period pieces, with classic memorabilia from local high school and college sports teams covering the walls and complementing the well-worn bars, stools, and bar trappings.

  The sno-ball stand represents a unique New Orleans contribution to the American canon of commercial urban folk vernacular building types—a synthesis of the wit and entrepreneurial passion of New Orleanians. The sno-ball stand, as a type, is deeply woven into the social and architectural fabric of New Orleans’s neighborhoods. A sno-ball is an ice cone draped with flavored syrup. The variety of flavors concocted seems endless. Before the invention of electric air-conditioning, the sno-ball was perfectly suited to New Orleans’s oppressively hot and humid summers. Nearly every neighborhood in the city retains one or more of these places to claim as its own. Architecturally, these small nondescript structures may be one of three types: freestanding and autonomous; semiautonomous; or embedded within another structure. The freestanding stands are situated along sidewalks or roadways, most with modest signage. Semiautonomous stands typically project somewhat from a mother ship, be it a private residence or another commercial establishment, for example, a sno-ball stand joined to a check-cashing business. It is usually easy to discern one from the other, even though they are attached at the hip. Tee-Eva’s on Magazine Street (see Part 2) is an example of the semiautonomous type.

  3.11: Shatline’s Place, Central City, 2005 (preKatrina).

  The embedded sno-ball stand is entirely within a larger commercial establishment, i.e., within a Laundromat, a mom-and-pop corner grocery, a mom-and-pop neighborhood gas station, or a currency exchange. Two noteworthy examples of the freestanding type are the sno-ball stands at Fourth and Derbigny (see Part 1) and the Red Rooster Sno-ball and Ice Cream, on Clara Street near Washington (Fig. 3.12), with its bright red exterior. These establishments are typically modest in scale, though the Red Rooster is somewhat larger than most sno-ball stands in the city.

  With their modest operating budgets and slim profit margins, most sno-ball stands would not be taken seriously as eating establishments, let alone as works of architecture. Neither are they necessarily presented here as high design as judged against mainstream professional design standards. They are, however, culturally salient because they are well-known soul-, funk-, and hip-hop-influenced landmarks in their neighborhoods. Most are very modestly scaled and appointed, usually no more than fifty feet square and constructed of wood frame.11 The roots of this type date to 1900, when ice had to be shaved by hand. Interest in this part-dessert, part-refreshment product was flourishing by the 1930s. In 1936, George Ortolano, a neighborhood grocer and son of Sicilian immigrants, noticed a crowd of customers at a nearby sno-ball stand at a competing corner grocery market. He was inspired to start selling this inexpensive product at his struggling grocery s
tore as a means to generate additional profits, and it worked.

  He resolved to create a machine that would produce fine, fluffy shaven snow, similar to that made with blocks of ice and a handheld ice shaver. He invented a simple but ingenious machine he called the SnoWizard to transform ice blocks into mounds of delicate snowlike flakes, unlike the crunchy ice crystals from conventional snow cone machines. He took a respite from his new invention to build ships in a local plant during World War II, and then after the war he introduced the machine to other grocery stores throughout the city. He soon abandoned his grocery business to devote his total energies to his fledging enterprise.12 The business remained family-run, and SnoWizard machines are in numerous foreign countries in South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia.13

  One visually striking sno-ball stand is located at the intersection of Arts and Franklin, in the Seventh Ward. It possesses most of the telltale attributes of the freestanding, autonomous stands—small, of modest wood construction, platform floor raised on concrete blocks, slightly pitched roof, small window, and an overhang to provide sun shading and protection from New Orleans’s sudden downpours during the semitropical summer months—and little more. Accommodations inside this stand, as in most sno-ball stands, are spartan. The distinguishing characteristic of this stand is a hand-painted mural that adorns the façade facing the intersection. This mural depicts African tribal imagery: a pair of males appear to hold two warrior shields. These figures guard what at first seem to be a series of houses in the neighborhood, yet they simultaneously evoke the imagery of decorative cemetery tombstones, as if to honor warriors fallen in the urban battlefield. Curiously, one residence-tombstone, in the lower-right corner, is rendered as a shotgun house, with a sole male figure (the artist) sitting alone on the front steps. The lights are on within the house, indicating evening (Fig. 3.13). At one time, this oddly shaped site was just grass, no structures. Over time, many residual plots such as this, the result of the city’s colliding, irregular street grids, were reappropriated.

  Another example, the mural on the exterior of the stand near the corner of South Robertson and Washington, depicted important figures in the local neighborhood. The theme of the murals was one of the empowerment and strength of the urban underdog—and, by extension, the urban underclass—against any and all odds (Fig. 3.14). This shuttered yet provocatively decorated sno-ball stand disappeared two weeks after this photo was taken (2006).

  3.12: Red Rooster Sno-balls, Uptown, 2005 (preKatrina).

  3.13: Arts Street Sno-balls, Central City, 2005 (preKatrina).

  3.14: Urban Warriors Sno-balls, Central City, 2006.

  3.15: Mural on the South Claiborne Barber Shop, 2005 (preKatrina).

  As New Orleans became transformed by decades of white flight, many neighborhood shopping districts withered. The sno-ball stand has endured, almost in defiance, as a work of unself-conscious architecture while providing a place, a common ground, for socialization. Eventually, these older shopping strips, including those along Freret Street, Elysian Fields, North Rampart Street, Broad Street, and Orthea Castle Haley (formerly Dryades Street), came to resemble sad human faces with gaps caused by missing teeth. Within a landscape of poverty and despair, the local sno-ball stand endured as a timeless icon.

  On South Claiborne Avenue between Napoleon and Louisiana Avenues, Uptown, one barbershop found an imaginative way to respond to the urban decay that surrounded it. In 2002, a mural was hand-painted on one side of the building. It depicted a typical day in the barbershop. The mural faces the foundation remnants of two buildings demolished years earlier. Three barbers are shown cutting hair; people are engaged in conversation, with the shampoo girl nearby. A few customers waiting, chillin’, are shown, and the figures, all rendered in silhouette, are African American. A large mirror is painted behind the barber chairs. Note the barber pole painted in the upper-left corner of the mural (Fig. 3.15). The overall effect is as if the brick wall were actually a large pane storefront running the length of the building, revealing (in cross section) the activity inside.

  Hip-Hop

  The hip-hop community has adopted this same strategy of using art and architecture as a means of staking claim to turf within the urban landscape—or what is widely referred to in the urban linguistic lexicon as “the hood.” The rise of southern hip-hop and the subgenre of gangsta rap has its strongest roots in New Orleans. Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip-hop music, and the culture it expresses centers on the lifestyles of inner-city thugs, criminals, and gangsters. Although crime and violence in the inner city have always been part of hip-hop’s lyrical canon, before the rise of gangsta rap in the late 1980s, hip-hop echoed to a certain extent the tone of socially conscious soul music of the 1970s. New Orleans’s brand of gangsta rap, by contrast, centers upon, embraces, and glorifies the extreme lifestyles of extremely violent street criminals. New Orleans gangsta rap has become the battle hymn of violent competing drug gangs on the West Coast and in the South.

  The genre is regularly attacked in the mainstream American media for glorifying murder, violence, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and excessive materialism. However, gangsta rap and its offshoots by 2005 had become by far the most commercially successful strand of hip-hop in America, and had achieved considerable chart dominance during the 1995–2005 period. The rappers defend themselves and the themes portrayed in their music by pointing out that they are describing the reality of their inner-city ghetto lives and upbringings, and claim that when rapping they are simply assuming the role of narrator, merely that of the interpreter, or messenger.

  Given that the audience for gangsta rap in America has become increasingly white, some commentators, such as the filmmaker Spike Lee, in his satirical film Bamboozled, have criticized it as being analogous to the minstrel shows and blackface performances of many decades ago. In blackface, performers, both black and white, were made up to look African American, acting in a stereotypically uncultured and ignorant manner for the entertainment of white audiences. Without regard to the possibility of being interpreted by “outsiders” as purveying caricatures of urban life, New Orleans rapper Percy Miller, aka Master P, and his label, No Limit Records, achieved immense commercial success in the past decade by exporting their themes far beyond New Orleans. Miller was born and raised in the Calliope housing project in Uptown.14

  Cash Money Records, also based in New Orleans, achieved commercial success with a similar style. A Cash Money artist, Baby Gangsta, aka B. G., titled a single in 1999 with a catch phrase that epitomized the core message of this genre—“Bling-Bling” (from the album Chopper City in the Ghetto, 1999).15 The term bling-bling refers to the glitter of large diamonds, and this phrase was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary.16 Although much gangsta rap of the past portrayed the rapper as being a victim of urban squalor, the persona of late-1990s mainstream gangsta rappers was far more weighted toward hedonism and showing off their finest jewelry, clothes, liquor, and women.17

  The wall mural in memory of rising New Orleans rapper Soulja Slim (see Part 1) by Jessica Strahan (2003) at North Claiborne and Pauger epitomized the transformation of a nondescript wall into a powerful social commentary on the relationship between vernacular folk art, architecture, gangsta rap, and the violent realities of street life. James Tapp, aka Soulja Slim, was a local rap hero who was shot to death in 2003 outside his mother’s house in the Gentilly neighborhood in New Orleans in broad daylight. He received the equivalent of a traditional jazz-cum-hip-hop funeral, complete with a marching parade, music, and second liners. Tapp had been involved in recent altercations in clubs in Mississippi, Miami, and New Orleans. He was shot five times point-blank in the head by a hitman wearing all black who had been waiting in the shadows along the side of his mother’s house that afternoon. The mural reads “Soulja Slim R.I.P.”18 Similarly, the urban folk architecture of the Hip Hop Clothing Store on North Broad (see Part 1) depicted highly coded themes embedded in the city’s indigenous hip-hop music and an
attendant cultural lifestyle obsessed with “street cred” at any cost, misogynistic attitudes toward women, and death.

  The well of hip-hop talent in New Orleans is vast as measured by the genre’s accepted creative standards. New and established acts adopt commercial vernacular buildings and then paint murals on them as advertisements for their latest musical projects and as acts of self-empowerment. The Jackson Avenue corner grocery at Jackson and Willow, Uptown, was emblazoned with a mural of a group of rap promoters, 4 Kings Entertainment (see Part 1). This scene, from left to right, depicts a woman cleaning a front-porch stoop of a shotgun house; a young woman looking out from within onto a neighborhood scene of the nearby public housing project, C. J. Peete/Magnolia; and three figures, only two of whom, Ronald and Chev, are identified by name in the mural (Fig. 3.16). No artist credit was cited. As mentioned, this mural was eradicated six months after Katrina.