Havana Street.

There are no benefits to living on Havana Street. It’s a dead end, just like Communism, or a theocracy of mullahs.

You’ve never been to Havana Street. It is a short street that runs next to the London Avenue Canal

A Buc-ee’s is open in Gulfport, Mississippi. This doesn’t interest me, but it is the news that is swirling around me as I sit and write this. It opened Monday. One man says Buc-ee’s is bigger than Sam’s Club. This may be, by number of outlets. By that measure, Dollar General is bigger than WalMart. Family Dollar, too. Not by sales, not by volume, but by number of locations.

If a town doesn’t have a Family Dollar, it has a Dollar General. This is true even if there isn’t a post office. Even if downtown is shuttered, boarded up, on the fringes, in an improbable side lot, there will be a Dollar General. People need sundries.

You may have been on Benefit Street. It’s long. It’s an old street, named by Bernard de Marigny. He had a way with names. He should have named more streets. He didn’t name Havana Street. It runs in a contrary direction. There is nothing of note on Havana Street. There is not a Buc-ee’s. There is not a dollar store. There is an abandoned sheet metal building surrounded by concertina wire and houses for starlings.

The intersection of Benefit and Havana Streets is right after Havana Street goes under an elevated highway, Interstate 610. Cars and trucks rumble overhead. The ground shakes. There are no birds, only construction equipment, under the highway. Even the birdhouses are empty.

If you want to see something more interesting than the dead end of Havana Street, you don’t have to go all the way to Gulfport. If your idea of a good time is going to Buc-ee’s (the fudge is highly recommended), you should go to Gulfport, Mississippi. There are worse places. Or, you can stay in New Orleans. I know a nice place.

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