JAZZ FEST.
Break out your Hawaiian shirts and stingy-brimmed pork pie hats. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival starts tomorrow. I think this is Number LII. Bayou St. John and Esplanade Ridge, two neighborhoods that tend to be relative quiet and tourist-free, will be clogged with Jazz Fest people.
875,000 people came to French Quarter Festival two weeks ago. There will be more for Jazz Fest, which is two weekends.
New Orleans is a city of 380,000 people. This is festival season.
Running food from kitchen to table pays less well than being a bartender—except when it does not. Running food from kitchen to table pays better than being a bartender in the French Quarter. I heard this news from the source and it makes total sense.
The thing about what the bartenders say about Jazz Fest people is that they are older, to, they do not drink much after the festival lets out, thus, they do not hip. They hang out and listen to the music, unaware that everyone who lives here is trying to make a living, getting by by getting by.
After the old-timers, who show up between after Jazz Fest closes for the day and 10:00PM, then the college kids show up. They run up big bar tabs, it averages three drinks an hour of drinks no adult would ever drink unless he or she was on a desert island and starved for a taste of candy-colored grain alcohol and fruit juice.
College kids do not tip because they charge everything on their parent's’ card. They will be in enough trouble when their parents get the bill. The best way to tip is with cash but college kids do not carry cash. They are more modern and independent paying with a credit card, or with their phones.
Cash is king.
This would be an interesting two weekends if this did not happen every year. This is how New Orleanians make their money. Our Lady of Prompt Succor, the patron saint of New Orleans, as well as all of Louisiana, smiles on these schemes.
Life is what one makes of their dual nature of being an enfleshed soul. There are thing visible and invisible in New Orleans every day. It is sometimes difficult to tell the two apart.
Now, I will put up the paywall. I have something to get off my chest that is for paid subscribers only, then, I will talk about something that interests me more than Jazz Fest. Reading after this paragraph will be like watching paint dry.