Life on the Greenway (Conclusion).

Crab-eating macaques prefer to live on marginal land, bivouacking into human domains for meals. It's just easier than hunting and gathering in the wild. There are two boiled seafood houses close to the greenway. They are Clesi's (the better of the two) and Porgy's Seafood, which used to be another boil house that was just as unmemorable.

The thing about these crawfish shacks is that they smell like boiled seafood. When crawfish are not in season, these places boil crabs and shrimp. They use the same seasoning for everything. There is so much spice in crawfish boil that the tongue in your mouth may as well be the tongue in your shoe.

Crab-eating macaques are not adverse to eating their seafood raw. The macaques that live on the Lafitte Greenway are not adverse to scavenging the trash behind Ikura, the sushi and hibachi restaurant on the far side of Rouses. It is always somebody's birthday at Ikura.

After North Carrollton Avenue, where the HAWK is installed, the greenway again runs parallel to Lafitte Street, to the right, except here Lafitte Street becomes a pitted shell road that had shed most of its shells. Lafitte Street runs dusty and forlorn, neglected, less than a civic afterthought. There are businesses and houses here. There is a shoe store, a sausage factory, an architect, an architectural salvage store, a mushroom distributor, people's houses. This part of the greenway, before it ends, is a real mixed bag. The trash at Rouses is better than the trash at Winn Dixie. Local does make a difference.

People who live on this side of North Carrollton Avenue shop at Winn Dixie for their grocery needs. For people who live on the other side of North Carrollton Avenue, the only supermarket for them is Rouses. It is like the difference between Uptown and Downtown. Carrollton Avenue separates cuisines and cultures. Everything stays within the New Orleans paradigm. Dance like nobody is watching.