Rats in the French Quarter.
I am not going to tell you where I am, but, I will tell you that I am writing this sentence at 4:28AM. You connect the dots. I am suddenly inspired to write about rats in the French Quarter. Why? Because one just poked its head up over the bar to look at me. I shooed it away.
This is New Orleans. This is real New Orleans.
There are rats everywhere in New Orleans but they are particularly populous in the French Quarter. The Quarter has the highest density of restaurants per square block. there is a lot of trash and food waste in the Quarter, not just in trash cans and dumpsters, but also just lying in the street. People can be slobs, especially when they are drunk.
A rat will eat from a pool of vomit. I have seen it happen.
[Ed. note: I should stick to my breezy afternoon dispatches. These early morning reports can get pretty gritty. No nice places are open at 4:28AM. Would you like to hear me bemoan that fact, yet again? Such is the life of a flaneur.]
New Orleans is a port. Where all the parking lots are now, along the Mississippi River in the French Quarter, that used to be all banana boat docks. New Orleans used to be the biggest banana port in the country. That title is now held by Gulfport, Mississippi.
New Orleans was originally the country’s largest slave and cotton market, then just cotton. Then it was bananas. The old United Fruit Company headquarters is on St. Charles Avenue, across from the Intercontinental Hotel. Its facade is what those in the know call Spanish jewel box architecture.
The biggest import to the Port of New Olreans now is coffee beans.
Where there are wharves, there are rats. I sit about 100 yards from the Esplanade Avenue Wharf as I write this. Before I sat down to write to you, I went up on the levee and watched the stars ripple on the breast of the river. I wanted to gather my thoughts while clearing my head, separating the wheat from the chaff.
It did not work for more than the time I was up there.
If you look into the dark restaurant and bar windows in the French Quarter when they are closed, look closely. There are rats scampering everywhere when these places are empty. The less you think about it, the better.
There is no need to go looking at this time of night. Just walk down Bourbon Street. The cleaning crews will be coming out soon, but there is still time to see rats in the street, darting from food wrapper to cup to a crumbled box from Willie’s Chicken Shack.
I am not going to tell you where I am. You connect the dots.
I am going behind the paywall before I tell you this story about how the bartender made an easy $75.00 one night. This is the kind of story involving rats that can only happen in New Orleans.
You should become a paid subscriber. We have added two in the past two days. All the cool people are doing it, like snowballing.