Two Snack Shops.

I am watching tourists marvel at how much history there is in New Orleans. The building we are in is about 280 years old.

The building I live in now is only about 150 years old (1883). Everything in New Orleans is getting older, including your humble narrator. My ears are bent.

I was out on patrol the other night behind the Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen on Gentilly Boulevard. This is a tidy neighborhood full of surprises I am not going to share. Mrs. King and I almost bought a house back there. Then, Ed got involved. Ed is my current neighbor.

X marks the spot in New Orleans. The ‘x’ isn’t silent in Bruxelles Street. Nobody likes to say it. Mispronounce everything you say while you are here. You will fit right in.

Bruxelles Street runs from the strip club on Broad to the Popeye’s off I-610. The street used to be much livelier. Parakeets have built nests in the street’s untrimmed palm trees. A stack of unclaimed phone books is on a front porch, one for each year the house has needed a paint job. The mailman spends a lot of time in the dead letter office.

The strip club is the Playhouse. I live next to a stripper. She’s never heard of the Playhouse. When she dances, it’s on Bourbon Street or at Visions, out in the East. The Playhouse is probably too wholesome for this stripper. She is a tough old bird who’s seen it all. The girls at the Playhouse are mostly from the neighborhood, the kind of girls you bring home to mother.

There has always been a snack shop on Bruxelles Street, some nondescript window selling nachos and prepackaged ice cream novelties (read: bomb pop). The shop is now under new management. The snack shop is Issa Snack Express, an apparent franchise. There is a new neon sign. It glows a warm midnight welcome.

Issa Snacks wasn't open when I was there. Gentilly Boulevard is not Lower Decatur Street. I owner wasn’t around. I wanted to ask if the operation out in Harvey is still in operation. Harvey is on the West Bank. ‘Nuff said.

There is one more thing to say:

If you ain’t dippin’, you pippin’, and if you ain’t snackin’, you lacking’.”

True dat.

and then there’s this place….