Ellen and Chris, our intrepid advance team, have landed in New Orleans, and report that the hotel restaurant, Wolfe's, has great fish!
But Chris just can't stop raving about Tyrone. And after watching the video, neither can I.
Tyrone is the king of napkin folding, and he works right at our Marriott. I don't think I could possibly unfold a fleur de lis dinner napkin, could you?
Watch the video and look for Tyrone's handiwork at the hotel!
A side note from Chris:
Ellen and I had dinner at Wolfe's tonight and Tyrone was our waiter. Everything he recommended we loved. I asked him if one of the 723 napkin folds he does was a horse. No, to do a horse requires several tablecloths and several hours using a folding technique known as ruffling.
The year was 1951, and Tennessee Williams' hit Broadway play had won the Pulitzer Prize and gone Hollywood with the signing of the day's biggest female star, Vivien Leigh (Blanche DuBois), signed to play opposite Broadway's rising star, the temperamental and unpredictable Marlon Brando (Stanley Kowalski).
That would be like Hilary Swank playing opposite Leonardo DeCaprio.
The Eisenhower years weren't supposed to be about great drama, but yet it exploded right in the faces of an America half in shock by the idea of going to war in Korea. Streetcar Named Desire would become the film that defined New Orleans as gritty and working class and tragic and sexy, and it is on many people's lists of Hollywood's all-time greatest films and plays.
Streetcar won four Academy Awards; Brando did not win the Best Actor in spite of his unforgettable performance as one of film history's most unlikable icons. Blanche and Stella did win for their performances.
But more than 50 years later, besides Brando, it is two names that we remember most from this film: the name of the streetcar from the title, and the name of Stanley's wife, Stella, played by Kim Hunter. We remember her name when the tortured actor screams it repeatedly with such intensity from the bottom of a balcony. They put a whole steamy New Orleans spin on the classic Romeo and Juliet balcony cliche.
Did she love the guy or not? Tennessee Williams never really lets us know, and neither did the actress, which is presumably why she won the Oscar.
New Orleans has a contest each year for actors, comedians, and all comers to shout "STELLA!" to a French Quarter balcony in honor of the play and the film. Because that's what people remember. And everybody wants to be Brando, even for a minute, even if no one wants to be Stanley.
And, who could forget the moment when Marlon Brando takes his shirt off? That was a huge risk for a director and an actor to take in 1951, but if anyone was going to get away with it, Marlon Brando would, and he did. In fact, this movie's script broke all the morality rules of its day. Taboo after taboo fell, and people still study this film today to understand how and why it works.
If you haven't seen this film, it's worth a quick rental, or you can watch the whole thing in segments right on YouTube. It's not a comedy, but it is as much a part of New Orleans history now as the legends of Andrew Jackson making pacts with the pirates.
I think when you land in New Orleans they give a little quiz to make sure you have seen this film, so be sure to watch it--then go for a ride on the streetcar! And don't be surprised if you're walking down some alley and you hear some tourist with a foreign accent yelling, "STELLA!" up at a balcony. Everyone does it. It's a New Orleans tradition.
If you forget something, the Riverwalk shopping center is just across from the hotel.
Sweat? It's the 14th of June and I'm bundled in polar fleece, wondering if the thermometer here on the New England coast is ever going to break through the 70-degree ceiling. My peonies want to bloom, but they're afraid. "Are you sure it's not going to snow again?" they seem to be asking as they shiver in the wind. I ask myself that questions some days.
New Orleans is having the opposite problem. I spoke with a friend there today who told me that the temperature was well into the 90s.
It hasn't been that hot here in years.
So of course I'll have all the wrong clothes for a sub-tropical city when I arrive, but one thing I remember about the convention center is the Riverwalk shopping center right outside our hotel. So if you bring the wrong clothes...or just want to go shopping for some new right clothes, you'll find plenty of options right outside the door.
The usual Gap-BodyShop-Brookstone core of shops will be there so you can also replace the basics that you may have forgotten or that the airline may have lost, or make up for that suitcase of sweats you packed when you scoffed, "How hot can it be down there?"
Click here to see a list of the stores in the Riverwalk. There's also a Saks Fifth Avenue further down the street at Canal Place, if you're up for a bigger splurge. If you walk all the way to the end of the Riverwalk, you'll be at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, which is worth a visit and is offering a yoga class in front of the huge open ocean tank on Saturday morning that sounds like fun. "Namaste, y'all!"
You'll sweat even more if you sample some of the hot sauces for sale in the French Quarter.
For me, shopping in New Orleans isn't about clothes, once I have the right ones for the right weather. It's about going in and out of the odd little shops of the French Quarter and looking for hot sauces and voodoo and music and art. The French Quarter is only about a ten or fifteen minute walk from the hotel, according to where in the French Quarter you're headed.
Just click here to keep an eye on the weather in New Orleans over the next ten days.
Thanks to the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau for the use of these photos.
