bar

our neighborhood is a place "in transition". it has been in transition the entire ten years we've been living here and the nearest "shop" street, half block down from us, has changed from chinese take out with bulletproof glass, dollar stores and countless corner bodegas into boutique shopping- a wine store, outrageously priced children's clothing, a kitschy/vintage place with a name referencing a trailer park, which interests me because i'm just about a million percent sure the owners and patrons have never set foot in a trailer or the glorious parks in which they reside. there are charming new food and drink places with ten dollar burgers and ambiance saturating the place the way teenage girls spray on perfume. and now we have our first fusion bar.

this bar is a combo watering hole and flower shop. cute. adorable. charming. it looked nice when i walked by. it looked exactly like what you'd think a flower shop/bar would look like. but it made me wistful for the most brilliantly considered bar i ever spent most of a year in. crazy igor's.

when i moved to new orleans, it was en masse with a group of people i'd met in los angeles. people who had been tossed together and who had lived and eaten and learned together and prepared to be teachers without really knowing what we were doing. and we all flew to new orleans and got jobs and apartments, many of us for the first time. and although $18,000 sounds like a lot of money when you're fresh out of school in your first teaching job, it just isn't. but if you're doing all that in new orleans, locals will set you up with the schedule. the free food schedule. bars then had specials and you could eat free most nights of the week if you could afford a bottle of beer and knew the schedule. and crazy igor's was this ramshackle bar that offered free red beans and rice on mondays. or maybe tuesdays. but it was once every week and i made it my business to be there. for two or three bucks i could get an abita turbodog or a dixie blackened voodoo and all the beans and rice my newly employed belly could hold.

this would be enough, surely. but you know there's more. igor's, which has since changed its name to igor's lounge and become a little fancier, has bar and seating right as you walk in. but keep walking. you have a heavy load and you need a place to put it. walk on back. past the tables. past the end of the bar. to the washing machine. that's right. the washing machine. machines. i can't tell you know how many there were, but i'm guessing six. that heavy load you've been carrying can rest right here. put the laundry in. put the few quarters you've scraped together into the machine. don't bother separating the whites and colors. just wash everything on warm with lots of soap. go up to the bar. get your abita. if you've got plenty of cash, get a bourbon. get something good. it's a sin to drink unfortunate bourbon. get quarters at the bar. go right back up by the door. grab your styrofoam bowl and fill it up with red beans and rice. on some days, with jambalaya. arrange yourself. styrofoam bowl in one hand with plastic fork and spoon tucked into fingers. drink in the other. your pockets bulging with change. get yourself back to the washers to see how much time you have. walk up the old metal stairs to the loft like area above the washers.

this is where the dryers are. and the pool table. if you are a teacher, you know that on days with free food the place will be crawling with other teachers. if you haven't found yours, wait five minutes. they will find their way up to the pool table smelling like laundry soap and beans. lay out your quarters, some for drying, some for pool. halfway through your game you will need to get your wet laundry and bring it up to the dryers. check your bowl. it will be empty. persuade one of your teacher friends to refill your bowl when he refills his so you will not have to make two trips. if you have money, offer to go get beers for everyone when your friend's laundry is ready to dry fifteen minutes later. if you don't, nobody will think less of you. someone will notice and buy you a beer. play as many games of pool as you can, breathing the smell of clothes drying and cigarettes smoking and beans simmering. you are standing with a cue, waiting your turn. when you take drink, notice the smell of your beer or bourbon is so pretty you don't even have the right words for it.

when your laundry is done, let another friend take your place at the pool table. fold your warm laundry to the sound of the cue and balls clacking on the table a few feet away. you will leave with a handful of friends. a cluster of your live nearby, some in one house, a few in another. and although you have never smoked a cigarette except that one drag years ago when you learned that you are not a smoker, you will bury your face in the laundry you're carrying up the steps and inhale the smell of the bar, the smoke, and you will be glad to be able to have such things.