Table Of ContentSTRANGER’S
GUIDE
WHO WE ARE
BEFORE THERE WERE GUIDEBOOKS, 18th- and 19th-century authors wrote “stranger’s guides,” which were personal,
eccentric and intimate portrayals of places. Stranger’s Guide is a modern version of that idea—an award-winning
publication that reveals the intricacies of locales across the globe, through both local and foreign eyes. Each print
guide dives deep into a single location, featuring writers and photographers from those regions, on everything
from sports and economics to fashion, politics and literature. Our work, which has garnered National Magazine
Awards for General Excellence and for Photography, explores the power of place-based journalism to break
down stereotypes and foster global citizenship.
PUBLISHER
Abby Rapoport
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Kira Brunner Don
CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER
Mike Kanin
MANAGING EDITOR
Kyla Kupferstein Torres
CREATIVE CONTENT EDITOR
Emily C. Skaftun
SPORTS/ SENIOR EDITOR
Emily Nemens
SENIOR EDITORS
Alex Hannaford, Anushree Kaushal
LITERARY EDITOR
Joanna Yas
EDITOR AT LARGE
Courtney Desiree Morris
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
Ambia Elias
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Cecilia Nowell
ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Kike Arnal
ASSISTANT EDITORS
Annie Estes, Aja Miller
COVER ILLUSTRATOR
Benjamin Frisch
WEB DESIGN
Blase Design
COPY EDITOR
Tan A. Walker
JOURNALISM FELLOW
Sharon Kleiman
NEW ORLEANS ISSUE EDITORIAL BOARD
Garnette Cadogan, Pableaux Johnson,
Brett Martin
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Kira Allmann, Joshua Beckman, Garnette
Cadogan, Saneta de Vuono-Powell, Kyle
Haddad-Fonda, Stephanie Heimann,
Roger D. Hodge, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro,
Laleh Khadivi, Victor LaValle, Alexis C.
Madrigal, John McMurtrie, Ayan Mittra,
Martin Perna, Emily Raboteau, Betsy
Reed, Laura Secor, Cassim Shepard, Lola
Shoneyin, SA Smythe, Matthew Zapruder
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Contributors
THOMAS BELLER’s books include Seduction Theory:
Stories, JD. Salinger: The Escape Artist, which
won the New York City Book Award, and
the forthcoming Lost in the Game: A Book About
Basketball. A longtime contributor to The New
Yorker, he is an associate professor and direc-
tor of creative writing at Tulane University.
BIG FREEDIA is a New Orleans-based hip-hop
artist and a critically-acclaimed ambassa-
dor of bounce music worldwide. She has
recorded with Kesha, Beyonce, and Drake,
and starred in her own docuseries, Big Freeda
Bounces Back.
JOANN CLEVENGER opened Upperline in 1983, one
of New Orleans’s most beloved restaurants.
She 1s a four-time James Beard Award final-
ist and the recipient of the Southern Food-
ways Alliance’s Craig Claiborne Lifetime
Achievement Award.
L. KASIMU HARRIS is a New Orleans-based writ-
er and artist. His work has appeared in The
New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Na-
tional Geographic and Garden @ Gun magazine.
LEONE JULITTE is a French freelance photogra-
pher based in New Orleans who is commit-
ted to documenting communities rooted in
radical self-expression.
ADAM KARLIN has written guidebooks for Lonely
Planet and essays for numerous anthologies,
as well as The Bitter Southerner, Catapultw and
other publications.
BRETT MARTIN is a correspondent for GQ Mag-
azine and a three-time James Beard Award
winner. He is the author of the book Diffi-
cult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creatwe Revolu-
tion, From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad
Men and Breaking Bad.
CC MOLAISON is a writer and bartender from
New Orleans, pursuing a degree at Tulane
University. This is her debut publication.
COURTNEY DESIREE MORRIS is a visual artist and as-
sistant professor of Gender and Women’s
Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley. Her forthcoming book is To De-
Jend This Sunrise: Black Women’s Actiwism and
the Authoritarian Turn in Nicaragua.
KATY RECKDAHL writes frequently for the New
Orleans Advocate Times-Picayune, the New
York Times and the Washington Post. She’s
received more than two-dozen first-place
New Orleans Press Club awards, the James
Aronson Award, a Casey Medal and three
TV-documentary Emmy Awards. In 2020,
she was a producer for The Allantic’s ac-
claimed podcast, Floodlines.
NATHANIEL RICH is the author of the novels Odds
Against Tomorrow and Ring Zeno, set in New Or-
leans in 1918; and two works of nonfiction,
Second Nature and Losing Earth. He is a writer-
at-large for The New York Times Magazine.
MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN is the author of The Ones
Who Don’t Say They Love You, a New York
Times Editor’s Choice that was also long-
listed for the Story Prize, and We Cast a Shad-
ow, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulk-
ner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
and the PEN America Open Book Prize.
BROOKE SAUVAGE is a writer and costumer based
in New Orleans. She has worked with the
Marigny Opera Ballet, New Orleans Airlift
and Vice.
GWEN THOMPKINS is the executive producer and
host of a New Orleans-based public radio
program, Music Inside Out. Currently, she’s
writing a book on the Music Inside Out inter-
views to be published by the University of
North Carolina Chapel Hill Press.
AVERY LEIGH WHITE is a street photographer, jour-
nalist and producer based in New Orleans.
Her work has been published by VICE, Roll-
ing Stone, Buzzfeed News and PBS.
Stranger’s Guide [ISSN 2639-3638 (print) ISSN 2639-3646 (online)] entire contents copyrighted (c) 2021 is
published quarterly by SG Studios, LLC. Email: [email protected]. Customer Service: [MaiL] P. O. Box
15007, Austin, TX 78761, [PHONE] (833) 848-5116. Postmaster: Send address changes to: P. O. Box 15007, Austin,
TX 78761. Subscriptions: | yr $75. Back issues $22. Airmail, foreign, group and bulk rates available on request.
Stranger’s Guide
NEW ORLEANS
TOUR GUIDE
SG's guide to New Orleans
FEATURES
Acid Church
by Courtney Desiree Morris
A queer psychedelic ramble through the Crescent City
Postcards from NOLA
by Maurice Carlos Ruffin,
JoAnn Clevenger & Brett Martin
and Big Freedia
Slow Time
by Katy Reckdahl
Getting by in the Orleans Parish Prison
Rubble & Dust
by Thomas Beller
The collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel
Mishpacha on the Mississippi
by Adam Karlin
Jewish life in New Orleans
Heinemann’s Curse
by Nathaniel Rich
The spectacular rise and grisly death of New Orleans baseball
34
43
a
19
89
PHOTOGRAPHY
Turning a Look
by Léone Julitte
intro by Brooke Sauvage
Vanishing Black Bars and Lounges
by L. Kasimu Harris
Bourbon Street
by Avery Leigh White
FICTION
How to Haunt
by GG Molaison
FIRST PERSONS
Blow, Man, Blow
mtro by Gwen ‘Vhompkins
TIMELINE
A Brief History of Slavery in New Orleans
LITERARY TOUR
SOUND BITES
16
62
96
105
112
00
84
128
KNOW BEFORE
YOU GO
LOST & FOUND: HURRICANE KATRINA ‘The things they left behind [75] PHRASES TO KNOW Talk like a local [38] NNET-CAJUN Po’boy v. bénh mi [47]
MAKE IT WRONG Fraud & incompetence post-Katrina [48] ABANDONED PLACES 27 st-century ruins [56] THE REAL VAMPIRES OF NEW ORLEANS
The secret les of sanguinarians [59] MUSIC BOX VILLAGE Aduszcal architecture [80] \NOLENT FEMMES Notorious female murderers [90]
AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED A coho’s who of New Orleans ghosts [93] SERVICE CITY Hospitality in the Big Easy [107] MASKING INDIAN Crafting
a costume [109] THE CLAIBORNE AVENUE MONSTER Trouble in Tremé [117]
NICKNAMES:
The Big Easy
CRESCENT CiTy
The City That Care Forgot
THE PARIS OF AMERICA
CRAWFISH TOWN
Gumbo City
NOLA
TOUR GUIDE
NEW ORLEANS
CONGO SQUARE, in Tremé, is
where enslaved and free
Creole peoples of color
gathered, danced and made
music on Sundays—their
day off, per Code Nowr
laws. It ts considered the
birthplace of jazz.
In pre-Columbian days, the place where Congo Square
stands was the site of a Houma Indian harvest festival.
THE WORLD'S FIRST MOVIE THEATER, VITASCOPE HALL,
OPENED IN NEW ORLEANS ON JULY 26, 1896.
In the early 1980s, the
New Orleans school system
asked students which
homegrown sports star they
most wanted to meet.
The answer; JUNKYARD 006,
New Orleans’s greatest
wrestling superstar. Today,
he’s almost forgotten.
DENTAL FLOSS WAS INVENTED
IN 1815 BY NEW ORLEANS
DENTIST LEVI SPEAR PARMLY.
IN 1922, NEW ORLEANS HAD
229 MILES OF STREETCAR LINES.
stern lnee ;
In 2022, tt had 22.3 males.
New ORLEANS Ciry PARK IS ABOUT
50°% BIGGER THAN CENTRAL Park.
The highest point in New
Orleans 1s a man-made
hill dubbed “Laborde
It’s illegal to wear a hat while the curtain
is raised at New Orleans theaters.
Mountain,” which reaches
43 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL
The po’boy sandwich
earned its name during
a 1929 streetcar strike.
Brothers Bennie and
Clovis Martin gave free
sandwiches to “poor
boys,” striking workers
who couldn’t pay.
AT LEAST
319
SONGS WITH
“NEW ORLEANS”
IN THE TITLE
HAVE BEEN
RECORDED.
Sno-Balls, finely
shaved-to-order
flavored ice, were
hand-chipped until
the 1930s, when
New Orleanians
George Ortolano
and Ernest Hansen
THE SAZERAC WAS DECLARED NEW ORLEANS’S OFFICIAL
COCKTAIL BY THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATURE IN 2008.
New Orleans is one of the
only North American areas to
grow Mirhitons, a pale green
gourd native to Brazil. Stuffed
murlitons are a feature of some
NOLA Thanksgwing meals.
independently
invented electric ice
shaving machines.
HANSEN'S MACHINES ARE USED ONLY AT THE FAMILY’S SNO-BLIZ STAND, WHICH OPENED IN 1939.
A LETTER PURPORTEDLY FROM A SERIAL KILLER KNOWN AS THE
AXEMAN PROMISED TO SPARE ANYONE IN A HOME WHERE JAZZ MUSIC
WAS PLAYING AT 12:15AM, Marcu 19, 1919. THE AXEMAN KILLED
SIX AND INJURED SIX MORE, BUT NONE ON Marcu 19.
New Orleans’s
“sludge metal”
as a subgenre of
doom metal that
uses brooding
guitar riffs to evoke
extreme depression.
More than Subsidence from
half of New draining what used
Orleans is to be swampland is
below sea level,
in some places
8 FEET
BELOW
sinking the area by
as much as
2 INCHES
PER YEAR
The official colors of SINCE NOLA'S FIRST LARGE-SCALE
NiadicGuas haves besa CARNIVAL IN 1857, THE CELEBRATION
HAS BEEN CANCELED 15 TIMES:
“CASQUETTE GIRLS” OR “CASKET GIRLS”
WERE YOUNG WOMEN SENT TO LOUISIANA
BY THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT IN THE
1700s TO MARRY COLONISTS—-NAMED
around since 1872.
1862-65 Civel War
1874. White supremacist AFTER THE CASKET-LIKE TRUNKS IN WHICH
Halenie THEY STORED THEIR POSSESSIONS. ‘Topay,
1879 Yellow Fever MANY NEW ORLEANS RESIDENTS CLAIM
1918 WWI LINEAGE TO THE CASQUETTE GIRLS.
1919 Spanesh flu
1942-45 WWI
1951 Korean War
1979 Police union strike
2021. COVID-19
NOLA H AS In early New Orleans,
coffins would float
2 1 up out of the ground
when it rained. Even
; ~ ° HISTORICAL after above-ground
PURPLE = JUSTICE An i Ibs illegal to ride on a. New DISTRICTS, yin
GREEN = FAITH a Orleans Mardi Gras float | THE MOST OF ;
other items are thrown coffins sometimes slid
GOLD = POWER from floats each year. without wearing a mask. ANY US CITY | cut into the streets
A New Orleans law prohibits using ESP phrenology, astrology In 1978, Ernest “Dutch” Morial became
or palmistry to resolve lovers’ quarrels or locate burted treasure. the first Black mayor of New Orleans. - we
a <—|
In 1991, Epwin Epwarbs BECAME
LOUISIANA’S FIRST 4-TERM GOVERNOR,
RUNNING AGAINST FORMER KKK GRAND
WIzaRD David DUKE ON THE SLOGAN:
“VOTE FOR THE CROOK: =
IT'S IMPORTANT.” | ‘steer
Chicory was brewed
in lieu of coffee
during France’s 1808
Continental Blockage
and the US Civil
War. New Orleanians
continue to enjoy it in
sweetened café au lait.
1 =
A 5 of by, 0 "4 /, New Orlean 5 was the 4th- HE WON WITH 61° PERCENT OF THE VOTE. Cage also owned the “haunted”
; ‘ $ LaLaurie Mansion for 2 years.
larges t fi im p roduction hub in the US, after In 2000, Edwards was sentenced to 10 years in prison He thought it would be a good
New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. on 17 counts of racketeering, conspiracy and extortion. place to write a horror novel.
The Live Oak Society, founded in NOLA’s independent
New Orleans, has 9,585 Quercus radio station, WWOZ,
virginiana “members” in 14 states. broadcast for its first few
years out of the upstairs
Louisiana’s coast has lost
2,000 square miles to
erosion since the 1930s.
beer storage room of
Tipitina’s bax. The DF
would drop a microphone
through the floor to
broadcast live musie.
LOUISIANA I$ HOME
TO AN ESTIMATED 2
NOLA has roughly 180 MILES of canals. MILLION ALLIGATORS
Its current president 1s Venice has 26 mules.
the 1200-year-old
“Seven Sisters Oak.” HALF OF NEW ORLEANS’S CANALS ARE UNDERGROUND.
THE LIVE OAK GANG WAS A GROUP OF VIOLENT There was never a canal at Canal
GRIMINALS IN THE MID-1800s, WHOSE WEAPON S Iv plans f
OF CHOIGE WAS OAK GLUBS. treet, only plans tor one.
Acid Church
A queer psychedelic ramble
through the Crescent City
Courtney Desiree Morris
tis really easy to fall in love with New Orleans. Especially
when you are on drugs.
Ask me how I know.
“T wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for acid. Acid saved
my life.”
Alli Logout is a bona fide rockstar. A café con leche, butter-
scotch woman—down South, we’d call them a yellow bone—
with a blonde Afro that floats around their head like a gold-
en cloud. They are the ferocious frontperson of a rock group
called Special Interest. The first time I saw them perform at
the WITCHES party during Mardi Gras weekend, they roared
through the crowd on a motorcycle wearing nothing but com-
bat boots, a black thong, fishnets, a black bikini top and topped
with a black feather cape and a Pocahontas wig. Then they
climbed onstage and roared into the microphone, “Sodomy
and LSD!”
That’s how you start a night in New Orleans off right.
We are standing in a backyard smoking cigarettes at a house par-
ty somewhere between the Seventh Ward and Bayou St. John.
The party is winding down. The early morning air feels cool
and good on my skin. Emotionally, I feel empty.
It’s been a hard night. It’s been a hard day. A day that start-
ed 200 miles away from New Orleans in Lake Charles, Louisi-
ana at my grandmother’s house.
When I come into her bedroom that morning, she is al-
ready awake, propped up on a bunch of pillows watching some
evangelical preacher on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and
humming gospel songs to herself. I walk over to her bed, plant
a kiss on her forehead and pull up a chair next to her.
“Good morning, Miss Bobbie. How you feeling?”
“Pretty good, baby. My arm’s a little bit sore this morning,
but you know I’m feeling pretty good.”
“Pulpit.” Sanctuary at the Mount Zion Baptist Church. Mossville, Lousiana. 2016.
All photographs from the series Solastalgia by Courtney Desiree Morns.
“She Who Sits with the Dead.” Morning Star Cemetery. Mossville. 2019.
Now that I am closer, I catch the faint odor of urine wafting
up from the sheets, and I wince. I don’t like the idea of my
grandmother stuck in bed sitting in her own piss.
“Hey Mamma, you ready to take a shower?”
“Yeah baby, that sounds good.”
“Alright then, honey, let’s get you out of these dirty clothes.”
I get up and slide my right arm behind her back; once she
is upright, I slide her gently to the edge of the bed until her
tiny feet are grazing the floor. Then I slide my arm behind her
once more as she leans back so I can pull off the adult diaper
she wears to bed each night. It is soaked with urine.
“This thing ain’t chafing you, Mamma?”
“No, baby, ’m fine.”
She’s being polite, but she’s lying. Nothing chafes the skin
worse than piss. I used to get annoyed at these omissions, but I
know that she doesn’t like us to worry or to seem needier than
she actually is. Even now as she is dying, she is terrible at ask-
ing for help. I sigh. We are alike in so many ways.
I prop her back up, then turn around to grab the metal
walker tucked away next to her dresser. As I do this, I catch a
glimpse of her in the mirror. She looks vulnerable and awk-
ward sitting naked on the bed. I hurry back and place the
walker in front of her. She grabs the handles and pulls herself
forward. As she shifts her weight from the bed to the walker,
she begins to pant as she struggles to find her balance.
“You good Mamma?”
“Yeah, baby. ’m good.”
She leans forward and begins to waddle towards her bed-
room door. I position myself behind her just in case she begins
to look too wobbly. I can feel her shivering as we walk the short
distance down the hall to the bathroom. My uncle has already
turned on the portable heater in the bathroom. I begin to sweat
immediately when we step inside, but my grandmother contin-
ues to shiver. She complains about being cold all the time since
she started the chemotherapy treatments.
She parks the walker up against the side of the sink while
I turn on the hot water in the tub. ‘Then we begin the awk-
ward dance of maneuvering her into the bathtub. The narrow
bathroom is not designed to accommodate an elderly, over-
weight, ill woman and an adult granddaughter trying to bathe
her. I pull the detachable showerhead from its cradle. As the
warm water pours out of the shower head I move it over my
grandmother’s body, watching the water stream down over
her shoulders, her wide breasts, sliding into the folds of her
