Nancy Apple performs at Central BBQ in Cooper-Young, Memphis, 7/8/12 (Taken with Instagram at Central BBQ)
Month: July 2012
Nancy Apple performs at Central BBQ in Cooper-Young, Memphis, 7/8/12 (Taken with Instagram at Central BBQ)
Nancy Apple performs at Central BBQ in Cooper-Young, Memphis, 7/8/12 (Taken with Instagram at Central BBQ)
Nancy Apple performs at Central BBQ in Cooper-Young, Memphis, 7/8/12 (Taken with Instagram at Central BBQ)
While fireworks are generally a part of July 4 celebrations across America, New Orleans seems a uniquely-appropriate place to celebrate our great country. It is a city, founded by French explorers near a Native American village, later run by the Spanish and then the Americans, to which came Africans, Jews, the Irish, Italians, Haitians, Mexicans and Vietnamese. All of these diverse cultures have left their mark on New Orleans, making it paradoxically America’s most exotic city and at the same time the most American city of all. In New Orleans this year, the fireworks were preceded by a Navy band concert, and followed by the same All-Star Brass Band that had been playing on Bourbon Street earlier in the evening.
On a hot Fourth of July night in the French Quarter, a cold gelato is a welcome treat.
Deanie’s Seafood, for years a legendary restaurant in the Bucktown neighborhood of Metairie, has now opened a second location in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I’ve never eaten at the original location in Bucktown, but the fried shrimp in the Quarter location is truly amazing.
French Quarter, New Orleans, 7/4/12
Bourbon Street can occasionally be serene and beautiful in its own way, 7/4/12
The New Orleans All-Stars Brass Band performs at the corner of Bourbon and Canal, a location that seems to recreate some of the spirit of the old Congo Square. Here the division between performers and spectators that is so much a part of Western culture is blurred, as dancers and second-liners become performers themselves, or as they occasionally borrow a drumstick from a band member and add a layer of percussion on an empty bottle. 7/4/12