Ace Hotel – Memphis Flyer

You want a first-world problem? Here’s one: Try writing a topical newspaper column on the day your fellow Americans are voting in one of the most significant elections of your lifetime. You have no idea how it’s going turn out. Will the tide of racial and political divisiveness, bigotry, science-denial, media-bashing, misogyny, corruption, and blatant daily lies and exaggerations as presidential policy be turned back? Or will the course we embarked upon in January 2017 continue unabated? Your call, America. Don’t screw it up.

By the time this column is being read, we will, I hope, have a pretty good idea of where America is heading. But as I write it, on this first Tuesday in November, I have no idea. None. And only a fool would make a prediction and risk looking like, well, a fool.

Bruce VanWyngarden

Riding on the City of New Orleans.

So, let me tell you about my weekend.

My wife and I took the train to New Orleans last Thursday for a little getaway to the land of beignets and booze. We hopped on the City of New Orleans at 6:45 a.m. and settled in for the eight-hour ride, which, at the ticket price, comes out to around $7 for each hour of travel — quite the bargain, honestly.

The pace is slow, but it doesn’t take long until you just give in to it. You’re on the train. You can’t get off. There’s no hurry. The rhythm seduces. The spacious, comfy seats recline like a Barcalounger, replete with leg- and foot-rests. There are outlets for your electronics, and nice reading lights. The Delta slides by outside the window — swamps and forests and fields and tiny forgotten towns with names known only to the locals. You can’t stop humming that song.

You want a drink or something to eat? You stagger up through the passenger cars to the club car and order like a boss. Stagger, because the train rocks enough to keep you grabbing passenger seat-backs on your journey down the aisle. There’s a running joke: “You been drinking?”

Every couple of hours, the train slows, and the conductor announces a stop: “This is Yazoo City. All my smokers got five minutes, but don’t leave the platform or we will leave you in Yazoo.” A fate worse than emphysema, no doubt.

We’ve been to New Orleans enough to know that the French Quarter at night is for amateurs and young folks — especially on a weekend when LSU is playing Alabama and the Saints are playing the Rams. Half the town is walking around in football jerseys and carrying big plastic drinks. The other half is in Day of the Dead apparel. And carrying big plastic drinks. After dark, the Quarter is a freak show of drunks, strippers, souvenir shops, and loud, awful music. Been there, done that.

But the Audubon Insectarium and Aquarium are wonderful, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art was a revelation. The food, as always, was splendid, especially in the CBD, just west of the Quarter. We tried Josephine Estelle, Memphis chefs Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman’s restaurant in the Ace Hotel, and it was aces. We also were delighted with a new-to-us Vietnamese/Southern fusion spot called Maypop. Check it out.

On Sunday, weary from power-shopping and the miles we’d walked, we headed back to the Amtrak station. It’s located near the Superdome, where the undefeated Rams were playing the beloved hometown Saints. We fought our way through numerous impromptu tailgate parties — on sidewalks, random patches of grass, parking lots, street corners. Apparently, in NOLA, when the Saints play, any spot near the stadium is fair game for tailgating, even the lawn of the train station. Who Dat!

As we settled into our seats for the long ride back, I was struck again by the diversity and easy camaraderie of my fellow passengers. Everyone’s friendly. Everyone knows we’re all in it together for the next eight hours. So the vibe is, ‘chill, enjoy the ride.’ With any luck, everything will stay on track. And with any luck, by the time you read this, the country will be back on track — or at least headed in the right direction.

Good morning, America. How are you?

It takes a certain mindset to drive into New Orleans 48 hours before a hurricane is expected to make landfall. I left Memphis after work last Thursday, wavering a few times before gassing up and heading south. My destination was the 13th Ponderosa Stomp. South-bound traffic was nonexistent, and five hours later, I was parking my car on Carondelet Street, the lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” ricocheting through my head.

Ace Hotel bar

I settled into the Ace Hotel’s Lobby Bar and ordered a Sazerac. I’m not normally a whisky drinker, but the complicated cocktail — allegedly America’s first, created by Antoine Peychaud in a French Quarter watering hole in 1838 — seemed appropriate. Spicy yet slightly sweet, it was the perfect sipping drink.

I slept in on Friday and failed to make it to Frenchman Street to visit Old New Orleans Rum. The distillery, in business since 1995, produces the highest-rated rum on this continent. Their Cajun Spice Rum, which is steeped with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, vanilla, chicory, and cayenne, provides my favorite base for a Dark and Stormy. God only knows why it’s not currently available on liquor store shelves in Memphis, but whenever I’m in New Orleans, I try to buy a few bottles to import into Tennessee.

I stayed at the Ace, where I was due to moderate a panel discussion with Carla and Vaneese Thomas on Friday afternoon. Beforehand, I guzzled a Tanqueray and tonic, served in a go-cup at Josephine Estelle, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s southernmost outpost.

That evening, I walked around the block for drinks and dinner at Herbsaint, Donald Link’s restaurant, audaciously named for the anise-flavored liqueur, another New Orleans creation. I was meeting friends and I made sure to arrive early to enjoy a drink in the restaurant’s small but elegant bar. Truth be told, due to the impending storm, the bar had more diners than drinkers, and within seconds of my arrival, I was sipping a cucumber-garnished Pimm’s Cup.

Pimm’s was an excellent choice — it paid homage to my dining companions, guitarist and roots music concert organizer Rupert Orton, author and music critic Andy Perry, and Harry Grafton, a bona fide English duke and Orton’s partner in the annual Red Rooster Festival. All three hail from the United Kingdom, as does the original Pimm’s Cup. Yet it was a bartender at the Napoleon House, a New Orleans establishment located approximately one mile north of Herbsaint, who popularized the drink in the American South.

Less than 10 hours later, I was headed back to Memphis. After dinner, I’d listened to — and danced to — one of the most eccentric musical line-ups ever assembled, including Roky Erickson, Archie Bell, Roy Head, the Gories, and Doug Kershaw. But the second night of the Stomp was cancelled, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu had ordered a mandatory curfew for his Crescent City citizens.

I was filled with regret as I drove, lamenting the dozen or more New Orleans watering holes I hadn’t visited: The Parasol Bar, hidden in the Irish Channel. The dimly lit Chart Room, one of the dive-iest places in the French Quarter. The Marigny’s Hi Ho Lounge, Kajun’s Pub, and Siberia, which lie a few hundred feet apart. D.B.A., the Saint, and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. A trip to Martin Wine Cellar on Baronne, which has an excellent deli as well as a full-service liquor store.

Fortunately, for everyone who lives in New Orleans and the rest of us who have had the pleasure of drinking there, Hurricane Nate decided to spare the city that care forgot. The Carousel Bar still turns; Sazeracs and Pimm’s Cups are still poured by bartenders who have seen — and heard — it all. I’ll head back soon, because, as Louis so perfectly put it, “I’m wishin’ I was there.”