Every Man a King, Part III - Back Home, If Someone Kills You They Have a Reason

This is the third part in an ongoing series that covers my visit to New Orleans in summer 2008:

My room at the Dupre wasn’t noteworthy in any way except for the vast beige curtains.  Normally neutral colors are able to mask the most fantastic things; put Godzilla in a beige pantsuit and he could destroy all of Japan without anyone so much as stopping to ask him for the time.  In the case of these curtains, even beige couldn’t conceal their being the size of several football pitches.  There was enough fabric on display to reupholster the sofas of every grandmother in Florida, with enough left over to make Gojira that pantsuit.  Whichever humanitarian had last cleaned the room left the air conditioning on so that the pleasing glacial air I had enjoyed in the lobby was to be found here as well.  I dropped my bag, magically four-hundred and seventy-two pounds lighter, on the king-size bed and changed out of clothes that were sweat-stained into clothes that soon would be.  My nod to futility finished I turned my attention to the rest of the afternoon, and my checklist.  

The Quarter

I have an informal checklist that I generally adhere to when I arrive in a new city.  The items are in no particular order and while it’s not vital that I get to all of them I do try.  So far today I had already accomplished two: “Find the hotel without getting mugged” and “humiliate myself in front of a woman”.  Since I’d started dating Nicky I had been able to retire a few items from the list, like: “Strike out at the bar and come home alone, but not before buying some Jim Beam on the way” and “wake up in the tub”.  Not all of the items are related to alcohol, at least not specifically, but it was late afternoon and so logically the next item to be checked off had to be “find a bar”.  I don’t make the rules.

Original Joe's | 2525 Cambie Street | Vancouver

UPDATE, January 2011: There is now an Original Joe's in Langford. Since Langford fills me with the same kind of malaise as watching soap opera re-runs at my grandmother's house I have never bothered to go.

By the time they reach adulthood most people have given up on things like magic. The notion of conjuring something from nothing is relegated to the worlds of fantasy and conservative economic policy. Yet I, in the midst of all this doubt, am a living example of magic’s possibilities. I can, through my mere presence, bring rain to any region of the world simply by appearing there without a coat or umbrella. My most recent trip to Vancouver came at the end of weeks of sunshine, and so I foolishly felt safe in bringing only the essentials: socks, underwear, undershirts, shoe shine kit. The collection of umbrellas I have accumulated by making this mistake time and time again hung, unused, in my office at home. True to form, the skies opened, and my plan to walk downtown for dinner disappeared into the rain like Rutger Hauer’s tears. Instead, I decided to keep close to my room at the Plaza and Original Joe’s pub, a place I had been to a few times, fit the bill perfectly.