Louis Armstrong in New Orleans

Jazz in Armstrong Park every Thursday

Louis Armstrong was the Zulu King on Mardi Gras Day, 1949.  He never came back to New Orleans after that.  No hotel in the French Quarter or the Central Business District would allow him to stay there.  We weren't open then, but he would have been welcome at La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.  Everyone is. 

Photo courtesy of nola.com.  Louis Armstrong in the middle.  Thanks for the memories

As soon as you land at Armstrong International Airport (MSY), you know that you are in a city where people who don't live here, and people who do live here, have good memories.  New Orleans is a city of black and white and every shade and hue in between.  Any hate that rears its ugly head in New Orleans is short lived.  Love is in the air.  It is romantic in the extreme.

Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Advocate

The photo above is swiped from the New Orleans Advocate, the newspaper to which we subscribe.  I'll give you my copy at breakfast.  Unlike the Times-Picayune, it is written and delivered to our doorstep every day.  They recently ran an article about how the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure and Pleasure Club has gotten City Council approval to expand their headquarters.  Finally.  This has been in the works for too long to think about.  It is overdue.  

I could have taken my own picture from the neutral ground in North Broad Street, but it would have looked the same.  It is what it is.  Why mess with perfection?  

Though Louis Armstrong never came back to New Orleans, he lived out his days and died in Queens, he always signed his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours."  If you read his memoir, "Satchmo," you will understand why he loved this city so much that it hurt.   

As far as we can tell, after delving through the historical record, Louis Armstrong never lived on Esplanade Avenue like Degas did.  Like everyone else who lives in New Orleans, he must have known the street well.  It is one of the most beautifully perfect streets in the city.  It always has been.  It always will be as long as we have something to do with it.

Louis Armstrong, who was a United Nations goodwill ambassador, left a legacy that lives on in New Orleans.  He is revered in the city, rightly so, as if to make up for snubbing him during the days when Plessy vs. Fergussen set the law of the land.  New Orleans is a city littered with bright spots and demerits, like the dappled shade under the live oaks that line our street.  It is a city of sometimes cruel contradictions that are shrugged off like palmetto bugs on a summer's eve.  Life is what you make of it when there is music in the streets.

La Belle Esplanade

Separate but equal is no longer the law of the land.  Thank Heaven.  We are all better off for that.  We are all in this gumbo together, come Hell or high water.  When you lay your head down to sleep, you should feel safe.  You should feel home.  Home is where the heart is.  That is what New Orleans is like on Esplanade Avenue.

A votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

We remain red beans and ricely yours.  We will see on Thursday, and on every other day of this new millennium.  To your health.  Laissez les bon temps rouler.