610 Stompers

More public service from the 610 Stompers

I spotted the above billboard on North Broad Street across from the courthouse.  If you aren't from New Orleans, you may not recognize those iconic gentlemen.  The are the 610 Stompers, ordinary men with extraordinary moves.

They've only been in existence since 2009, but they have become part of the city's fabric.  We first saw them in a Mardi Gras parade in 2010.  Like anyone who has seen them in action, they made a lasting impression and won our admiration.

Now, they are cropping up on the sides of buses and at bus stops, as well as on billboards.

North Broad Street, New Orleans

Corner of N. Broad and Esplanade Avenue

As their website says, they come from the epicenter of culture in America.  It is hard to disagree.  Any place that can give birth to a group as ordinary and extraordinary as the 610 Stompers is the place to be.  You've never seen anything like them.  Of course, if you watched last year's Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, you may have seen them there representing their city.  (Watch the Macy's video.)

Another sign on North Broad Street by the courthouse that makes me smile:

Mr. Everything

We have never eaten here, despite it being the home of the world famous grilled chicken.  La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast is located only a few blocks for what is called the home of the best fried chicken in America, Willie Mae's Scotch House.   Though Urban Spoon lists Willie Mae's as being in the 7th Ward, you can take it on eyewitness testimony that it is firmly planted in the 6th Ward, in Greater Treme.  

Esplanade Avenue forms the boundary between New Orleans' 6th and 7th Wards.  Downtown is the 7th.  Uptown is the 6th.  St. Anne Street is uptown of La Belle Esplanade.  The line outside the restaurant can stretch around the corner of St. Anne and N. Tonti Streets.  It is worth the wait, as anyone who has eaten at Willie Mae's can tell you.

La Pelican Suite (Part II)

A lavender room

Some cities are not lovable.  Does anyone visit Houston, TX and become enchanted?  Oklahoma City? Wheeling, WV?  Bismark, ND?  Of course somebody does, but I don't know the people who love these places.  Every city has its charms, and some have more charms than others.  Minneapolis trumps St. Paul for a reason, though both are too cold from my tastes.  What is this leading up to?  

New Orleans is easy to love.  It is easy on the eyes.  It is full of color and music.  It pulsates.  It throbs.  A city is a place in which people live close together and share their eccentricities.  New Orleans is like that.  If you can't find a good meal in New Orleans, you don't have any taste buds.  If you are bored in New Orleans, you don't know what to do.  

With that in mind, here are some new pictures of La Pelican Suite. The sitting room is lavender.  The bedroom is spring green.  The ceilings are cerulean.  

Facing the bed, looking up

Antique sofa.  New pillows.

The map behind the sofa is of New Orleans circa 1820.  Esplanade Avenue is just Esplanade Ridge, but Bayou Road is there.  It is the oldest street in the city, older than the French Quarter.  It runs opposite 2216 Esplanade Avenue, on the other side of Gayarre Park.  The other picture is a view of the harbor in the 1880s.

The fireplace mantle in the bedroom

The fireplace mantle in the sitting room

La Pelican Suite is the quietest of all the suites at La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.  It also has a very private balcony...

Riverside of 2216 Esplanade Avenue

Attentive readers will notice that the porch pictured above is a different color from the vibrant orange at the rest of the address.  We decided, as a matter of maintaining the historical record, not to paint the side of the house fronting the alley between 2216 and 2212 Esplanade Avenue.  You can see what the property looked like for twenty years before it came under new management.

There is a table and two chairs for enjoying the sunrise over the first cup of morning coffee (coffee maker in every suite), or for enjoying a bottle of Abita beer (complimentary in every suite's refrigerator) for a nightcap.

New Orleans is a city of unexpected delights.  Esplanade Avenue is a distillation of that.  La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast?  It is a concentration of the Esplanade Avenue experience.  Remember, in New Orleans, Esplanade is pronounced "es-plan-AID."

A votre sante.

NOLA Bed and Breakfast Address

2216 Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, LA

I put the address on the house today.  That's the window in the entryway.  From the inside:

Home is where the heart is

In addition, I put the business' name on the front under the windows:

What beautiful penmanship

The writing is done in chalk, and the script is reminiscent of the kind seen on school blackboards, if schools still use blackboards.  What it lacks in permanence, it gains in flexibility.  Your hosts are whimsical folk, and one of them takes pleasure in posting public statements.  We will leave it up to you to determine which one he may be.  

A view of the office in the lobby:

Pull up a chair, we are ready for check-in

I enjoy that sconce.  It casts a shadow shaped like a fishhook.  It is made of driftwood and oyster shells.

From the banks of the mighty Mississippi River

By the way, we didn't catch that sailfish over the mantle.  It was a gift.  

In our travels, we've come across a Cajun gentleman who has stuffed examples of an alliduck, a duck with an alligator's head.  It is a very rare example of the taxidermist's art practiced on a very rare animal found in the back bayous of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes.  He has promised that the next time he catches one, he will stuff it for La Belle Esplanade.

Other sundry preparations happened today.  There are three suites ready for occupancy: La Pelican, La France, and Les Fleurs.  Thus far, on the reservation front, La Pelican seems to be the most popular.  Pictures of it fully decorated to follow later this week.  What was missing from these suites, though, were the plaques for the doors.  We took care of that today.  The door to Les Fleurs Suite:

Your room is waiting

We cleaned up the last of Hurricane Isaac's debris.  It is a joy to putter about the property, making everything nice.  Like New Orleans itself, La Belle Esplanade is truly a beautiful place in which to live and to stay, for any amount of time.

A votre sante.

A Walk Around the Neighborhood after Hurricane Isaac

Clio overlooking Esplanade Avenue this morning

It was a quiet week on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue.  As you may have heard, Hurricane Isaac blew into town last Tuesday and stayed the day.  High winds and 20 inches of rain.  No damage sustained to La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast save a large branch off the pecan tree in back.  Everything was tidied up by the neighbors the following day.  There is pride in place hereabouts.

Until a few minutes ago, however, there hasn't been any power on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue.  Now, everything is truly back to normal.

With nothing to do, after noodling around the grounds, sweeping, raking, and generally making everything shipshape, I walked around our block and took pictures of the properties adjoining La Belle Esplanade on this most picturesque part of one of the most beautiful streets in New Orleans.  

The 2200 block starts, naturally enough, at 2200 Esplanade Avenue, which is located on the corner of North Miro Street:

The sky was really this blue this morning

I decided to start at the beginning and move lakeside toward North Tonti Street.  2200 Esplanade is a tidy elevated house painted lavender.  There isn't much in the way of landscaping.  The building prefers to speak for itself, and it does so with a song.

Moving on, there is 2206 Esplanade Avenue:

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet

This property takes landscaping in another direction.  It is a family homestead that has been in the family for generations.  It is lovingly cared for, a delightful accumulation of details.  Pink and yellow, they work magic together.

If the wind was blowing, you would see that the flag is Hamburg, Germany's

Following 2206, is the majestic 2212 Esplanade Avenue.  This is the house that people used to stop to take pictures of before La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast got its fresh coat of paint.  2212, 2216, and 2222 Esplanade Avenue were all built at the same time by the same man in the 1890s.

Moving on, a property we should all be familiar with by now...

A New Orleans Bed & Breakfast

Has a more stunning color scheme ever been assembled?  La Belle Esplanade, you never fail to bring a smile to a pedestrian's face.  You can see the inside here.  2216 Esplanade Avenue anchors the block with its beautiful facade.

That is a limp Connecticut flag haning by the door

Julius Weiss, the cotton broker who built 2212, 2216, and 2222 Esplanade Avenue, wasn't a man who invested in half measures.  For 2222, he decided to go all out Italianate, even though he was a German by birth.  While there is no accounting for bad taste, credit should be given when good taste is exercised, as it certainly is here.

Next to 2222 Esplanade is another manor that has just received a fresh coat of paint at 2232.  

Carnation pink

Note that the ceilings of the front porch are painted cerulean blue, the same as La Belle Esplanade.  Great minds think alike.  Let's take a closer look from the front at street level:

Understated and stately

So there are La Belle Esplanade's immediate neighbors.  The property keeps elegant company.  All photos were taken this morning.  As you can see, Hurricane Isaac had little effect on the joie de vivre of this tiny part of New Orleans.