 |
| |
|
 |
 |
Frisked and fleeced in New Orleans Posted: Wednesday February 06, 2002 3:20 PM
Notes and memories from New Orleans: I'm already hearing this called the Security Super Bowl. I hope this ugly name doesn't catch on, but I'm afraid I see the buds sprouting. I'm sure you want to know my take on the security ... or at least some of you do. A few of you? Anybody? Well, you'll have to hold still while you hear it anyway. Newark Airport. This was the only place where the security people were downright nasty. Even the guy in St. Louis who randomly pulled people out of the boarding line for a special frisk did it good humoredly. Not in Newark. Shoes off, belt off, empty the pockets, empty the mind, a nasty blonde-haired woman barking orders. "Stand over there!" she said, when I finally achieved clearance. "Stand over there, please," I said sotto voce, earning myself a dig in the ribs from the Flaming Redhead. "Are you crazy?" she said. "You wanna spend the rest of the day here? You're lucky she didn't hear that." Right, lucky. Security at the Superdome, both for Media Day and the game itself, was handled in a professional manner and wasn't really much of an annoyance, although my fellow cynics, uh, writers, greeted it with their share of one-liners. I noted four different kinds of uniforms, including National Guardsmen in very serious-looking camouflage outfits, topped off with black berets. I couldn't help envying these guys. I wish I'd have gotten to wear spiffy stuff like that when I was in the Army. Instead, it was those stupid Ike jackets and heavy wool pants that made you look like Joe Fatso. Here's the thing about security. After a while you simply took it for granted. It became part of the landscape, like the guard at the bank. But then I found myself at around 10 p.m. Sunday night, heading back from the Dome on a kind of lonely stretch. I'm not squeamish, but there's a very scary aspect to New Orleans. Maybe it's because there's such a disparity between rich and poor, helped along by those in control. Property taxes are practically nil, yet the sales tax is a whopping 9.5 percent, which, of course, is aimed at those least able to afford it. The crime rate is high, the police force has been called the most corrupt in the country. You're always reading about some street crime in broad daylight. The Redhead was in a gallery on Dauphine in the Quarter when some guy burst in and told the lady in charge that he'd just seen a woman's purse ripped off and flipped to an accomplice in a getaway car. Linda mentioned she'd read a story about an abduction of some tourist when he stepped out his hotel three blocks away. "Not a good neighborhood," the gallery owner said. "He should have known better." I mean, it was only three blocks away. So there I was on Sunday night, quickening my steps, and what did I see but two young guys in that camouflage outfit, with the berets -- and weapons. I couldn't help myself. "Thanks for being here," I told them and they nodded. "That's our job," one of them said. I go back a long way with New Orleans. My first experience was more than 40 years ago when I was in college and my buddy and I, skipping the usual spring break destination of Fort Lauderdale, headed to New Orleans, a place we'd only heard about. It was bawdy and wild, much wilder than today's phony schlock of Bourbon St., but, in a strange way, you felt safe. We quickly discovered that the real action wasn't in the Quarter, it was in the hillbilly bars along St. Charles, all closed now, probably because they didn't pay off the right people. On our first night there we wound up in the company of a lady wrestler called Dolores "Kid" Lopez, half Mexican, half Apache, or so she told us. I could go on, but, you know ... On later visits I started noticing the things that older, more responsible folks tune in to. The air seems poisonous. It's still got its share of good restaurants, but whereas they used to be cheap, they're now priced for the tourists. The delicate glamour of the Garden District bumps head on against some pretty severe slums, and even the Garden District is starting to pick up a quality of seediness. Fun, fun, fun, aren't we having fun? is what you hear everywhere, as if people are trying to convince themselves of something. You know how it is. When an idea is beaten to death it becomes suspect. Oh sure, we found some neat things, as always, none of which involved watching drunken or pretending-to-be-drunken 19 year olds throwing up on Bourbon St. On our first day there this time around we headed for my favorite place, Le Petit Soldier Shop on Royal, run by a nice old guy named Dave Dugas, someone I've known since Super Bowl IV in 1970. Lovely hand-painted military miniatures at very reasonable prices. I've bought a ton of them from Dave through the years. This time I found some terrific Zulus in full ceremonial regalia, just the thing to bulk up the Rorke's Drift diorama that I've been working on. The problem is that I need more Welsh troops, since they are now severely outnumbered, which, I guess, is how it really was in the days of the Zulu Wars. If anyone has a few Welsh lying around, I'd be interested. Dave employs only local artists to paint the soldiers, and while we were there two of them showed up, unwrapping ancient boxes containing their work and collecting their wages. One guy, probably in his 50s, dressed in seedy clothes that must have been combat fatigues, told us he'd been painting for Dave since he was in high school. That was his sole means of income. Dave supports half a dozen people like that. On our last day there we took a long drive down the six miles of Magazine St., stopping for lunch at an oyster place called Casamento's that still has the original Italian floor tiles laid in 1919. We bought some handmade furniture at a store called Utopia. Each piece had the names of the artists who worked on it (they even included their dogs' names). We visited Leilah Wendell's Gallery of Necromantic Art and Literature, also known as the House of Death, and bought a couple of books. "Freezing in here, isn't it?" Leilah told my wife. "The heat rises to the ceiling and nothing stays down here." "Well, isn't that what death is?" I said, lamely trying to inject a note of levity that drew blank stares. We visited the D-Day Museum, and what started as a one-hour look-see turned into two, three hours, until a guide announced, "We're closing in half an hour. You'll only have time for a walk-through in the Pacific wing." Pacific? I didn't even know that arena was covered. One letter written by a British corporal described the landing at Sword Beach and the tall, erect figure of their colonel, "Shimi" Lovat, leading his troops behind "the skirl of the bagpipes." This one really got me. The pipers marching into the hellfire of those German guns. New Orleans restaurants? Too many to go into now. The Redhead and I always list and rank every eating place we encounter, but the roster is too long. There are people, though, who absolutely despise this city. NFL Films president Steve Sabol, normally a good - natured, pleasant fellow, contorted his face in hatred when I asked him how he liked the city. "I can't stand it," he said. "I've been robbed and poisoned and swindled in New Orleans. The first time we were here, for the 1970 Super Bowl, our hotel kicked us out the night before the game. Thirty of us. We were nobodies then, and the hotel gave our rooms to a dry cleaner's convention that was willing to pay more. "There was a doctor we knew, so he got us rooms in Mercy Hospital. We shared them with the patients. In the middle of the night the roommate of one of our cameramen died. The guy was so shook that he could barely work. We had to take him off midfield and put him in the end zone." On the flight home I ran a word association test on the Redhead. Capsule descriptions were what I wanted since she has a unique way of describing things. AIRPORT SECURITY "If I have to look at one more old guy's white crew socks ..." GAME AND HOTEL SECURITY "Only a 40-minute wait getting into the Dome. I went early. I didn't like that cop in the hotel, though, who told you you could only smoke your cigar in the men's room. But I did like the sound of the planes flying around on Saturday night." I mentioned that one trooper told me they were F-16s and any craft that violated our air space would be shot down. "And where would those shot down planes land?" she said. "On the hotel, right?" SUPER BOWL ENTERTAINMENT "Well, at least it wasn't another tribute to Walt Disney. I mean, real people instead of cartoon figures. I like U2 a lot. Paul McCartney? An overdone sugar daddy. Barry Manilow? I didn't know he was still alive. Last year at the New Year's Eve thing, Dick Clark showed film clips of him. I was a little worried about Mariah Carey doing the national anthem after that breakdown she had. But she pulled it off, didn't she?" (Yeah, but I clocked it in an endless 1:56.2). HOW ABOUT NEW ORLEANS ITSELF? She didn't answer that one. Instead, she pulled out an ad she had clipped from one of those tourist brochures, advertising the Napoleon House and handed it to me. It was named in honor of the trip to New Orleans that the emperor never made. There was a bust of Napoleon prominently displayed, right over a description of dishes he would have liked, "Eclectic dishes such as chicken sate." And there was a picture of a room decorated in French Provincial. "This would have been Napoleon's apartment," the ad said. I think they're onto something. If I ever quit my job, I'll go back to New Orleans and set up a whole neighborhood of houses that would have been loved by famous people in history who never made it to the city. This would have been George Washington's stables, Caesar's baths, von Bismark's gymnasium for dueling. The list is endless. Sports Illustrated senior writer Paul Zimmerman covers the NFL for the magazine and CNNSI.com. His "Inside Football" column and Mailbag appear weekly on CNNSI.com. To send a question to Dr. Z, click here. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
