I first came to New Orleans in 1995 for mardigras to visit a friend who lived here. I fell in love. I returned the following year to the gras again, and realized that it was just this magical place that I belonged. I would return again years later, with several friends, and then would end up in a divorce that would bring me to my destiny – New Orleans!
I loved the music, the nightlife, the food, the culture, the gras, the artists, the bohemian lifestyles, and the weather. It was the dirty paris of the south, the modern day atlantis, and it was a place I could grow. My dream would be, to become one of the artists that capture the beauty, and the gumbo that makes this place what it is.
My next adventure would be to find the skeleton and bone gangs. I had been doing day of the dead art for some time in Seattle, Portland, Arizona, and now was bringing it here. It didn’t really meld for me, until I went through a hurricane, and saw the spanish return to “fix” their city. Afterall, many of the streets are spanish names, and therefore …. post K dia de muerte was born.
this poem beneath? pretty much sums it up. If you know who wrote it? let me know, as I’d love to credit this persons words!
give me a king cake smear
give me a beignet kiss
give me a french quarter morning that looks just like this
give me the endymion krewe
give me the times-picayune
give me a drunk and lazy crawfish boil in muggy sticky june
give me a six pack of dixie
give me some assorted abita beers
give me a city where it only snows once every 10 years
give me a green neutral ground
give me a mardi gras ball
give me a medium rare burger at my grand old Port of Call
give me a glittery drag show
give me the streetcar line
give me the House of the Rising Sun
give me a Tchoupitoulas sign
give me a shrimp and oyster poboy
give me lovebug season in May
give me my New Orleans-
I will definitely stay.