Tim Eskew: Would you like to hear about chair racing after Katrina?
LJD: I would love to hear about chair racing after Katrina.
TE: Everybody knew that while we were all away—while most of us were away, I should say—Frenchmen Street was guarded by Jimbo, that owns the building across the street, Adé at Café Brasil, Kenny Claiborne, and George, who owned Snug Harbor before he died, rest his soul.
They held anybody off from breaking into any of these places—with no weapons. They took down the sign by the grocery, so it didn’t look like a grocery store. At some point, Jimbo was roaming around looking for things, as you do, and I think it was Mr. B’s Bistro that had thrown out all of their chairs. They were rolling chairs, like the kind you can roll across carpet.
Now, not long before Katrina, Frenchmen got refinished so it was as smooth as glass. It was the semi-centennial re-paving. One of the events we were having was, Michael would be barbecuing every day out there on the sidewalk, dogs and burgers and whatnot.
Michael Ferrand: I’d go to Baton Rouge to get a bunch of stuff from Whole Foods, because that was the closest grocery store open, and we’d barbeque right in front of the shop and anyone who came by was welcome.
TE: We had all kinds of foods, and then one day there’s chairs everywhere—
MF: Lots of veggies and chicken and whatnot—
TE: —and we had chair races in the street. You’d take the chair and you’d sit in and you’d race by kicking yourself backwards.
Something to do to pass the time on Frenchmen Street with no one around. Of course then whenever a car would now and then come down the street, we’d be like, “Toll road. $100 bucks.”
MF: Cuz you could look down Frenchmen Street and there would be no cars—
TE: No cars.
MF: —in either direction.
TE: There were many days that I had the only car on the block.
MF: No power, of course.
LJD: How long was the power down?
TE: Toward the end of October, because it was another a week or two before it was back at my house in Gentilly. It was a cave in here. I came home the 12th of September, and it was not at all ready for anybody to come back yet. My sister was pregnant, so I got all the baby stuff out. The house had taken just enough water to ruin the floors, so I had to actually break the floor to open the door.
Before Katrina, we’d just taken in a shipment of Schwinn bikes, so we had all these bikes. I put a stand out on the sidewalk, and the very first day I was back, a girl was like, “I need a bike.” I’m like, “I can’t take credit cards.”
I remember on Chartres and Esplanade, there was a giant hole in the ground and they had literally cut this pipe and capped it off on either side. So the French Quarter had gas, but the Marigny and everything this way didn’t have any natural gas. All the businesses had to get electric for hot water. Just got to call it a water heater, right? You don’t take hot water and make it hot. So, they all had to get electric water heaters.
There’s so many stories. Like when Coco lived above Café Brasil and his wife was burning candles and it burned her wedding dress down. There was a giant fire, and Ade’s on the roof, screaming with a hose, trying to put the fire out, and the firemen are like, “Come down!” and he’s cursing them and cursing everybody, putting out the fire.
LJD: I actually talked to Coco’s widow, and she told me that story… [an account in which it was Coco who set the house on fire… but he didn’t admit til years later on WWOZ! Haha. And apparently, the dress was saved! An uplifting ending. See story HERE.]
TE: I remember the original owner of the Spotted Cat had come back and accused Jimbo of stealing all of the alcohol out of the place. He had his hands around Jimbo’s neck about to choke him. I’m like, “Take your hands off Jimbo’s throat.” The guy turns around, looks at me in a cocaine-induced angry face and said, “Or what?” I happened to be wearing a 45 on my side, and I just put my hand on it like this, and I said, “Take your hands off Jimbo’s throat.”
That was not a good thing. We all ended up in handcuffs, but nobody got arrested. I barely walk on that side of the street to this day, and it’s completely different owners now. Much better people, Bill and Doug took that over.
I mean, I remember when it was an oyster house, [and when it was] owned by Alton Osborn that has Bywater Bakery. He had a dress shop in there for a little while. Somebody was hand-stitching dresses, kind of nice stuff. All before it was the Cat.
We [Bicycle Michael’s] used to be in DBA, where on one side was the bike shop and the other side was the theater, Theater Marigny. We moved over here in ’99, when we finally got evicted.
MF: Oldest bike shop in the city.
TE: Michael opened the shop in ’83. We started on Royal Street, in the French Quarter, on the 1,000 block. That was the year before the World’s Fair. All the landlords were going to get rich off the fair. They kicked out all the cool boutiques in the Quarter, which is why you have a lot of T-shirt shops.
As Michael always said, when he came to this area, everyone said it’s an up-and-coming neighborhood, but of course now it’s up-and-come. For a long time, it was just like, you had Apple Barrel, you had Café Brasil, you had Dream Palace, you had the bike shop, and Snug Harbor, Café Rose…
MF: Nah, it wasn’t Snug; it was Faubourg then.
TE: Yes, it was the Faubourg when you opened.
LJD: That bookstore, I just talked to those guys, and sounds like they’ve been around for a while too.
TE: Yes, they have been around for a while. And Jerry used to have a grocery store in the backside of it. A little walk-in; small place.
MF: The Dream Palace was here way back when.
TE: In the ’70s. Yeah, you look at some of these places you think they look like they’ve been there forever. Like Mona’s. They haven’t been there that long. Maison for a while was a little hard-core showplace.
MF: Café Brasil wasn’t even here when I moved here in ‘83.
LJD: Speaking of Café Brasil, do you guys know how to get in touch with Adé?
TE: No one knows. You can just holler up there, and if he’s there, he comes down. If he has a phone, he hasn’t told anybody the number. Just free livin’.
LJD: Huh. I’ll give it a shot. So I meant to ask, were there any particularly skilled chair racers you remember?
TE: I was the champion. I don’t have any fear of falling over backwards. … Also, I was racing mostly people significantly older than me.
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