June 2019
JJ: My love of Frenchmen is really the evolution of New Orleans as a whole.
So what I mean is: They just did the construction on Bourbon Street, right? Bourbon Street used to stink. You’d walk down Bourbon Street and smell that stench. But it doesn’t stink anymore.
LJD: It doesn’t?
JJ: It doesn’t.
LJD: Okay.
JJ: Now though, you’ve actually got Frenchmen, and it stinks. And that’s partially based on the fact that they fixed the stench on Bourbon Street. It used temper you for Frenchmen.
LJD: Huh.
JJ: My first memories of Frenchmen Street, in 2004, when I was first here, are the vacant lot where Dat Dog used to be and Mardi Gras Day and the fire-spinners. It was a place where—as a waiter—I sent tourists to increase my tip percentage. Now the tourists and the cover bands have gone to Frenchmen and the jazz has moved back to Bourbon.
But Frenchmen has that magic of breaking the stubbornness of New Orleans. Like, “We’re going to change, you fuckers, and it’ll live through it. We’ll be here for Mardi Gras Day, we’ll be here for New Year’s Eve, we’ll be here for Halloween.”
Yeah, there are daiquiris and chicken tenders on Frenchmen Street now, but on the other hand, if it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and I’m stumbling out of a great music show and I’m really drunk and I need a chicken tender… And there’s an art market that wasn’t there back in 2004.
It’s still my favorite place to dance to a brass band. Right there on the corner of Frenchmen and Chartres. The Young Bloods usually is the brass band that plays there, and now that Café Brasil has reopened—I mean, where Café Brasil used to be, whatever they’re calling it now—they’re playing across the street there by the bookstore.
The bookstore’s just reopened too. We haven’t lost the bookstore. The books are important. He closes at 11 and lets the brass band play there. And yes, you do have Willie’s Chicken Shack right there, but that corner of Frenchmen and Chartres, we evolved that one. It’s a place where bands can come and play, where a guy can walk by with a cooler of beer; it’s a celebration. We’ll always hoist, hoist, hoist this part of humanity.
It’s a celebration and, hopefully, the bands keep playing at Frenchmen and corner of Chartres.
Also, that’s the same corner where Coco Robicheaux lived and set that apartment on fire. That was across the street, above Cafe Brasil, and it started because he had candles lit, prayer candles, just like the first fire of New Orleans in 1788. That was also started by prayer candles, a dude praying at his altar on Good Friday. He had some candles lit, and he walked out to go to the bathroom or something, and the candles caught the drapery on fire.
He ran out to the church, to the people in the church, and said to the priest, “Ring the bell! My house is on fire! Let everyone know to put out this fire!”
The priest was like, “Dude, it’s Good Friday. We don’t ring bells on Good Friday. Sorry, I can’t help you.”
LJD: Is that a thing?
JJ: You’re not allowed to ring Angelus Bell, the largest bell of the church, on Good Friday. And that’s why New Orleans burned down in 1788 …
But anyways, that’s my story of Frenchmen Street. It’s the evolution of New Orleans. It’s going to keep changing and shifting.
