The Rebirth Brass Band’s regular Tuesday night gig
8316 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 866-9359
Open Daily 3pm-3am
Sardines in the can have more elbowroom than I have pushing my way into the Maple Leaf’s music room adjacent to the bar. “Hey, Pops!” I’m merrily greeted by the guy at the door collecting cover dough. The average age of these sardines is about twenty-five.
The rhythmic organic swaying to the beat is the same as Bullet’s minus the dancing. Trumpeters hit impossibly high and sustained notes that stoke the writhing beast of a crowd, then trombones fire away, the whole sound underpinned with tuba and drums.
The music pins my ears back. I don’t know if the silly grin on my face is due to the fabulous music or that the tiny bones in my eardrums just broke and my sense of hearing will never be the same. I should care about this. I don’t.
One of the last songs they play before the break has words. Everyone in the room knows them. They go something like this (you add the appropriate rhythm cadence here...) "If you... don’t fuck with me ...I won’t fuck with you.... and that's the truth..." The lyrics here on the page look stark, perhaps foreboding. When uttered with the music, they're sort of an urban version of the Golden Rule, sung with a smile, not a frown.
Kermit Ruffins just played a version of this at Bullet’s Sports Bar without the words. I’ve been humming it for several days. I have to be careful where I am when I add the lyrics. People in the aisle of Stop and Shop might take it as hostility if I happily sing the verse in the frozen food aisle.
Midnight, Break time.A wave of sweaty people empties onto Oak Street. Another anomaly around here is that street vendors are sort of like camp followers. They set up shop outside places like Bullet’s and the Maple Leaf, a symbiotic relationship with a Louisiana flavor. The Grill Guy has his huge black smoker running full tilt. He stands on the sidewalk taking orders while his assistant keeps loading burgers, sausages, and chicken onto the red-hot charcoal. The motto on back of his T-shirt: Hot Meat For Your Mouth - With All the Juices.
Another vendor named Gary is sautéing “gourmet bacon dogs” his specialty laden with onions, peppers, garlic mayonnaise, jalapeno peppers, pickles, or okra, take your pick. If you survive that impressive assault on your stomach, he sells generously sized home made triple chocolate whiskey caramel brownies and sour cream chocolate chip banana bread. He’s known as The New Orleans Chocolate Devil for a reason. Each one priced at $5.
“What’s with the camera and notepad?” he asks.
“I’m a retired teacher. This is what I do,” I answer. Turns out Gary has friends in Brookline, MA, where I taught for 34 years. He chills. I’m not from the Board of Health and we have something in common.
This feels like a street fair under the stars on a sultry Louisiana night. A hundred people sitting on benches, smoking, drinking from plastic cups, eating, and talking up a blue streak or standing in a daze produced by the tiny bones in your inner ear being temporarily shattered or the Bud Light having hit bottom.Maple Leaf Bar owner Hank Staples not only tolerates the vendors here but also sees the advantage of their presence. He lets Gary run an electric line inside for his bacon frying pan.
“Lots of these people stay here for hours. If they have food, they’ll stick around longer and go back inside for the next set, and drink more. The staff comes out here for food, too,” Gary says. The New Orleans Chocolate Devil sets up here every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. Everybody’s happy.
I'm living a dream. Happy doesn't even begin to describe this.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
The Rebirth sound can knock you down...
Break time - most of the crowd is outside
Fenway Park: Who But W.B.Mason
Fenway Park
June 16. 2010
Red Sox vs. Arizona Diamondbacks
W.B. Mason Suite 22, Sweet Luxury From Above
Forget about getting to Fenway Park early to watch batting practice. Hit Yawkey Way around 6:30 PM when torrents of fans jam through the cordoned off street. This is where the action is. The vendors selling programs, peanuts, hot dogs, Italian sausage sandwiches, are barking louder than Dustin Pedroia in the Red Sox dugout.
If you’ve never heard the Boston-ese language in all its glory, this is your language lab for the night.
“Prograaams heeyaaah, get yooah programs heeyahhh, 2 dohllaahhs heeyaahh, 5 dohllaahhs inside…”
”Get ovah heeyah, we got quality heeyah, the cheapest items in the paahk, we gottem, we gottem, we gottem, fresh roasted peanuts heeyah…”
The Red Sox Nation drops more dough here than Dominoes Pizza. Red Sox caps, jerseys, T-shirts are flying out of that souvenir shops that line Yawkey Way. Anthropologists would love the sight, a field study in attire, social status, age, race, political leanings, and class all funneling down Brookline Avenue and into the old ball yard.
Scalpers with slick backed hair and dubious bona fides stand like rocks around which a river of humanity streams from the Kenmore Square T stop all the way to the park.
“Wanna ticket, need-a-ticket, wegottaticket” The supply siders, tickets clutched in their fists, make their pitches. Wary passersby keep their distance.
Tonight I am joining the likes of John Henry and Linda Pizzuti in the rarified level of luxury boxes above the field. A friend has tickets to the W.B.Mason ("Who but W.B. Mason?") box along the left field line. I shall be in baseball heaven.
No matter how many times I’ve been here, coming up a ramp from the dark bowels of the park and into Fenway borders the surreal. The expanse of emerald green turf set off by the red clay tone of the infield, dotted geometrically with three white square bases and home plate, the batter’s box bordered with dense white lime, is so perfect my mind can't take it in at once.
The piece of little boy heart that never matures inside the grown man beats harder. The field I’ve dreamed of standing on, waiting for the 3-2 pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, my team down one run, comes into focus and reactivates every baseball fantasy I’ve ever had.
“Jaysus…” is all I can muster. It’s enough. He’s never run on those base paths - but he’s walked on water. He’d understand.
The W.B. Mason luxury suite is the last box down the left field line. The left field foul pole looms to my left and the three tiers of fans in the Monster seats perch happily just beyond the pole.
No sooner had I walked to the our seats just outside the suite, I heard the classic “crack” of a white ash wooden bat slamming into horsehide sphere, looked straight ahead and saw the trajectory of Dustin Pedrioa’s hit arc past me, bounce off the top of the Green Monster's ledge, and lazily drift down to the playing field for a home run.
Thirty seven thousand and something fans went wild. I just shook my head, pinching myself to be certain I was witnessing the game from a vantage point I’ve dreamed of having some day. This was the day.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
"Programs heeyaaahhh..."
Show and Tell outside souvenir store
Photo opps galore on Yawkey Way
Suits and jeans...
Where you sitting?
Rule 1: Eat a Fenway Frank
...or an Italian sausage
W.B.Mason Suite 22...watch the game on plasma or...
step outside and sit in cushy seats - how sweet it is!
Christopher Huggins, Business Manager of The Learning Center for the Deaf in Framingham, MA and W. B. Mason client ... and my benefactor for this grand evening at the paahk.
pt and Helene Sullas Huggins enjoy the memorabila on the EMC level
Hallway around EMC level on the way to the luxury suites
Whether in Green Monster seats atop the left field wall or the bleachers in distant center field, you'll feel the magic of the venerable ball park.
View from the top row of the Monster seats. Kevin Youkillis crushed a home run right over my head and into Lansdowne Street a few minutes after I made my way here in the sixth inning.
June 19, 2010 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (6)
Tags: Fenway Park, W.B. Mason