"Would you email me quote about what Gambit means to you?" publisher Jeanne Foster asked me after I subscribed recently (her email under the story).
The Gambit provides exactly what it promises - news, events calendar, film, music, food, drink, lifestyle, design/decor, free and fun stuff, info for tickets to just about everything going on in the city (during the pandemic hardly anything).
My response...
Hello Jeanne,
In response to your request, I started sending you a quote about what the Gambit means to me and this is what happened as I thought about it.
Especially now, I want to feel the energy of New Orleans and its people.
In 2008, I asked a girlfriend, born and raised in Baton Rouge, to take me there for a long weekend. “Honey, if we go, we’re not going for a few days, we’re going for two weeks!” Sort of like the analog to Me and Bobby McGee but instead of singing every song that we knew to that trucker, she took me to every good place that she knew from Tipitina’s to a favorite restaurant in Lake Charles to Phil Brady’s and her sisters' homes in Baton Rouge to the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette and the reknowned Whiskey River Landing (that sadly closed in August 2018) in Henderson. I've written about all of these places.
“I haven’t been the same man since,” I’ve joked with her. It’s no understatement. That the trip changed the course of my life (subject for another story). I’ve visited NOLA and SW Louisiana scores of time since then.
I’ve seen the struggle New Orleans has been going through since the storm. I have a sense of what is being lost as New Orleans gets to its new normal. The forces of the tourist industry aiming to make New Orleans a tourist destination and the struggle of neighborhoods like the Marigny and Tremé losing the battle with gentrification and resulting dislocation of generations of the people who represent the core of New Orleans spirit, have consequences.
So what keeps holding it together? Music and everything associated with it, musicians, second lines, the recharging value until recently of Satchmo Summerfest (that I’ve witnessed several times) and French Quarter Festival (which i have not witnessed…yet) and the street performers and buskers of just about every type that are like cultural musical fairy dust sprinkled over street corners in the French Quarter day and night. And in spite of the harshness of trying to make a living with limited resources, the unfailing open hearted friendliness of everyday people I encounter on street trolleys, casual conversations with taxi drivers or hotel workers or on street corners in the French Quarter or buskers on Frenchmen Street, represent New Orleans in style and substance.
What else? The still strong bond that keep families together through thick and thin, held together by food, music, love, and fish fries and crawfish boils in back yards or sidewalks that have been going on for as long as anyone can remember. All of it is elusive to define but like the smell of frying catfish and wafts of aromatic smoke from the grill and the smell of your clothes after you’ve spent a few hours hanging out on a stoop or your camp chair or maybe even the couch that someone drug out of their living room and plunked on the sidewalk for the occasion...that's the spirit of New Orleans
My friends from Lafayette took me to the Krewe de Vieux Mardi Gras parade in the French Quarter in 2019, the most recent visit. I don't have to tell you about the wonderfully outrageous creative decidedly non politically correct satire - and the throws to match - floating around the corner and on to Frenchmen Street.
Full of contradictions, New Orleans has the nation’s highest official poverty rate (18.6%) among the 50 largest metropolitan areas according to the 2017 census. Admittedly I see only part of the city and base everything I’m saying on my limited experience. What if it were possible to determine richness in terms of spirit or attitude or determination to keep on keeping on despite income? I don’t know. I don’t want to be Pollyanna-ish about it to diminish its effect on New Orleanians. I guess what I’m thinking is that there’s a difference between poverty in dollars and poverty in spirit.
The New Orleans in my limited experience is rich in spirit.
I never tire of telling friends about New Orleans and SW Louisiana.
Jeanne this was my first impression of New Orleans on our trip August 6, 2008
I intended to send you a short response to why I read Gambit. Not possible. Every time I read that story in the link, I get a flashback to a memory impressed like a watermark on my Yankee psyche. It makes me happy, no small achievement these days, and pine for the day I can return.
Writing this response was great therapy in this time of pandemic, staying indoors as per the state orders didn’t mean i was prohibited from takin’ ride down to New Orleans.
Be safe
My heart goes out to Louisianans suffering from COVID-19
Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
xxxxx
Dear Gambit Community,
I wanted to send a note, thanking you for becoming a Gambit Community Member and /or Adopting-a-Small Business. My inbox is always open to your ideas on what you would like to see in Gambit (in print and online), I take your feedback to heart.GAMBIT has been a staple in many New Orleanians’ lives for almost 40 years, and I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to work alongside talented journalists, creative designers and brilliant marketing professionals to bring journalism and entertainment news to our readers for more than 18 of those years.This month we are trying to reach 1,000 new members, please help us share this campaign on social media and invite your friends and family to support local journalism too.Also, if you would like to email me a quote on what Gambit means to you, I would love to publish it in an upcoming edition.Thank you again for your support and stay safe,JeanneJeanne Exnicios FosterPublisherGambitxxxxRESPONDING TO THIS REQUEST below, this my mini campaign to support New Orleans by suggesting you get a splash of New Orleans goings on and support journalism in the time of pandemic. Journalism was on shaky ground even before the pandemic. If you'd like to support one of the main outlets trumpeting the range of the city's goings on and the spirit infused in it, consider signing up to become a Community Reader for $5.00/month. That's what I did.
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