Tamiami Sammy had spent the better part of his life searching for the world’s best grouper sandwich. Lucy had taken up the mantle and had parlayed that mandate into the hunt for the pinnacle of shrimp po boys. From the Florida Keys to Gulf Shores and New Orleans, she’d eaten them all over the south and she was proud to have taken up the cause. Her time in New Orleans had been entirely spent looking for good food and cheap beer.

Parkway Bakery and Tavern first opened for business in 1911, and it has been a New Orleans icon ever since. Charles Goering, Sr., a German baker, built Parkway on the corner of Hagan and Toulouse in Mid-City New Orleans and ran it until 1922, when Henry Timothy, Sr. purchased it with the intent of continuing to run it as a neighborhood bakeshop.

Back in those days, every neighborhood in NOLA had a bakery on the corner. Over the next seven years, Timothy, Sr. established Parkway’s reputation for delicious and fresh bread, donuts, and his famous Seven Sisters sweet rolls. But this was just the beginning of Parkway’s innovative and historic legacy.

In 1929, the poor boy was created by Bennie and Clovis Martin (read the full history of the poor boy), two brothers who owned Martin Bros restaurant and were former streetcar operators. The Martin brothers came up with the simple but hearty sandwich when the Amalgamated Association of Electric Street Railway Employees, Division 194, went on strike, sending 1,800 unionized streetcar drivers and motormen off the job and onto the picket line.

The Martin brothers gave away sandwiches to the strikers and the story goes that when a striking union member walked into their restaurant, Benny would call to Clovis, “Here comes another poor boy!”

In solidarity, Timothy, Sr. added the “Poor Boy” shop to Parkway that year and fed union members and conductors French fry poor boys for free. Meanwhile, Parkway was also selling the recently invented “Poor Boy” sandwich to the workers at the American Can Company. They operated twenty-four hours a day, with the addition of the poor boy, so did Parkway.

This Parkway po-boy could easily be the best, but honestly, such comparisons are beneath us. This particular specimen was prepared in a simple, delicious way common to the region. No nonsense with shaved lettuce, pickles and tomatoes on a French sandwich bun with tartar sauce. The one Lucy had was particularly long with perfectly seasoned fried shrimp pouring out onto the paper which she gladly lapped them up like baby sea turtles on the beach.

The entire meal consisted of a poor boy with fresh french bread, flash-fried Louisiana wild caught Gulf shrimp, chicken and sausage gumbo, french fries and a Frozen Porch Swing Vodka Lemonade. Checkmate.

Parkway now serves on average 1,000 people per day. Some are locals and their families, and others are travelers from all parts of the world. Jay, Justin, and other Parkway team members have been featured on television and in various media projects that have told the story of Parkway one way or the other.

Visit the Parkway website and like their social media sites on Facebook and Instagram,

Thanks to Justin for hosting and Rachel and Eric for taking us in. Keep up with the wranglers as we send forth Dispatches from the Quarter from a break in the festival season. Support those who support the wranglers and find your way to Parkway Bakery and Tavern next time you’re in New Orleans. Sit in the upstairs bar to avoid the wait.

The post Parkway Bakery and Tavern: A New Orleans Original appeared first on wook wranglers.

Of course she was still living in the front seat of the Oldsmobuick but this was nothing knew. It had come down to choices, mostly bad ones and while she’d certainly made her bed, she was now crumpled up in the front seat of the car, missing hers. The chickens had come home to roost. When it came to work destinations the last few years, she’d used this vehicle surgically, finding her way into the heart of the city, only to disappear into the sea of soccer moms and street cleaners. Now she was buried deep the heart of New Orleans, nestled inside a constant hum of activity and potential. Laissez les bons temps rouler. Throw me something mister. For Lent, she’d given up self-control and guilt. Thanks to Pig Out BBQ and The Saddle Bar for welcoming the wranglers into their house. Relax. This is “Sans Souci”. Dispatches from the Quarter.

Things were going finer than frog’s hair as she’d found her parking/living spot a few blocks from one of the several dive bars open twenty-four hours. Except for a few errant drunks falling into the hood and someone crashing into the front bumper, amidst a hasty parallel parking exit, things were coming up roses. She had it better than most hippies on the block just because she could sleep in the wagon, as borderline miserable as it was, it was better than the sidewalk. Everywhere she looked, people were falling down drunk. If her vehicle was going to break down, this was as good a place as any. Sure, everyone knew about Sarah Fortier and her ground glitter, (the dirt/moss blend that could be found in her hair at Suwannee), but here in the womb of the French Quarter they had something called gutter glitter and while she wasn’t sure what it was, she knew she’d worn the scent.

Lucy understood there wouldn’t be enough days or money to get to all of the food she wanted to embrace. Red beans and rice, shrimp po boys, etouffee, gumbo filé. It was Mexican Monday in Boone but how could she eat that here with all the Creole fare? By the time it was over, she would alone, consume a metric ton of beignets. Relax Mr. stage manager, I can assure you this is powdered sugar all over me. The Veux Carre was alive with all manner of tourists, homeless, hustlers and an army of patrons waiting to take the order. For days, she’d been planning on taking a shower at the nearest truck stop but life and continued questionable choices had kept that from happening…and things were going south. She was definitely dirty but it didn’t appear as if anyone else noticed. She wondered if she smelled like a goat and was just unaware. Wherever she went, a swarm of fruit flies circled her vaginal area. Occasionally she would “wipe up” in a restroom or anoint herself with groundscored medicated powder from Hulaween and Dollar Tree deodorant. Indeed, these were the times to be thrifty.

There were always lots of people carrying guitars in this town. And how is it homeless folks always run with dogs? That seems like a expensive hassle. She definitely understood the idea of companionship but dogs, like kids, women and potted plants required attention and money. She always felt like a noob when it came to the ways of the street. How savage could she be when she’d never even hopped a train?

As usual, Lucy was making money just about as fast as it took to spend it. But she was on the skreets and it took money to make money. And it took money to buy oysters and draft beer but from 2-5pm daily the Desire Bar made it easy. Just take it all.

She was close to the edge and for a while she considered busking. After watching how much the hippies made panhandling in Boone, she figured a few hours of busking would hopefully pay for some cheap whiskey and absinthe. But the truth was, almost every back in town appeared to be hauling a guitar. She stayed on the hustle, working when she could and exploring the Quarter when she was loose.

What kind of establishment makes deals with the wranglers? Innovators to be sure. Merchandise for promotional consideration? Networking had replaced traditional commercials and now they were presented as friends to the audience. The worm had finally turned for Lucy.

The Saddle Bar. 715 Bienville St.: With 2 stories of country fun, Saddle Bar is located in New Orlean’s French Quarter, just 60 paces from Bourbon St. With our upscale downstairs bar serving up classic favorites and premium whiskeys, have a seat in the special VIP area, or hang out on the dance floor while the DJ churns up country gold on the speakers! Venture upstairs to play games, visit our rustic bar, check out the extra-large balcony or Ride Randy, the biggest cock in New Orleans! Like a mechanical bull, but it’s a #bigassrooster.

Pig Out BBQ. 537 Toulouse St. (504) 224-2434. Fall off the bone ribs, duck and andouille gumbo was the bill of fare. Served up with slaw, smokin’ macaroni and cheese, pickled vegetables and more duck gumbo? Christ on a popsicle stick, things were finally going Lucienda’s way. This would be a regular stop on all her future trips to the Crescent City. Right down the street from Molly’s and Toulouse Dive Bar, two of her favorite night spots. Like their Instagram page and let Johnathan take care of you the next time you’re in town.

Her mother had warned her about visiting New Orleans. She received all of national information from Fox News so to listen to her explain it, all major cities were rearing from unchecked and rampant waves of criminals, homeless folks and immigrants and a very real combination of all three. Lucy, once again, did not find the hyperbole to be true. #fearmongers?

Usually when one actually visits these locales, the threat is very much exaggerated and otherwise unfounded. And naturally, like any other place, there are hard areas of town, neighborhoods best avoided. Don’t believe the fear-mongers. Don’t support the war-mongers. Hang out with fishmongers.

Monger in fish, not fear.

Enter Welmon Sharlhorn, New Orleans artist with works hanging in the Smithsonian, Collection de l’Art Brut,  and the American Visionary Art Museum. Wrongfully imprisoned in Angola for twenty-six years, it was there he honed his skills at ink art. He and Lucy visited several times at Igor’s, where he imparted his amazing story. Visit this article from Prospect New Orleans for more information.

By the time it was all over she just about broke even, ending up about where she started. Her guitar was still sitting in Salesury, North Carolina but she she still had a few hustles in mind. The hard weather had broken and the irises and morels were close to popping up. It was time to head back to the high country.

Ratonita Frita and Gutter Glitter. She’d seen about half a dozen mice in the last twenty-four hours. The first was in a trap in the kitchen of the Marriot. “Someone should get rid of that”, he said to no one in particular but no one gave any indication of hearing her or much less caring. She saw the rest after the all-night downpour. Two had been drowned, washed out from their gutters and the rest were noticed scurrying from overturned garbage cans. At five am she was headed back to Check Point Charlies. At the early hour, the mice seemed to exhibit a pronounced and eerily aggressive posture.

She was sitting in the bar at about 9am when the bartender broke out the Red Rider BB gun. His quary, a medium-sized mouse edging across the brass railing above the beer taps. Time froze as he proceeded to take aim and plug the varmint midsection. Nary a sound could be heard as the patrons watched the beast fall into the vat of hot grease below. The television broadcast “Invasion of the Bee Girls” as the bartender walked past the bubbling vermin and carefully hung up the wooden sign. “Kitchen Closed”.

Follow the wranglers as we roll south to the Florida spring festival season already under way with Suwannee Spring Reunion and a slew of furry, forest animals in Live Oak. Check out the schedule here. Look for the Kamp Happiness Wook Trap at your next feral adventure.   namaste y’all.

And now you know the rest of the story.

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                                                                                                                                   Book of Sorrows

Don’t pick a fight with a Mardi Gras float.

He was still locked in the bathroom grinding his dentures down with a drimel. They were painfully over sized due to the fact they had belonged to someone else as recently as yesterday. That guy certainly wouldn’t need teeth where he was going. Even the laminate faux wood paneling begin to smell like burnt bone. Burnt pig bone.  Like the grinding of metal-on-metal gears gone far too long without the save of some lubricating salve. The grinding may just go on forever but there’s always a way back. El zono finale has a rocky reputation.

He promised himself if could just find his dead cat and get out of New Orleans with a shred of what he used to call his mind, it would be the straight and narrow from here on out. From now on, the choices that lay ahead would be attacked with a furtive drive reminiscent of a more noble and stoic figure, like Thomas Jackson.

Another lost cat? There’s no way that’s a real thing. Full tilt Watusi boogie of the second Def-Con, to be sure. The last real tragedy was Lucky, who after mixing Ketamine and sawdust, threw himself into the Holiday Inn La Concha incinerator. Sometimes bad things happen to bad cats.

Around Bienville St. Frito saw Doornail entering a side door with a with a crate full of stolen Mardi Gras beads. Long ago, the crooked sign used to read “The Low Hanging Fruit” but most of the milkleaf had faded.  Luke saw him huddled in the corner, suppin on a dusty bottle of Butterfly absinthe and watching Baylor and Texas play girls softball in the afternoon shadows. Predictably, as the sun dropped in the sky the bits of shouting and profanity increased and after one unforgiving rant he was ejected from the tavern only to be seen stumbling from the curb into a mud hole slotted between broken cobblestones. At this point, all signs pointed to Madame Francis. He wouldn’t be able to go much longer without one of her Le Omelets Dauphine.

Known as an absynth drownery, Jean Lafitte’s has been a, “Muse”eum of sorts since way back. Thatcher Owen Mullins has always been a big fan of the, “Synthdriver”, an imaginary cocktail featuring absinthe, eye of newt, powdered bat wing, and the juice of virgin oranges.

The short man’s fountain of bigness is a prominent effigy in this fine establishment. None other than the biggest short man ever tops this pyramidal obelisk.

“Black Lung”

Her Christian name was Odessa but folks called her Black Lung and it was not a self-moniker. She found herself to be critical of people who gave themselves hippy-dippy names like “Harmony” and “Peace” when they were anything but. She was drinking wine out of a cardboard box. She said it was cardbordeaux. Eventually, she dumped the box and slung the bag over her should like a bloated udder. She made everyone slap the sack in order to get a shot of cheap wine. Somewhere between the warm wine and the second tin of grease, Frito realized she was trouble and no more than a godless savage.

She had been using dead cats in Vodoun ceremonies for years, but with all the new fly-by-night tourist brands of “voodoo” it had begun to seem gauche. Normally, it was pretty harmless business. A head full of mescaline and a couple weeks of dancing nekid with painted chicken’s feet punctuated by the occasional vat of animal blood. Often, the leftovers could be found wandering Lafayette St., covered in neck tattoos and uttering nonsensical gibberish about Mayan codices and the end of the world.

GRIS-GRIS LOVE SPELL

Author: Okrabeaux

Prep time:  30 mins

Cook time:  1 hour

Total time:  1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 1

This magic will help someone to fall in love or at least have an attitude adjustment.

INGREDIENTS

• leather pouch
• powdered lizard bones
• 3 pebbles from a cemetery
• human hair
• malachite crystal shard
• freckle
• shot of bourbon

INSTRUCTIONS

1. To create a gris gris, you should set up a basic gris gris altar or working space. This altar should contain the four element: a bowl of water to represent water, incense to represent air, a bowl of graveyard dirt to represent earth, and a candle flame to represent fire.
2. Choose a color specific to your need.
3. Gris gris must contain an odd number of items: more than three, never more than thirteen.
4. It must be filled with items that are specific to the desired purpose.
5. It must be dressed with a liquid of some kind.
6. Be very careful of the words you speak when making gris gris.
7. Each ingredient can be smudged or smoked in incense, and so can the final bag.
8. A petition petition should be added
9. Words of power are spoken over the bag as a means of activating the divine energy.
10. Breathe upon the gris gris to give it life.

In his screened-in kitchen, Okrabeaux used to tell stories about the old river woman who used to make up the gris gris. In the New Orleans tradition, there’s a gris gris for anything.  It’s a mixture of herbs and common ingredients such as powdered minerals, graveyard dust, roots, bones, and sacred words and seals. It can be used as a powder thrown in the path of an enemy, in an amulet or gris gris bag, in a doll, mixed with water and drunk, or used in a bath. Gris gris is part of a belief system that has remained relatively intact in New Orleans since it came from Africa by the first Senegambian slaves in the early 1720s.

Dead Cat Hit By Falling Statue

MAY 11, 2017

During the Jefferson Davis Statue removal today, an unidentified dead cat was crushed by the 400 lb obelisk. Subsequent removals of Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard Monuments will involve increased accountability measures. 

NEW ORLEANS – After two years of planning and court discussions, City officials continued the process today of removing the three remaining monuments that prominently celebrate the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” The crowd of onlookers was still applauding the removal of the statue as the unidentified dead cat was found crushed under the ruble. Said one eyewitness, “I guess the war called home one more soldier.”

All inquiries should be directed to New Orleans Police Department.

From his perch on the second floor, Thatcher saw the cat get into Black Lung’s El Camino. It was the one she’d driven since Reuben’s death but it had a new, bad paint job and the shag carpet on the dashboard had been changed and not for the better. She was perched behind the wheel, a mulatto girl with nose rings and a tattoo of Jesus eating a bowl of cheese and rice. The old man in the back seat had orange eyes and reeked of urine. Once he’d probably been handsome, but an M-16 bullet changed that, so now he was forced to eat, pray and love with scant amounts of teeth. They were all obviously tweaking and a curious cloud of dark magic seemed to follow them as they sped away from the drive-through daiquiri shop. Maybe never to be seen from again. Cat or no cat, the G-Train train was rolling to Texas and beyond. Maybe he would show up on the Mexican Blackbird.

May 22, 2017

Check out some other wookish delights including The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park: A Pictorial History. Keep up with the family as we head to Brainquility, Suwannee Spring Reunion and more.

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