Luv Doc Recommends: Sixth Street for Bourbon Street Benefit Concert

Most people have mixed emotions about New Orleans and that’s OK. New Orleans is a pretty mixed-up place, and not just because it’s currently stewing in a dark, swirling roux of floodwater, sewage, and petrochemicals – a pungent brew that probably makes the vomit stains of Bourbon Street seem like the tulip fields of Netherlands in comparison – but because, since the earliest days of the republic, the Big Easy has been keeping it weird like no other place in the world. In New Orleans, the weird went pro about 200 years ago. These days they just sit around dreaming up ways to make it even weirder. New Orleans has been weird so long they can’t remember what normal is. For instance: Most New Orleanians speak in a bizarre pidgin incomprehensible to anyone except other New Orlenians and French/Irish/Spanish Haitians down on vacation from the Bronx. If you hail from the heartland, you have a better chance negotiating a fair bar tab in Tijuana. If you’re ordering food, you might as well make peace with the idea that even if you say “cheeseburger” a thousand times, you’re going to end up with a soft-shell crab po’boy. It’s an upgrade, just roll with it. Sure, New Orleans is renowned for its spicy food and great music, but it’s also the only city in America – possibly even the world – where you can buy Huggies, whiskey, pork rinds, and bestiality-themed pornographic postcards in the same Christian bookstore at 3am on a Sunday morning. For that reason alone New Orleans deserves careful preservation – the kind of loving attention we bestow on places like Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore – and the kind of resolve it takes to overcome the condemnations of the Pat Robertsons of the world, the folks who think that Katrina was some sort of biblical bidet sent to wash clean the funky, steamy crotch of America. Nonsense. Maybe now the Hurricane that changed New Orleans forever won’t be the one they serve exclusively at Pat O’Brien’s, but that doesn’t mean God has gone postal. Far from it. And just because some people’s only memory of the Big Easy is of a goat, a midget, a quart of Vaseline, and a seedy motel bed with thousand fingers massage is no reason to call down the fire and brimstone. In New Orleans, you get what you ask for – that’s why it’s called the Big Easy. In this one instance, however, what happened in New Orleans didn’t stay in New Orleans and it’s time to let our harder partying cousins to the South sleep one off on our couch. Rest assured they’ll return the favor someday. Right now, we should help in any way we can. This Friday, you can do your bit and still get lit at Sixth Street for Bourbon Street, a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina featuring Cowboy Mouth, Jerry Jeff Walker, Asleep at the Wheel, Marcia Ball, Delbert McClinton, Alejandro Escovedo, Jon Dee Graham, Dr. Michael White, Theresa Andersson, and many others. The show will take place between the 200 and 300 blocks of Sixth Street from 4 to 10pm, and all of the proceeds benefit Red Cross of Central Texas and Foundation Communities, who are hard at work clothing, feeding, healing, and housing folks displaced by the hurricane, all without the benefit of interpreters. So go ahead, drop a few bills and feel good about feeling good.