575: NOLA tips, 'exitutional' theory, and Cajuns vs Creoles
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Hello from the Chateau du Fey, 90 minutes southeast from Paris. It’s a 400 year old chateau that sat vacant for a decade before COVID until a young French architect inspired by her time in SF co ops put together a bid to buy it.
Now its an event venue in the summers and hosts an evolving coliving community in the winters, which is why my Caribbean season took such a chilly turn. I’ll report more on what it’s like here over the next two weeks, but for now I owe you: New Orleans tips!
My local artist friend Emma made a wonderful document with many tips.
And Cristina who grew up there has a massive Gmaps list here.
WWOZ has the live music calendar almost every night of the week.
The Country Club and the Railyard both have pools and hot tubs available for day visits, with the former hosting a proper restaurant and the latter more chill.
The Presbytere, Voodoo, and Pharmacy museums were good quick tourist stops.
Royal street, one block south of Bourbon, has many wonderful art stores. I liked Leroy’s Place, the Mortal Machines galley, and Swiet Stuff the most.
Walk around the artsy Bywater and the Marigny to get out of the Quarter.
The swamp tours are worth it if you want to get out to the Bayou.
One of my favorite stops was the Music Box Village, where sound artists and fabricators have made a village with spare house parts full of things you can play with and make noise on.
And NOLA is a national burlesque hotspot - I saw operatic burlesque at the Allways Lounge.
Technology
Limitless makes an AI pendant that listens to everything you hear and lets you ask it hyper personalized GPT style questions like ‘who did I promise to follow up with?’
This is a scifi gadget come true and an exciting way to remember more of one’s life, assuming the data privacy and security is in place, which they say it is. Time will tell, but I’ll probably get one just to try it out - you can turn it off easier than your phone, after all!
Ideologies
One thing Fey is big on is exitutional theory - the social dynamics that affect humans within and without institutions, if I understand it correctly. Sounds a little hand wavey to me, but we’ll see if a few weeks here doesn’t illustrate it better.
Memes
Creoles are mixed race, primarily Blacks in Louisiana, while Cajuns are descendants of French Canadians who were expelled from Canada. Their cultures and cuisines overlap and distinguish upon a few key lines, and this video explains them well.
Meanwhile, one of my favorite parts of NOLA was the accents. This Brit linguist found several clips of different kinds of Southern accents that works as a regional ASMR. :)