The St. Charles Inn (3636 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana; Phone: 504.899.8888 - swing a little business their way, won't you?) is a touch run down but very homey. The postage-stamp sized lobby is crammed with overstuffed furniture, and the halls and stairwells are stuffy with hot, humid air. The place is jaunty, though, painted a warm Gulf Coast Yellow, and there's a coffee joint and restaurant attached. Far away from the psychotic French Quarter crowd, the St. Charles Inn is nestled in a near-residential section of the Garden District, not far from Tulane and Audobon Park and sitting right on the streetcar line.

Sonya and I have been staying at the St. Charles Inn off and on since 1995. While we certainly could afford better accomadations and go elsewhere for Mardi Gras (the Inn's five-night minimum makes it prohibitively expensive come Fat Tuesday) it's always nice to stay at the Inn. It had been a while since we'd stayed there, so it was pleasant to go back.

Not so pleasant, though, was the realization that, since they'd sold off their parking lot next door, I had to park in a garage about a block away. I could deal with it, though.

[Note: The drive down was uneventful except for passing a truckload of goats. The male goats were separated from the female goats in two separate but mobile pens.

"You know why they've got 'em separated?" I asked Sonya.

"Sex?" she guessed.

"Yup," I confirmed, "and there's nothing more distracting to drivers than goatfucking."]

Saturday afternoon and evening were nice. We ate, shopped, ate, wandered, rode the ferry, witnessed a white-trash fight-in-public between a drunk guy in dolphin shorts and his massively pregnant paramour, got a book by Dennis Cooper (Guide, which is unpleasant but train-wreck compulsive - we got it Saturday night, I finished it this afternoon. A short book with lots of heavy subjects) and finished off the evening with drinks at Molly's at the Market.

Sunday morning I had to run to Rite-Aid for some essentials (hair gel, hair dryer, razors, beer), then we had a leisurely drive along Magazine - and a not-so-pleasant drive through the projects when I got off the beaten path. Silly me. Then down to the Quarter for souvenirs for the dog-sitters, shopping at Gargoyles (Sonya got a Sinner t-shirt and a zebra-pattern skirt, I got a Bettie Page t-shirt and a collar), meeting up with Kathy T., a friend of Sonya's, and then a stop at Popeye's for chicken sammiches on the way back to the hotel.

We sat quietly around the room for several hours, 'cause we had big plans. Helfyre, a gothic/industrial dance thingy, was happening at the House of Blues that night. Really, after buying all the fun clothes we had to wear them somewhere, right? About 10:30 we left (getting an alarmed look from the desk clerk) and caught a streetcar back to the Quarter.

[If you didn't come through the opening page, go check it out and see how cool Sonya and I are.]

We got some looks on the streetcar, and on Canal as we walked down to Decatur. I can pretty safely say the looks were from tourists, though. I doubt we were too interesting to the locals.

Y'all, you never seen so much black clothes and eyeliner. It was really, really cool. A constantly changing projection on a screen over the stage showed scenes from Godzilla with a young Raymond Burr popping up occasionally, Planet of the Apes, footage from post-bombing Hiroshima, a really bad white-slavery movie from the seventies, pro-NRA propaganda and car wrecks. It was nifty. I went to the bathroom shortly after I got there. The attendant, a wrinkled little black man, was packing up his stuff when I walked in, shaking his head at the foolishness going on. Sonya and I parked it at the middle fo the bar, got some drinks and watched the entertainment.

It was fun, y'all. Really cool music and a deeply entertaining crowd. Sonya and I, fabulous as we were, were rather nondescript compared to the finery some of these people were wearing. We're talking corsets, latex, leather, vinyl, big hair and bondage accessories out the wazoo.

I also saw a couple of chicks kissing, which pretty much completes any night.

[I should note for the record that one of the girls in question was going back and forth, first kissing the other girl and then kissing this guy who was pressed in between 'em. It was a beautiful thing.]

About three o'clock Sonya and I took off, strolling down Decatur. It was absolutely deserted, something I've never seen before. We walked up to St. Peter, beside Jackson Square, and headed towards Bourbon Street. The flickering candlelight from the fortune-tellers was mondo atmospheric.

Bourbon Street, at three in the morning, is all hard-core drunks and goth kids. We saw it, shrugged at it, and hopped in a cab.

The next morning we slept late, checked out moments before check-out time and drove on home.

You know what's sad? Nothing of any remote interest has happened since we got back. Went and saw the mother in-law yesterday, went for an honest-to-god 5K run this afternoon (forty-five minutes, which is not bad for an out-o-shape bastard like myself).

And it's been a week since I updated, so it's been a nice little break from updating. vacations all around!

Plans for the next few days? Finally going to see Jen's play tomorrow night, and a cookout Friday. I'll keep you posted.

Oh yeah, they've been running these commercial fof the Memphis Italian Festival, coming up soon. The commercials feature a little cartoon Italian.

"You know what he eats?" I asked Sonya. "A-spicy meat-uh balls."

Really, the little guy is Italian Stereotype Man.

"His name is probably Guido," Sonya said. I thought that was funny as hell.

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