I had not actually planned on doing lunch at City Slice. I was going to get some pho at Pandan Teahouse when I went to pick up the King Cake I’d ordered. When I got there they told me they had sent the wrong size King Cake so I got the three small ones they sent for free. No problem there, and everybody at the shop was very happy with the outcome and also that someone had broken the ice on Mardi Gras. Somebody’s got to be the big dog. But they also told me their kitchen wasn’t open because the cook hadn’t made it in yet. That was not encouraging and I hope they don’t go the way of everyone else that has tried to make a go of it in that suite. I would very much like to have them nearby.
Speaking of haunted locations. City Slice is the latest in a long line of bars and eateries that have tried to live in the space the Bayou made notorious before it burned down in 2002. City Slice shouldn’t have any difficulty hanging around since its main purpose is to serve as commissary to the City Pork kiosk they just opened in the LSU Design Building so they aren’t nearly as dependent on instore sales as every other tenant since Frank Duvic has been. That said, they put out a good product and are smart enough to offer pizza by the slice and chianti by the glass. Those are winning moves. They also rotate their specialty pizzas for sale by the slice so people can try them at lunch without a major commitment. I think they are smart enough to keep it going there for a long time to come. Still, it is hard to sit there though and not think about the Bayou. People and events that I will never forget. Very, very formative part of my youth. Back in the day, you could start at Magoo’s on a Friday afternoon and hit the Bayou, the Gumbo Place, the Bengal, the White Horse, the Cotton Club, and the Brass Rail on your way to Mother’s Mantel for twenty-five cent whiskey and Bluesy Jacuzzi playing at happy hour. Here’s some more City Slice pics and a piece I wrote in honor of the old Chimes Street scene way back when.
The Biker Bar
Magoo’s is long gone. Sometimes I see my wife trudging up the hill with her heavy sack of textbooks and papers to be graded although she is no longer my wife and lives now in New York or Tibet. She picks her way through Dalmatians with bright bandannas leaping for Frisbees and the day is crisp and blue with a breeze. I follow her under clouds of water oak into the Bayou where cocaine once snaked the bar and the pistol was out for Willie Nelson practice after closing. There is a collection of canned beer above the bar, Dixie, Black Label, Falstaff, and women or their daughters who resemble them entirely still float in and out between the worn pool tables, their cigarettes like fireflies above train tracks, longnecks held by the throat raised to flashing white smiles and yards of hair of every shade tossed over a bare shoulder. This should be enough, to remember the boys who ate acid and laughed as they crawled out of their jeans on Friday afternoons when a thousand of the faithful would gather on the hill to drift in and out of the pool halls and biker bars, rolling joints and making women love them or laugh and smile a promise of another time. I heard a story, and it was Charlie who picked up his partner and placed her legs spread on the pool table at Magoo’s to align the balls when the bikers had stolen the rack to mess with his head. He is still here and tackled the Christmas tree and dry humped it in the Chimes last year like that behavior is still okay in the USA and not a sign of migration to Brazil and Carnival and warm bodies whispering Portuguese when night slips deep into the blood with rum and ice in equal parts. There was a slender girl with red hair to her waist, part ghost, part whore, who walked without weight and never said a word to anyone. I never met her but we are still together after all these years, winding hand in hand through the speckled shade of all the oaks that line this small street of fortune. When it rains we duck into the coffee shop for a wordless cafe au lait and admire the little prints on the walls made by students who want to be artists and watch pails of water slap against the windows and leak in through the sills and under the door until the young espresso attendants run for mats to create a pathway to the counter and the chocolate covered beans. I still go every morning for dark roast: it is like church the music and the people pretending to be better than they are. I miss the girl with red hair or at least the thought of her in the back of my mind drifting with me through the hopes and dreams of each day. Magoo’s the biker bar became a blood bank then a used textbook exchange. Something like that always happens.