My trip throught the ghetto

On Saturday night my homeboy Martin and I set of to the House of Blues to see Every Time I Die. I'm not really into that kind of music but I figured it'd be cool to jump around and mosh with a bunch of painfully thin teenagers with greasy hair and artfully messy eyeliner. Or something. It didn't really matter thought because the show sold out. We actually saw the singer of the band wandering up Decatur but he didn't have any tickets on him. Weird.

So there we were, downtown in the early evening. Nobody from Tulane was gonna show up and party until at least 11. I was totally content to wander around the quarter looking and art and browsing in voodoo stores and stuff, and then head off to Frenchman Street to see some jazz. Martin doesn't like jazz though, so we agreed to try to find a reggae club. There was a dude with a red black yellow and green hat on selling pipes and Bob Marley posters on the street so we asked him what was up. He told us Club Caribbean was a pretty cool spot, so we hopped on the streetcar and rode it to Broad street. I noticed that the buildings were getting smaller, dirtier, more covered in spray paint, and had less glass in the windows.

We hopped of the street car and headed up Broad looking for Bayou, which the reggae guy said was like 10 blocks away. I was getting kind of spooked. The street wasn't well lit, no businesses were open, and there were bars on all the windows. After a block Martin piped up, "You wanna call a cab?"

"Yes!" I was all about getting in a cab. So we waited on the corner forever next to (I think) a prostitute. She told us to be careful. The taxi finally showed up and we quickly jumped in. When we rolled up to Club Caribbean it was very obviously closed. It was supposed to open up at 9, so we walked over to a gas station and sat in the pool of light by the air pump for a freaking hour. A couple guys in a Dodge Charger revved their engine at us while I was mesmerized by their rims spinning right after the car stopped.

At 9 we went back to the club, which still wasn't open, so we called another taxi and rode back to Tulane.

That was my ghetto experience.