On any given day you can find at least half a dozen street performance artists doing their thing down in the French Quarter. It wouldn’t be Jackson Square without the silver metallic painted man standing for hours in various poses. And who would tourists take their picture with if the guy walking a battery operated dog or the guy who balances on the wooden latter, seeming to defy gravity, didn’t come out to entertain them?
Yesterday, a perfect spring day, Greg and I headed off to NOLA for a much needed day off and to celebrate our fifteen-year anniversary. We didn’t have a plan other than to eat at Muriels, where I had the crawfish and goat cheese crapes. Oh. My. God. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Yeah, the filet mignon was excellent, but I could have happily gorged myself on crapes all night. Anyhow, it was a beautiful out and we opted to spend the day exploring the quarter. Sure, we live nearby so we’ve done this dozens of times, but while the quarter seems to stand still in time, it’s ever changing with new artists and shops coming and going. We like to check in and see what’s happening.
We walked until our feet started to complain and settled on the steps outside St Louis Cathedral to listen to some live music and people watch. That’s when we spotted him. Imagine if you will a tall, six-foot-four, man weighing no more than one hundred-twenty pounds…in a purple unitard, with only a fanning pack positioned over his man bits. Don’t forget to factor in the grunge-fro look he had going on for a hairstyle.
The look alone is enough to frighten you, yes?
Yeah, well you didn’t see his act. *Insert creepy dance music here* and add naked baby dolls and body parts. A few baby dolls as well as some sort of animal skeletons were tied up as marionettes that he danced around, all the while doing his signature pelvic thrust for the obviously horrified crowd. Remember the fanny pack? Yeah, thank God for that. Though I had to wonder if he was hurting himself with all the bouncing it did.
And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, he knocked a baby doll’s head off and somehow manged to get the hands and feet of a doll onto his fingers, which he then walked over to the feet of a few teenage girls, where the baby doll’s head had landed. There was a bit of yelping and jumping back at this point. All I could think about was my friend Kelley who is terrified of dolls and I couldn’t stop laughing. What her face would have looked like.
Anyway, I apologize for not snapping a picture, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Then I’d have been obligated to tip this poor misguided soul.
