Sweet Olive Bed and Breakfast’s Journal - New Orleans

We’ve been gradually making the rounds soaking up the amazing art that the neighborhood is currently infused with during Prospect.2. Among the installations cross the street from us in The New Orleans Healing Center is one that explores the intersection of Blackhawk Helicopters and Haute Couture. You’ll get it when you see it. Around the corner, one of our neighborhood coffeehouse/galleries has its walls covered with gigantic sheep. I’ve always thought sheep were cool. Here they are paired with Super Heroes. Even cooler. A bit further down the street, the entire University of New Orleans St. Claude Gallery has been taken over for an installation of fencing. In this case white neon fencing inspired by wrought iron. Very Zen. There’s more on the show HERE.

Brisk. It’s not a term we use to describe our weather much in New Orleans. But this morning was truly brisk, and energizing. Not that our Faubourg Marigny neighborhood much needed a weather change to be energized. We can hardly keep up with all that’s new and notable happening around us. Across the street the New Orleans Healing Center blossoms with a yoga studio, Voudou shop, fitness center, credit union, arts market, and a branch of the beloved local Maple Street Book Shop now open. Fatoush, the new Mediterranean restaurant around the corner offers a terrific menu of light Mediterranean fare…and even better, makes it’s own baklava everyday. We had an amazing vegetarian Korean meal the other night at the Wander Buddha a couple blocks away behind the HiHo Lounge. The young chef uses her mother’s recipes. The huge international art biennial Prospect.2 returns this month with cutting edge installations all over the neighborhood. And not only is our neighborhood now home to New Orleans’ emerging arts district, but its emerging performance district as well. Suddenly our historic hipster neighborhood isn’t a secret anymore. When Tripadvisor ranked New Orleans #7 among top US destinations, they actually mentioned Faubourg Marigny before the French Quarter. It’s a groovy time to be in the Marigny. sweetolive.com.

There seems to have been an explosion of public art in New Orleans after Katrina, including one installation we find particularly interesting, but easy to overlook. From our neighborhood near the river all the way to Lake Pontchartrain, a series of poles have been installed in the median of Elysian Fields Boulevard. On each pole is a blue glass “bead” that is positioned to illustrate the water level during the flooding after the levees failed. The bead on the pole nearest us rests on the ground, because our neighborhood escaped the flooding. The one shown here is about halfway to the lake—this bead was about three feet above the ground. The bead on the pole a few blocks further was over six feet.

I’m working on a story for an upcoming edition of Country Roads Magazine (my day job) about the amazing place that’s opening up just across the street from us. Here’s an excerpt:

He’s head of a development company that specializes in reviving historic neighborhoods all across the U.S.

She’s a Vodou priestess with a temple in New Orleans’ bohemian Bywater neighborhood, who specializes in matters of the spirit.

They also happen to be a couple, and they’ve combined their disparate areas of expertise into a boundary-breaking effort to heal New Orleans.

“We were faced with sitting there crying about it,” recalls Sally Ann Glassman about those dark days after the levees failed on New Orleans, “or reaching into ourselves for an answer.”

For Glassman and her partner Press Kabacoff, that answer was to buy an old furniture store abandoned after Katrina, strip away the 1960s era façade to reveal its historic bones, and then adaptively reuse the 55,000 square feet inside to create The New Orleans Healing Center.

Just inside the front doors of the once abandoned building there is now an open airy space where individual local artists and collectives will showcase their work. Off to the right is Glassman’s vodou shop, Island of Salvation Botanica. To the rear of the building are a grocery coop and a performance space operated by a local poet. Upstairs are yoga and dance studios as well as spaces for practitioners of various healing arts, a women’s collective, and a room deliberately left sparely furnished where anyone can come for quiet time to renew their spirit.

An organic restaurant, herbal teahouse, coffee and juice bar will occupy the adjoining building.

And still there’s room left over in the cavernous building for a credit union, fitness center, business incubator, travel agency, bookstore, florist and street university offering classes in everything from “French Immersion” to “Investigating the Paranormal.”

Oh, and did I mention that on the roof is the “Earthlab”—billed as “both a permaculture garden and land-based laboratory exploring, experimenting, and testing technologies that support pollution remediation, soul, health, food systems, integrated water recourse management and ecosystem regeneration.”

Much more to come on this story, we’ll keep you updated.

New Orleans ranked seventh in Trip Advisor’s recent list of the top 25 US destinations. Here’s part of what they had to say about us: “The city’s walkable historic core, including Faubourg Marigny, the French Quarter, Warehouse and Arts District, Magazine Street, the Garden District, Audubon Park and Zoo and St. Charles Avenue, are flourishing anew and eager to welcome visitors once again. Whether for the jazz, the nightlife, the hopping gay scene, the food, the culture, or for that distinctive joie de vivre, it’s time to head back to the Crescent City.”
So you know what we find really cool about this? Faubourg Marigny is mentioned before the French Quarter. We’ve been discovered! It wasn’t long ago that only a handful of savvy travelers knew about our nifty little neighborhood.

The original Mardi Gras beads were glass. A friend gave us these, and it turns out they make a beautiful tie-back for the new kitchen curtains.

We borrowed an idea from Brennan’s this morning and made the cinnamon-sugar toasted French bread that they serve with their famous breakfast.

Another beautiful picture by Christian Senger who stayed with us awhile back.

Get it? It’s the clever name for our newest breakfast offering, which is hand-crafted in small batches by two culinary entrepreneurs in the adjoining Bywater neighborhood. We chose their Louisiana Sweet version that includes organic oats, pecans, and candied Satsuma peel.

Beads and buds have appeared on our fence. Signs that Mardi Gras and spring are almost here.