"It's true that blacks have not gotten involved in the historic things," said Clifford Blake, who owns a po' boy shop.
We were led into restaurants with secret codes in our fortune cookies; we rode the metro to a karaoke studio that contained copious alcohol and messages only readable with a UV flashlight we'd been given; we ate New Orleans king cake in a po boy shop to find a bunny figurine inside.
Bakeries and po' boy shops struggled mightily to get back in business.
At the New Orleans Po-Boy PreservatioNov.stival on Nov. 22, as brass bands play and celebrators hoist drinks, serious-minded panelists will tell tales of long-lost po' boy shops.
A problem that's more difficult — possibly reflecting a drop in expectations set by fast-food purveyors — is that the quality of some po' boy shops has declined.
"Most po' boy shops don't have off-street parking," she said, from a perch at Hermes Bar in the French Quarter, as she bit into an oysters Foch po' boy, stuffed with fried oysters, smeared with pâté.
Located in Treme, one of the nation's oldest African-American neighborhoods, Dooky Chase was started by the parents of Chase's husband and partner, Edgar Dooky Chasese, Jr., in 1941, as a po-boy shop inside an old shotgun house.
Hustling with Spree in a downtown t-shirt shop, Po had plotted to win over owner Dallas/Austin's attention.
The mirage of the old, comfortable life in a city of densely woven neighborhoods, beguiling if sometimes dangerous street life, and inviting po' boy sandwich shops contrasted too sharply with the grimmer present-day reality of New Orleans for these exiles.
Sometimes I like to peruse the wares at nearby bohemian boutique Zhan (Shop 1, Po Hing Court, 10-18 Po Hing Fong; +852 2559 3001) which sells carefully selected vintage clothing, jewelry, and homewares.
