Home Sweet Home

It’s days like these that get me wondering why I’d want to live any place else in the world.

Yes.  That’s my neighbors doing that really old Kinks Song with a quick  appearance of the guys from the Preservation Hall Band.

But, really, let me tell you about my home town.

The last time Greg Newkirk visited New Orleans, one of his favorite local attractions was an actual local.

“I had walked into a shop to ask a few questions and ended up getting a thorough history of New Orleans voodoo by a man who was the nicest self-professed vampire you would ever meet,” says the Cincinnati-based editor of Roadtrippers.com. “He gave us weird travel advice, delicious food advice, and psychic life advice. If that doesn’t sum up the French Quarter, I don’t know what does.”

Such full-service eccentricity made New Orleans a natural contender for the nation’s strangest people, based on votes in the offbeat category of T+L’s annual America’s Favorite Cities survey. Readers rank 35 metropolitan areas for features such as live music and food trucks as well as their residents — be they smart, attractive, or, indeed, lovably weird.

I do hope you know the next Top Chef is the New Orleans version.

Well, it turns out that Top Chef was thankfully not affected by the shutdown. Government program? No. Hour long advertisement for cars and grocery stores in between Real Housewives episodes? That it may be. Whatever it is, the eleventh season has begun and is off to a sweaty running start in New Orleans. If you like shows with transition shots that are exclusively brass instruments played by old black men and alligators briefly surfacing in a swamp, you are really going to love this season.

Hopefully, Hurricane Karen won’t shut us down for long.

Open Thread!  Indulge!!!