Is pizza replacing the poorboy as NOLA’s fast food of choice

There is no better way to learn a geographical area than by ambulating through it. Recently I trekked the length of Bourbon Street reconnoitering its eateries. I practice this discipline one every few weeks whereby I scout a street or neighborhood with a singular purpose. Perhaps it is to count the number of stop signs in a one mile path. Maybe it’s to see the different churches. I once walked, ruler in hand, all of Prytania to count the number of concrete lips over 1” to determine its walking safety score. There were 841 sizeable lips.

Walking gives knowledge. The sounds, smells, and tiny details escape a person who drives everywhere. As we slow, our minds can take in the small things which when brought together project the city.

It doesn’t completely come by physical action though. One must also be attentive to the small details. If you do not give what appears on the surface to be mundane, you will never grasp a city’s ousia or essence. Attend to what others look at but do not allow to register in their minds and you will see the world much more clearly. Give purpose to your precious gift of time. Focus on the details. See grace in all things. I’ve heard it say, mostly by lousy musicians or second rate painters, that drugs or alcohol open new dimensions that enable their work. While they may be true, their work has no lasting, redeeming value. The artist’s whose soul is pure and mind is focused on what is good will produce art which is transcendental, not merely in the glib sense that is frequent in Art Review or Bon Appetit but in a way that will positively impact the future long after those here are gone. My dear reader, you have the ability and gifts to produce transcendental art today, if you focus and give attention to the grace that stares at you each time you look deeply.

Bourbon Street is a vivid yet profoundly sad street. The loud noise and neon lucencies, the welcoming words of bartenders and bouncers, the balconies of revelers shouting below to the curious, the lost, and the broken all form a mask. Bourbon is a street that tries to hide itself. You will never know Bourbon’s self unless you are soberly attentive to its every crack and sadness hiding just behind the jovial offers of frivolity at its entryways.

I admit I am not yet strong enough to pull off the mask on Bourbon Street. Far too much sorrow and misery hide beneath it where its true self lies. As I walked I realized my observations would be attenuated because to take in all that is that street would break me like Drago.

Did you know that no less than twelve establishments on Bourbon Street advertise that they sell pizza? Besides alcoholic drinks, there is no other food or drink more advertised. In my youth, when I was less observant, I do not remember ever seeing a pizza place on Bourbon Street. That in itself is an anachronism, as the documentable birth of pizza started near the corner of St. Louis and Bourbon Streets. The original location of Segretos is clouded behind a shuttered red building with no numbers on it. Next to it though is Big Easy Daquiris with Pizza By The Slice.

Only four places on Bourbon advertise for poorboys. Bourbon may be a microcosm for the NOLA dining scene, as there are now far more pizza places in the city than poorboy places.

Has this always been the case?
Have we mistakenly believed that NOLA is a poorboy, not pizza city? Is at its heart actually pizza? Does the history of pizza in Nola actually extend beyond that of the poorboy? Has the pizza history been lost and only recently recovered? Does NOLA’s pizza history actually rival that of New York’s? Should NOLA and NY stand alone as America’s most historic pizza cities?

Find out by touring with me on a TulaneLSU Poorboy Tour of NOLA. First tour is scheduled November 1.