THE MYTH OF NEW ORLEANS
WHEN I BEGAN MY barista job at CC’s Coffee House, my brother Michael, a veteran employee of the French Quarter, explained which streets I was to avoid on the way to the bus stop at night and demonstrated the forward posture in which I was to hold myself in order to appear most threatening. Every day, Michael broke from his own work at K-Paul’s Restaurant on Chartres to walk the few blocks to where I worked on Royal Street. I fed him dark chocolate–covered espresso beans and a frozen drink called the Mochasippi.
From time to time, he’d look to me and say: “What, you don’t like to do nothing to your hair?”
My brothers were always asking me this about my
