i can't believe i watched the superbowl

Holidays make me grumpy. All that pressure to be in a good mood on a certain day automatically puts me in a bad mood. At the same time, something in me changed before I moved to New Orleans that made me want to be in a place where people celebrate absolutely everything. People either associate New Orleans with celebration or tragedy. After living in Portland, Oregon for six years, a place you could describe as pleasantly monotonous, I was ready for some highs & lows.

I actually watched the Superbowl on Sunday, or at least parts of it. Being in a town with an actual personality changes the way you live. I look at the scene I was involved in in Portland before I moved. It was pretty ideal, being a queer woman who plays music because there are so many others, and then after a while, more & more people of color started to move to Portland. So by the time I left, in the fall of 2008, I was leaving behind the scene of my dreams, in a way. But everyone who's ever lived in Portland always compares it to a bubble. My whole life revolved around this group of mainly punk inspired, queer, mostly female musicians who were transplants from other states, and all in their 20s. I was a nanny so it's not like I even knew people from work. My whole world was my housemates, my bandmates, other people in bands, people I saw at shows and then peripherally the folks at the feminist bookstore, or the community organization I volunteered with for a little while.

In New Orleans, there's more of a feeling of being a part of something larger than your particular group of friends. You're a part of a city with a strong historical identity and distinctive culture and you'd have to be the most jaded person in the world to not want to learn more about it and participate on some level, which is why I actually watched some football last Sunday. I just wanted to be around all of the excitement, you know? Of course it's half ecstatic and half annoying, like the exhilaration of zipping through standstill traffic in the French Quarter with everyone honking their horns to celebrate our victory, but then almost getting smacked in the face by people on foot & in cars who think it's a good idea to try to high five a biker. It's not just events or holidays, it's the actual culture itself that's so appealing. I've been able to see a few marching bands in second line parades that happen randomly throughout the year, and I also went to see a couple punk brass bands who are inspired by the traditional brass bands of New Orleans. I'm actually thinking about putting Chin Up (aka Slow Danger) Brass Band on a No More Fiction show with a touring band cuz they might as well get a taste of what's unique about this place if they're only gonna be in town for one night.

I was just telling Brontez today how queer of a town New Orleans is. It's the secret queer capital of the South. I mean, I guess it's no secret to people who are actually from the South, but you know how a place like San Francisco, for example, has a national reputation for being queer? Well, New Orleans doesn't have that, but it is. If you think about it, where else are all the freaks from Texas, Mississippi and Alabama gonna go? And I'm not talking queer as in mini version of the Castro, although that does exist here. There are also tons of black, poor & working class queers, too, who have created their own culture all to themselves. There's this hip-hop subgenre native to New Orelans called Bounce and queer bounce rappers created a sub-subgenre called Sissy Bounce, which is starting to gain national attention. And I see black MTF trannies on a regular basis walking around my neighborhood and the Quarter like it's no big deal. Part of me thinks a black transwoman would have a harder time surviving in Portland, Oregon--a seemingly more "liberal" place--than here. Obviously, I wouldn't know for sure.

Honestly, I'm still taking it all in. There are so many layers to this city, it's humbling. I feel like when I talk to people who travel a lot or move a lot, they often try to characterize a city in such a quick & simple way, as if you can really know a place after only being there for a few days, weeks or months. New Orleans is the type of place that defies easy categorization. It's southern, but it's got Caribbean influences; it's progressive and traditional at the same time. It's African, Spanish, French and Native American. It's beautiful and still cheap to live in relative to other major cities. I'm so down with living here. I hate where I grew up, my parents are immigrants so it's not like I have deep roots anywhere in the U.S., and I knew Portland wasn't gonna be my home forever, but here I am for the first time feeling a lot of pride about where I live. Like meeting someone you have instant chemistry with, I want to give this city more time and get to really know it. I don't have any plans to move on.