Tennessee Williams was here

We’re just finishing up the latest festival for our most famous writer.  Not cheap to attend, but probably worth it, if you are a writer or a reader on New Orleans or the South. Nice website: it’s in my links on the right.

What I know about him-off the top of my head:

Came here from St. Louis to get a job on the WPA Writer’s Project: was not hired by Lyle Saxon. Came back and lived on Toulouse, then on Orleans then on Dumaine.

Lived in Key West later in life.

Poker Night was the original name for the play Streetcar Named Desire. The Desire streetcar started running in 1920, and traveled down Decatur, through the French Market, over to Royal, then right on Canal and right again on Bourbon to head to Desire. Streetcar was shut down the year or year after the play opened on Broadway.

Had a party where the landlady poured hot water through the floorboards to quiet everyone down.

He said:

“There are only 3 cities in the United States-New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. The rest is just Cleveland.”

Welcome to NO Block by Block (NObxb)

Hey old and new fans of our city. I have devoted many of the past years to living in this lovely, messy chaotic city and am glad of it. Now, I am redoubling my effort to illuminate its particular charm for others and for me with this blog.

I have been writing about my alternative,  sometimes underground part of the city for a while (neworleanscanthrive.blogspot.com). The purpose of this blog (and the corresponding yet unpublished pieces written offline) will be to chart parts of the city block by block with written history, fables overheard, stories believed.

Starting with the French Quarter, but adding others as we go.

I say we because I put it out to you to add your pieces to this blog as you wish. I am looking for collaborators of news and bits of opinion which could end up in the published work (with your credit firmly established).

Or you could just point me in the right direction….

Ironwork