Paul Ryburn's Journal

Normally I don’t blog about work, because I prefer to keep my professional life and personal life separate.  However, I’m going to make an exception and blog about the reason I was in New Orleans last week.

Three times a year my company holds national bridge tournaments in different cities across North America.  The tournaments run from Thursday of the first week to Sunday of the second week, and people come from around the world to attend them.  The most recent one ran 12,000 tables in 11 days.  The Monday-Wednesday before the tournament starts, the board of directors meets.

So I got down there Monday night of board meeting week.  Tuesday I attended committee meetings, one on Internet bridge – meaning, the sanctioning of websites that function as online bridge clubs.  I didn’t do anything in this one, just sat and listened.  In the afternoon I attended a technology committee meeting, where I served as the technological expert of the company’s marketing department.

Wednesday I attended a meeting of the full 25-member board.  Again, I didn’t have to do or say anything, just sat and watched as they introduced and discussed motions and received committee reports.  It was interesting to listen to them conduct their business.  Well, for a while it was.  By mid-afternoon I was bored out of my mind and playing with my iPhone.  Our senior director felt my pain and told me, “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off.”  I was very appreciative of that.

Wednesday night I attended a dinner to honor the New Orleans volunteers who helped us put the tournament together.  It was at Pat O’Brien’s on the River.  I ended up at a table with my manager who is the marketing director, a couple of board members, and some volunteers.  I wasn’t expecting much, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Food was delicious.  There was an open bar and people were not shy about hitting it.  There were speeches recognizing the locals and lots of applause.  Everyone laughed and cheered and had a good time.

Thursday I was assigned to work with one of our tournament directors.  As games start and end, she gathers up the results, puts them in proper format, and uploads them to our website.  As webmaster, it was useful to see the process she went through, so I could think about enhancements to make her job easier.  It also helped me understand that it takes some time to get results rounded up and posted when it’s an extremely large tournament like the ones we run.

I also got to see the offices the company had rented to run the tournament.  There were desks for all the managers.  There were tons of scorecards and other bridge supplies everywhere.  There were radios, and I heard the tournament directors discussing how to set up the conference rooms over the radio, in order to maximize space while still giving our players as much comfort as possible.  Very fascinating to watch the tournament come together.

The main thing I learned work-wise during my trip:  Bridge players are really nice people. Quirky, yes, and they will admit that themselves.  But everyone was just extremely nice and could not have treated me better.  The board members especially.  It was also fun to hang out with my co-workers in a setting other than the office.  I certainly don’t think I would have had this much fun on a business trip, had I been working for a typical for-profit corporation.

One more NOLA post to come, and it’s the best post of all:  Food and drink.

Hi there.  It’s Sunday at 11 AM and I’m still drunk from last night.  Started the day at the Saucer about 4 yesterday, then went with my friend Lee to Kooky Canuck to eat.  Magan was working.  The hot one.  The other one was there too, but who cares about her.  Anyway, I had the corn brats, which were excellent as usual.  While there, I came up with a brilliant idea.  Lee should run a clothesline out his window.  Then, when his dogs need to go out, he could just clothespin them to the line and move the line so they’re out the window and can pee and poop from the second floor.  They’d probably be so scared that they’d get it done quickly.  Then he could pull them back in, and he’d never have to go outside himself.  I should get a $5,000/week consulting fee for coming up with brilliant ideas like this.

So anyway, we got done eating, and I decided to go back to the Saucer for another beer.  I managed to convince Lee that he needed to have another beer too.  While there, I ran into the elusive and mysterious Kimmy Kim.  Due to staffing at the Saucer, the E&M KK was not the shortest person in the building for the first time ever.  I ended up going to Bardog and then Paula & Raiford’s with the elusive and mysterious Kimmy Kim.  Man… Paula & Raiford’s was the place to be last night.  The entire club was packed and people were dancing their ass off.  I got pics of the elusive & mysterious Kimmy Kim, and I could post them, and I probably should, but I can’t… it’s like posting pics of Mr. Wrestling II without his mask on.  You just don’t do it.

Anyway, you people better be glad I have posts saved in Drafts, so you have something better to read today than this crap.  It’s 11:30 now.  Saucer opens in a half hour and Sunday Fun Day will begin.

Today is Social Saturday at South of Beale.  Buy a beer for a stranger, and get one free for yourself when you show your MarksMenus phone app.  Pretty neat and inventive promotion.  I may have to swing by and check it out.

If you’re looking for something to do tonight, SNOZberry performs at the Flying Saucer at 9:30.  $3 cover, free if you’re a UFO member.  They’re one of my favorite bands that play Downtown – check their website to learn more about them and view a sample song list.

Other Saturday night options:

It’s WKNO Night at the Redbirds.  There will be a preview of “The 10th Inning,” documentary film by Ken Burns.  Game was scheduled to start at 6:05, but due to yesterday’s power outage, they’re playing a doubleheader today, which I believe starts at 4 PM for two seven-inning games.  Not sure if they’ll show the film between games or after the second one.

WEVL’s Blues on the Bluff is today. This is WEVL’s annual fundraiser with The Bo-Keys, Last Chance Jug Band and the Eric Deaton Trio with Kent Kimbrough. It’s from 6-11 PM at the Metal Museum and you can bring blankets and lawn chairs.

Hope Clayburn’s Soul Scrimmage plays the Center for Southern Folklore tonight from 9-11 PM.

The Stunning Cunning Band plays the Tap Room tonight. I can’t recall hearing them but I’ve heard good things about them from my friends who are Tap Room regulars.

Those would be my recommendations, but you can find lots more to do on the DowntownMemphis.com events page.

Story here. Wow, guess we better not invite these guys to play outdoors on Beale Street.

(Edited to add: The pigeon has its own Twitter account at @KOLPigeon.)

Not even the loss of power could stop the beer dinner at the Flying Saucer last night.  They had the food warm and the ice cream cold, and everything was delicious.  Here are some pics.

Another excellent dinner.  Thanks to Schlafly and to the folks at the Saucer for making it happen.  Fun night with friends, and the perfect thing to do my first night back in town.

The French Quarter certainly lived up to its reputation while I was in town.

Monday night, I arrived in New Orleans about 5:30.  With nothing to do until the next morning, I threw my bags in the room and hit Bourbon Street.  Less than 10 minutes into my adventure, a guy called me over.  “Hey big bro, want to see a magic trick?” he said.

“I know what you are,” I told him.  “You’re a panhandler.  We have you in Memphis.  Go away.”  He muttered “aw man” and walked off.  I got panhandled three more times that night and had two other bums offer to sell me weed.  After that night I apparently had my “game face” on and the panhandlers didn’t even bother me for the rest of the week.

There were numerous strip clubs, and the girls standing outside used every trick in the book to try to get me to come in.  Tuesday I had my “I Love Romanian Girls” shirt on.  “We love Romanian girls too!”  said a stripper peeking her head out a door.  “Come party with us!”  There was one club called “Barely Legals” which had 18-year-old girls that looked young for their age – I’m talking real young, prepubescent even.  I turned down all the invitations.  Believe it or not, I’ve never really been one to get excited about strip clubs.

Wednesday night I had a work dinner at Pat O’s on the River.  That’s a Pat O’s I didn’t even know existed.  It’s for special events only, and it is indeed on the Mississippi River.  It was on Decatur Street, about six blocks from the hotel.  Most of my co-workers took cabs to Pat O’s.  Seriously?  Have you people heard of walking?  So I went to the dinner, had more fun than I expected, and about 8:30 I started the walk back, down Decatur.

About a block and a half from Canal Street, a drag queen jumped out of a doorway.  He had hair extensions, DD-cup fake boobs, and a tight lavender dress that exposed his navel.  “Come give daddy a hug!” he said to me, arms outstretched.  Giving “daddy” a hug was certainly one possible plan, but instead I went with Plan B, which was “get the hell out of there.”  He cussed me all the way to Canal.

(For the record:  I have no problem with drag queens being who they are.  I just choose not to hug drag queens I don’t know, or call them “daddy.”)

Thursday night, I stopped in a dive bar a couple of blocks off Bourbon.  It would not normally have been on my radar, except that a sign said they were selling Abita SOS.  SOS stands for Save Our Shore, and 75 cents from the sale of every beer goes toward the effort to clean up the mess BP made in the Gulf.  I ordered one, to find that it was $8 for a 22-ounce, 7% ABV beer.  “Guess I’ll be here a while,” I thought.

So this chick came up and started chatting with me.  I won’t say she was ugly, because she wasn’t, but she… well, I’ll put it this way, she looked like she spent a lot of time in bars.  (Then again, I suppose the argument could be made that I spend a lot of time in bars.)  Anyway, she was extremely friendly – too friendly, it seemed.  She asked where I was from, why I was in town, how long I was staying.  She asked if I had a cigarette, and I told her I don’t smoke.  She chatted for a couple more minutes, then asked, “Well, do you think you could front me the money for a pack of cigarettes?  I’ll pay you back.”  I told her I didn’t have money, that everything I bought went on my expense account for work.  (A lie – I had just pulled out a 10 to pay for the beer.)

She then tried to interest me in the video poker machines.  In New Orleans, bars can have video poker machines if they restrict entry to 21 and up.  It became clear to me that if I played, it would be a team effort – I’d be putting the money in the machine, and she’d be keeping any winnings.  I declined, explaining that I only play real poker, against other players rather than the house.

Then she started asking me questions.  “So, what do you like to do?  Do you like to have a good time?  Do you like to have fun?  What do you like to do?”  To me, those sounded an awful lot like questions a hooker would ask, to indicate “hey I’m a hooker but I can’t say that in case you’re a cop.”  I pulled out my phone and opened the Mail app.  “I can’t have fun tonight,” I told her.  “I’m on call for work.  See, I’m checking my work e-mail right now.”  (Another lie – my iPhone isn’t even set up to check work e-mail.)  I also moved my wallet to my front pocket.  After a few more minutes, she figured I was a waste of her time and left me alone.

Bums, strippers, drag queens, and hookers – I got to see the Quarter in all its glory.  And I survived.  More posts to come – I’ll probably do one about work, and one about food.

This past week (Monday-Friday) I was in New Orleans for a business trip.  I’m going to break the recap of the trip into several parts, to keep it from getting overly long.  Probably I’ll write about the hotel, then the street people, then what I did for work when I went down there, then the food and drink.

I stayed at the Sheraton at 500 Canal Street.  I arrived at the hotel to find teenagers with green backpacks everywhere.  I mean, EVERYWHERE.  They were sitting all over the lobby, lying on the floor, waiting in lines 15 deep for the elevator, etc.  I found out later they were Lutheran kids attending a national youth conference. They were nice enough kids but damn they were loud and in the way.  A few minutes after I got to my room, one of them tried to walk right in and said, “Hi neighbor” – thank goodness I had the latch on.  The walls of the Sheraton were paper thin and they were running from room to room and yelling until after 1 AM.  Not real good when I had to be at a board meeting at 9 in the morning.

Then there were the elevators.  At the Sheraton, there were five elevators.  You punch your floor number into a keypad and it tells you which elevator to get on.  In theory, this gets everyone to their rooms as efficiently as possible.  In practice, it told everyone to get on the same elevator, and I found myself crammed in with about 15 kids, with the elevator stopping on damn near every floor before it reached my floor, 20.  Tuesday morning I attempted to go on my Mountain Dew run to the CVS down the street.  (There was a soft drink machine on my floor but the kids had cleaned it out.)  I punched 1 into the elevator keypad.  “Car B,” it told me.  And I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  After 5 minutes, Car B (nor any of the other elevator cars) had shown up, and I was getting so short on time that I simply gave up.

I also thought it was strange that a hotel at this price point would charge by the day for Internet access.  Of course, I’ll hand in a receipt to work and get it back, but if I were on a vacation I’d be irritated at having to pay it.  Hotels much less expensive than the Sheraton offer free Internet in the rooms.  They had it for free in the lobby, but I wanted to be in the comfort of my own room.

That’s not to say it was all bad – the room was very nice, and once the kids left on Wednesday, the elevators started working better.  Also, the location is ideal – all you have to do is cross Canal Street and you’re in the French Quarter, with Bourbon Street two and a half blocks away.  I just got a sense that when the hotel is loaded to capacity for a convention, they have a little trouble keeping up.  If you come to New Orleans, the Sheraton wouldn’t be a bad place to stay – just check and make sure there is not a major convention in town when you’re there.

Part 2 – French Quarter street people – coming soon.

Today at the CCC annual luncheon, Mayor Wharton announced some good news that Downtowners have been waiting to hear.  Starting August 1, Downtowners will see cops on the beat.  There will be five cops assigned to this duty, four on bikes supported by one in a patrol car, and they initially will be working from 10 AM to 6 PM Tuesday through Saturday.  They will support the efforts of the Downtown safety patrol, in an effort to crack down on the crimes that make Downtown feel unsafe to those not familiar with the area – aggressive panhandling and alcohol-fueled disorderly conduct.  Furthermore, the cops will cover South Main as well as the Downtown core.

Kudos to Mayor Wharton and the CCC.  You’re finally giving us what we’ve been needing for years.  More cops on the beat = better behavior on the street.

I had a reader question this morning and I don’t know the answer – what’s happening in the old Burger King building on Madison between Second and Third?  It’s been vacant for years, but recently people have been seen doing construction in there.  If you know what’s happening shoot me an e-mail at paul@paulryburn.com.

Sure wish developers would decide to pay attention to that corridor of Madison between Main and Third.  There are so many building that would make really cool loft condos or apartments.  There have been some great businesses on that block – Dawgie Style, Don-Don’s Hot Wings, Market Cafe – that have closed because of the lack of foot traffic on those blocks.  Hope this new business makes it, whatever it is.