Funky, eclectic Oak Street

Oak Street is the commercial heart of the Leonidas neighborhood of New Orleans. It harbors great restaurants, an indie bookstore, funky art galleries, and a legendary bar/music hall with a poetry reading series. For starters. It’s my daily haunt when I visit the city.

Gotta love the hyperbolically negative motto of Jacques-Imo’s, one of the best restaurants in New Orleans: “Warm beer, lousy food, poor service.”

The utility wires below constitute visual pollution at its finest, and I was drawn to their effect in this photo of a chimera on Oak Street.

At an eccentric antique shop on Oak Street, two spooky pre-pubescent mannequins (one levitating) dwarf a cloth Santa Claus and porcelain Christian figurines.

At the same antique shop, a crocheted doll reclines in a wooden salad bowl, covered by a tattered plastic Times-Picayune newspaper bag. The window display has remained exactly the same for months.

If I had hair, this is where I’d get it cut.

If I subscribed to acupuncture . . .

Rue de la Course is one of the coffeehouse greats, located in a historic old bank. The next tenant was a Kinko’s, which predictably sliced the spaciousness in half with dropped ceilings.

Restored to its mellow splendor: light streaming from the generous skylight and windows suffuses the warm stone interior. Classical music and caffeine quicken the soul.