A Night of Randomness

We had one really bizarre, random and coincidental night while in New Orleans and it was just too epic to not share it!

To set the scene, Tom’s brother Todd gave us the contact information of an old friend of his, Sean, in the New Orleans area that is a magician and plays in a band. So Tom reached out to Sean, and we were lucky enough that Sean totally hooked us up with tickets to one of his shows at the House of Blues in the French Quarter.  We are thinking awesome, it would be great to go out listen to some music, hit up Bourbon Street and catch the end of the parades on Canal Street; little did we know that our night would be full of random coincidences!

Now onto the events of the night, the house we rented in New Orleans is just right around the corner from Jacques Imo’s, so we never need to call for a cab, we literally just walk around the corner and grab one from the many tourists that are being dropped off at the must eat restaurant in New Orleans.  This night we needed to wait a bit, there was a bachelor party of about 12 guys ahead of us, their entire party didn’t fit into one cab so they invited Tom and I to share in the second one with the other half of their party.  I’m sitting in the front seat talking back and forth to the cabbie and the bachelor crew, kind of having a party in the car and of course we have our “go” cups, so it’s all fun at this point.  We end up telling the guys where we are heading and then I start talking about this promo that was on the news today about a show at The House of Blues, called Bustout Burlesque, and I am telling them about how this girl literally ice-skates on some foam pad during her burlesque routine and I am thinking how cool it would be to see it, and at this point I’m trying to convince Tom into staying for the later show, but with no avail.

We get dropped off just off of Canal Street, due to parade routes, and walk over to the House of Blues to pick up our tickets at will call. Now we totally think we are seeing the band St. Augustine play, but low and behold it is tickets to no other than Bustout Burlesque! Imagine my delight! Now we are talking burlesque here, not strippers, this is in an entire different realm, even though clothes do come off, it somehow magically done tastefully and classy. Plus they have ice skating on foe ice, a full jazz band playing behind them and a magician, Dante the Magician that is. Yes, Todd’s friend, Sean that got us the tickets was our MC and magician for the night. This show was so much more than I expected and made for a great night of entertainment, and for your viewing pleasure, just click HERE and it will take you to the news version, the clean version that I saw early that day. 

After the show we took a stroll down Bourbon Street to take in all the crazy Mardi Gras season goers in full spirit; beads and boobs were everywhere; no worries, mine stayed put! This was more about taking it all in and imaging the crowds 20 times thicker and the craziness that would ensue the following weekend! Did you know that they literally grease the light polls so that people cannot climb up them during Mardi Gras, needless to say, I was floored, the concept of needing to actually grease a poll to keep people off of them, never even crossed my mind. 

 

At the end of Bourbon Street we pop out onto Canal Street and catch one of the parades and walk our way up the road, catching beads as they fly freely from the floats and wondering where we are going to catch a cab home. We end up walking up and over to The Roosevelt and the lovely door man hails us a cab, and as we step in, it’s like the night just started, same cab driver that dropped us off; so we ask how often does this happen, only his second time in six years of driving cab in New Orleans!