Bayoo Boogaloo Music Festival & bayou history

Yesterday afternoon, I walked a block to Coliseum Square Park, a small green space with gnarled oak trees and a fountain, surrounded on all sides by historic homes. The neighborhood association was having a fundraiser crawfish boil to help restore the park's fountain. There was a band, beer and all the hot boiled crawfish you could eat for $20. I actually ingested 3 plates! Once you pop their heads off, suck the tasty juice out and then push the meat up and out of the tail, there's not much to them. They boiled them with whole garlic cloves,onions, potatoes and something hot! The crowd was a nice mix of friendly people and transplants. Looks like I'm not the only one here from somewhere else...

The photo below is a 60 pound fresh batch of steaming "bugs"... they also go by a host of other odd nicknames: Mudbugs, Crayfish, Crawdads, Yabbies, Lobster, Mudbugs, Crawcrab, Crabs, Bugs, Ditchbug, Nipper, Raki, Rak, Panzerkrebs, Krebs, Ecrevisse, Langouste, Langoustine, Homard, Cangrejos, Cangrejo de rio, Camaron, Shaitanbalyk, Shaitanbalyk, , Astaci, Lagostas, Zarigani, Koura, Acocil, Chraebs, Crawdaddy, Crowfish, Cray, Crays, Freshwater Lobster, Freshwater Crab, Mud Puppy, Spoondogs, Craws, Crawlfish, Ditchbug, Grave Diggers, Kharchag, Kreef, Rivierkreeften!

Today, I biked down to the French Quarter (10 minutes) to "mystery shop" the Canal Street McD's and get my biscuit and coffee... then 4 miles up Orleans Ave. to Mid-City to check out the Bayou Boogaloo Music Festival. It's been going on all weekend. Food, 3 waterfront music stages and arts and crafts vendors along Bayou St. John.

This is a typical food vendor menu at any New Orleans festival... and they have one to celebrate something almost every weekend:

From Wikipedia:

Bayou St. John (French: Bayou Saint-Jean) is a bayou within the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Bayou as a natural feature drained the swampy land of a good portion of what was to become New Orleans into Lake Pontchartrain. In its natural state, it extended much farther than today.

The portion still in existence today was navigable by canoes and similar small vessels, used by Native Americans since Pre-Columbian times. The natives knew the waterway as Bayouk Choupic. There was a portage between the Bayou and the Mississippi River, which attracted early French explorers, traders, and trappers, some of who established a small community here by the late 17th century. In 1701 a small fort was established by the French beside the Lake Pontchartrain end of the Bayou to protect this important route; Fort St. Jean would be known to later generations of New Orleanians as "Old Spanish Fort". The Bayou and portage was a key factor in the selection of the site where the city of New Orleans was founded in 1718, by the river end of the portage route.

In colonial times the portage trail became Grand Route St. John, later replaced as the main route by the wide straight Esplanade Avenue. The Carondelet Canal was dug to connect the back of the city along the River with the Bayou, and the Bayou dredged to accommodate larger vessels.

An area along Bayou St. John was reputedly the location of many voodoo rituals by Marie Laveau. In the early 20th century, commercial use of the Bayou declined, and the Carondelet Canal was filled in. A number of New Orleanians started living in houseboats on the Bayou. Complaints from people in nearby neighborhoods and sanitation concerns led to this being outlawed in the 1930s. A Works Progress Administration cleaned up and beautified the Bayou. A lock was installed near the Lake Pontchartrain end of the Bayou.mThe Bayou then took on the role it has had since as a picturesque bit of water with small earthen levees on either side forming a narrow bit of park space in the city.