This essay by David Rutledge on drinking coffee in hurricane season was written this August but it already seems like it's from another age. We share it to remember New Orleans before Katrina.

In September 2004, a massive storm was centered in the Gulf of Mexico and slowly approaching the coast. This was Ivan, an intimidating hurricane, the radar images barely able to contain it, with clouds circling from Florida toward Texas. Ivan seemed to be ready to devour the South. Specifically, Ivan seemed to be headed toward Alabama, Mississippi or — most importantly — New Orleans.

There is an eerie sense to a city preparing for devastation, the boarded up homes and businesses, the boards often spray painted with desperate pleas — “Ivan stay away.” The streets are nearly empty, many residents having fled, untimely tourists holed up in hotels. Here in the French Quarter, there are also a few who consider a hurricane an occasion to celebrate, especially during these long hours of anticipation. Ivan is more than a day away, and people can watch him approach on television, toasting each turn toward or away from our city, cheering Ivan on. The sense that this show might become real only adds depth to the drinking. This is New Orleans, after all, where the party continues even through the funeral.

Now if a local — deciding to stay for the hurricane, seeing on TV all of the freeways out of town jammed with traffic, and not wanting to be drunk or hungover when Ivan arrives — thought that this would be a good time for a cup of coffee, the options would be limited. This is the evening before the day before the expected hurricane. Those who are going have gone, and most of those left behind have no time to run a coffee shop.

I try my local place — C.C’s, two blocks from my apartment — Community Coffee (there seems to be an unnecessary possessive in the acronym, unless behind the scenes there is a secret someone named C.C. This issue is easily ignored, however, because they serve some very good coffee.)

This is a local chain, with similar places around the city, but the people who work here and drink coffee here keep it unique. The little wooden tables by the windows, right on the sidewalks, where you can watch various passersby and clomping donkeys hauling loads of visitors, are also a plus. I have been here in August, in the air conditioning when the French Quarter is sparsely populated, and I have been here in better weather, when tourists crowd up the place (many of them seem to have "Iowa" all over them — corn-fed Americans carrying cameras). This is a great place to sip a coffee while reading a book, looking at the people and at the Quarter. This evening, though, C.C.’s is closed.

I turn to the oddly quiet street. The Quarter always has a ghostly aspect to it, especially in the evenings, with so much secrecy back in those shadows, but now it seems as though the ghosts may have taken over. These unpeopled streets, boarded up and abandoned, seem to hold another life, as if remnants of those who have left still linger along the sidewalks.

Zott’s is the next stop, just outside of the Quarter — down some dark streets —to the Marigny. It is an uninviting place, with a few steps leading to a rickety door. This evening a wooden board is half nailed up on the door, sort of hanging over the window. Inside there is a small front room, with a coffee counter and one table, always occupied. Dark or torn clothes, anti-social hair. It looks like a punk gathering place, or some sort of lesbian resentment center. Piercings and tattoos in most available places. The people at that one table always seem to be hunched over, as if covering something up. They are so against the norm, so instinctively against the mainstream, that I want to join them. I want to hunch over something with them. They look up as if to assure me that I do not belong.

“We are definitely the last place open for coffee,” the blue-haired woman behind the counter tells me.

A black tank top, a silver sliver of a ring through her pale navel. A drill and a few other tools lying about. “We are going to close up soon, but you can get something to go.”

I sense, from the unmoving people at the front table, that they will soon be boarded in, riding out Ivan with plenty of coffee.

I get an ice coffee. I have learned to drink ice coffee while living in New Orleans, because most of the year the hot stuff makes me drip like Frosty in the greenhouse. Many places are able to add enough ice to cool down the

drink while maintaining the coffee flavor. Zott’s ice coffee, however, is filled over the brim with ice, so that very soon the cup seems to hold as much cold water as coffee. It does not quite satisfy the coffee craving, but it is so much better than nothing.

***

The next morning Ivan is still threatening this city. The weathermen are explaining worst-case scenarios, the eye of the hurricane headed toward the mouth of the Mississippi, Ivan traveling right up the river, broken levees, uncontrollable floods. Many of these weathermen seem to enjoy the excitement. One idiot even says that we could be the next City of Atlantis.

I head to a Holiday Inn at the other end of the Quarter, just to escape my ground level apartment. Ivan is predicted to hit tonight. While waiting for the room, I again wander the emptied streets, with only a few stray people. Even the ghosts are behind boards now. The sky is large and still, cloudless. The great character of the Quarter is temporarily shut down.

Across Canal Street, just outside of the Quarter, I find a Starbuck’s. Starbuck’s is not permitted inside of the Quarter, probably because they threaten to devour the place as much as Ivan does. There are at least three Starbuck’s on the fringe of the Quarter, one street away, as if pushing to get in. As if stalking the local coffee places. (There is a former coffee shop nearby in the Quarter, now dusty and lifeless, Rue de la Course, across the street from one of these surfeitless beasts.) I drink the coffee of this evil corporation — this monstrous machine of monotony — for over three hours (a nicely mixed ice coffee) while reading in the comfortable Sheraton lobby.

People are reading, talking, milling about in this big lobby, but all anyone is really doing is waiting for Ivan.

***

My final hours of anticipation are spent in a Holiday Inn room — no coffee, no bar. Only a window, a TV and a book. There is a citywide curfew beginning in early afternoon. From my twelfth-floor window I watch police cars cruising to assure that the streets are empty. I can see some strip club lights on Bourbon street, garishly flashing to no one. There is a hideous sense that those lights are the only life left on that street.

Later I see clouds circling, looking ominously like the hurricane clouds circling on TV. Winds rattle the window.

As evening turns to night, all of the local channels show Ivan approaching, approaching, then — at the last second — turning to Mississippi.

I go to sleep, knowing that Ivan will miss New Orleans.

***

The next morning no one knows what to feel. Happy that we are still standing and our neighboring state was smashed? Disappointed that after all that anticipation there was nothing? Didn’t we want at least a little destruction? Something to talk about? Something to clean up? There had been so much promise, after all. People feel relieved, empty.

I see only one broken street light on the walk back to my apartment, less damage than on many a French Quarter night.

The city is gradually crawling back to life. Slowly unboarding. Looking over the lack of damage.

The quest for coffee comes to mind. C.C.’s is still closed. A few people are walking around — stunned by this momentous nothing.

I walk to another coffee shop, on Decatur, closed; try another on Frenchmen, closed. A man sweeps where nothing needs to be swept. I have taken a round about way to Zott’s. And Zott’s is … open.

A purple-haired human serves the coffee. The mood seems not to have changed inside Zott’s, except that the sun now shines and the boards are gone. Similarly hunkered people surround the front table. This little place, so far from the norm, is the first to open, the first to get the necessary coffee out to the undestroyed city. There it is — the ice over the brim, the soon watery coffee. So much better than nothing.

***

When New Orleans returned to normal, in another day or two, I did not return to Zott’s. My regular place has better coffee, better sidewalk watching. And since that non-hurricane, Zott’s has closed. I don’t know where I will get coffee before and after the next threat. I might have to make it at home. How dull.

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