These Waters Run Deep

Kirsten and I went to the Taste of Soulard pre-Mardi Gras event this Saturday, basically running around like idiots in 10-degree weather trying to decide weather we wanted shrimp remoulade or crawfish etouffe (neither; we had kielbasa jambalaya). Until last year, when we went to Taste of Soulard for the first time, I'd known Soulard was a culturally important part of town, and a historical district. I'd assumed that there were building codes (there are, but I won't post them because they're about 400 pages long).

But I don't think I'd really realized quite how ingrained the creole culture is in Soulard until this weekend. It's sort of like how you see all these movies about poor southern white folk, and you say, "Yeah, but that's just a Hollywood stereotype," but then you're driving in the back hills of Alabama and you realize how spot-on stereotypes can sometimes be.

Saturday, during our excursion, Kirsten and I stopped at the Soulard Farmers market - her for flowers, me for place to answer the call of nature.

Normally, in a urinal, one finds a flavored mint (for the love of God, don't eat it), a cage to hold said mint, and maybe some cigarette butts from folks who can't stop smoking long enough to take a leak.

Mine didn't have any of those things...instead, I saw a half-chewed crawfish claw.

God bless St. Louis.