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Reconsidering New Year’s Eve

by Dave HoekstraDecember 23, 2010

Meeting Black Elvis, New Year’s Eve 1987.

Dec. 23, 2010—

New Year’s Eve.
Where do I begin?
That’s what New Year’s Day is about, right?
I’m getting the feeling this New Year’s Eve will be like New Year’s Eve 1998. My Chicago friends Bob and Cleo met me at the Snow Flake Lounge, a tiny bar adjacent to the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Snow Flake Motel south of St. Joseph, Mich.

A local Elvis Presley and Patsy Cline husband-and-wife team hosted a karaoke party. Bob and Cleo were staying with some friends.
I stayed at the Snow Flake, where my one-light bulb room had minimal heat and a mattress that was crazy hard.
The lounge was packed with locals on a snowy night. “Elvis” went off the rails to cover Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson and even Faron Young’s “Hello Walls” while always sounding like a profound Elvis.

The Snow Flake was built in 1962. Wright died in 1959. The roadside motel’s plans were completed by William Wesley Peters, Wright’s chief apprentice and son-in-law. The motel and lounge have since been razed.

Last year I was with my ex-girl friend and her younger sister at a party with a live cumbia band in La Barrona (pop. 900) on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. The doormen packed heat. Dancing abounded. There was a glorious fireworks show and cold Gallo beer.
We stayed with her wonderful friends, where our room had minimal heat and a
mattress that was crazy hard.
Her sister and I saw a rat scamper across the dirt floor of the casa, a fact which is still being denied in some quarters. Sometimes you don’t see what’s in front of you.

Jan. 1, 2010. Good morning.

Elvis was also in play when Wendy and I flew to Key West to see Jimmy Buffett and the Neville Brothers in a New Year’s Eve 1987 show in his just-opened Margaritaville Cafe on Duval Street. That’s back when you could make money in journalism. There were only 200 people in the room which gave me ample space to hang out with opening act “The
Black Elvis.”
The bed at the roadside motel on Highway 1-A was just fine.

This year I am staying home.
I will make jambalaya and wander over to the Empty Bottle to catch a Big Freedia “Bounce” set. I think Bob and Cleo will be back in the house.
Big Freedia is the main purveryor of the free-form New Orleans Bounce scene. Bounce has the fast beats of Chicago House, but Freedia (FREE-da) says there is more ass shaking going on in Bounce. We may be an older demographic for this gig, but no more than a night at Archie’s Iowa & Rockwell Tavern in my neighborhood.

The urban Bounce movement began as “Sissy Bounce,” a New Orleans term for biological men with varied and ambigious sexual identities, but “Sissy Bounce” is eschewed by its performers. I do expect fun, especially when Freedia draws from the rhythmic wordplay of some of my favorite 1960s New Orleans R&B artists like Jesse Hill (“Ooo Poo Pah Do”) and Oliver Morgan (“Who Shot the La-La?”).

And I like cooking jambalaya because I can also shoot from the hip.
I have to type this out to remember it: I throw on New Orleans rhythm and blues (soul singer-drag queen Bobby Marchan is in order for Freedia), Cajun music and fire up my kitchen. Sometimes I wear science classroom goggles.

Since it is New Year’s Eve I will add black-eyed peas for good luck, carrots, onions and maybe chickpeas. I use traditional jambalaya meats: andouille sausage and spicy tasso ham, which I find at Paulina Meat Market, 3501 N. Lincoln on the north side of Chicago. At Paulina’s, the tasso ham is dry cured, seasoned and fully cooked.

The ham is what makes my jambalaya different. Paulina Market uses four different peppers in the ham, including cayenne. I always add a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper into my jambalaya just for more kick. Then I’ll spin out to the bottle for a bold dash of bounce. Who knows what might happen? Its just another night.