Escape Gentrification New Orleans By Thinking Outside the Box

Dorise's place near Franklin and Claremont gives you the real New Orleans experience. So it's just outside the gentrification along St Claude. So what is gentrification good for but lightening your pocketbook? Walk along a boulevard of old Live Oaks less than a half mile and arrive at St Claude near St. Coffee. Near St Coffee, a really intimate wine bar and bottle shop awaits with fresh baked bread, Louisiana cheeses and wine by the glass for five or six dollars each. Mix and match and have fun. We're not talking some yuppie cheese sampler to loot your wallet but purchase by the pound and slice the bread and cheese yourself. Trader Joe prices keep the soirée going. Enjoy better prices than the lovely St. Roch Market, which is seven-tenths of a mile from Dorise's. But St. Roch Market is so vibrant and so in the key of NOLA's transformation, so go.

From Dorise's, you could throw a rock into the walled St Roch Campo Santo. But don't. You could put up three couples in comfort for the cost of a single in Marigny. If you like to cook late at night, Quicky's gas station has a butcher counter open twenty-four seven selling chicken, pork and Cajun Creole sausages for prices that will make people blink. I think beer is ready to go around the clock too.

The house itself started life as a pure shotgun shack in 1936 and Dorise and her team totally upgraded it. One has to dwell in a shotgun for a few nights just to appreciate the physics of this vernacular architecture. Shotguns keep cooler inside than outside by some magic and have powerful circulation. Dorise's renovation kept all of the pluses and removed many minuses of the form. The house feels solid and secure. Passcode entry on the main entrance and the bedrooms add to the feeling. The heart of pine flooring present could not be harvested from American forests now without great cost. The concrete porch has a feng shui all its own, perfect for porching.

The kitchen has all that's needed to make good use of the soul food butcher at Quicky's. Some of the furnishings have a history but history gives things soul. The tub has cigarette burns on the edges yet the narrow and long tub might make one wish to burn one during a good hot soak. Use a vape because Ms Dorise doesn't allow smoking on her premises.

Dorise communicates well and her team responds to issues rapidly. Draw her into conversation because she's worked real estate magic in New Orleans since Katrina passed through. She knows how it's done.

It is bittersweet to praise this property so highly because I'll never see that introductory deal again.

WanderingWilbo is written by Wilbo in response to his travels for business and pleasure.