Best products from r/NewOrleans

I wrote a guide book, New Orleans for Free (http://www.amazon.com/New-Orleans-Free-Paul-Oswell-ebook/dp/B00IPQTR1O/).

Here's the free food chapter. For free.

Free game day food
Sports fans, you are the luckiest people in town, because come the days when the New Orleans Saints are playing, lots of bars roll out the free snacks in order to get you to sit and drink for three hours. Again, it’s a rare neighbourhood bar that doesn’t offer SOMETHING in the way of culinary refreshments as they cheer on the black and gold, but among the most celebrated are:
Pal’s Lounge
Not only does this Mid City favourite offer free bar food (such as hot dogs and chilli) on game days (including the bigger college ball games), but it also has free red beans and rice on Monday nights (949 Rendon Street, 504-488-7257, www.palslounge.com).
Henry’s Uptown Bar
Known as something of a quintessential locals bar, it also offers free BBQ during Saints games (5101 Magazine Street, 504-324-8140).
NOLA Brewing Co. Tap Room
This dog-friendly bar has some great free jambalaya when you buy a drink during Saints games (3001 Tchoupitoulas Steet, 504-301-0117, www.nolabrewing.com).
Robert’s Bar
The free ping-pong and pool tables draw a loyal student crowd, and locals join them in numbers for the free barbecue on game days (3125 Calhoun Street, 504- -866-9121).
Kingpin
Not only is there the requisite free game day food at this Elvis-themed bar, but on Friday and Saturday night, cheap food trucks stop by (1307 Lyons Street, 504-891-2373, www.kingpinbar.com).
Finn Mccools Irish Pub
Traditional free game day food, but with the twist of it being more of a pot luck, where the locals bring their own dished to share. Buy your bar neighbour a drink and they’ll likely let you have your fill of whatever it was they bought. If you want to get creative, you can win a free bar tab if you bring a dish and it’s chosen as the best of the day (3701 Banks Street, 504-486-9080, www.finnmccools.com).
“We love visiting sports fans, but use your common sense. Try not to loudly berate the locals in their own bars. We’re all for some sporting banter, but remember you’re a visitor and don’t get aggressively competitive. We drink as much when we lose as when we win, and we’ll mostly be great sports about it.”

General free food
Even if you’re not a sports fan – and we understand that at least SOME people of this persuasion exist in this city – you can pick up some great free food if you’re happy to patronise the right establishment on the right night. Again, you’re likely to have to shell out for the odd drink, but we think you’re still getting a great deal of free hospitality. The following were all on offer at the time of writing – if you’re making a special trip then of course it makes sense to call ahead and check, because things can change fast here (sometimes, at least…).
Handsome Willy's

There’s a pretty good revolving choice of free food every Friday night, coinciding with Happy Hour, which is 5pm-9pm. Expect BBQ, burgers, tacos, etc. (218 S. Robertson Street, 504-525-0377, www.handsomewillys.com).

Mick's Irish Pub

A wealth of free food happens here, starting with traditional rice and beans on Mondays, then anything from hot dogs to sandwiches through to Friday. As they like to say: “Weekends, you’re on your own.” (4801 Bienville Street, 504-482-9113, www.mickspub.com)

Rendezvous Tavern

There’s a rare chance to try Indian food in New Orleans here every Sunday afternoon, with spicy curries and exotic sides from local Indian restaurant Nirvana. (3101 Magazine Street, 504-891-1777)

J&J’s Sports Lounge

According to several locals, locals bring free side dishes into the bar at the weekends, and not exclusively for game days, though this is perhaps when the best choice might be found (800 France Street, 504-942-8877).

R Bar
This Marigny staple has regular Free Food Fridays, which can be as exciting as a crawfish boil in season. You’re encouraged to tip the chef. And drink, of course (1431 Royal Street, 504-948-7499)
Le Bon Temp Roule
Locals say head uptown early for the free Friday night oysters as they go pretty quickly. You can stay for the free live music even if you miss out. The seafood comes out at 7pm. (4801 Magazine Street, 504-895-8117)
Banks Street Bar and Grill
“Banks St. Bar has ‘Spaghetti Western Sunday's’. There’s free BBQ, good old school country music played by Ron Hotstream and they show a spaghetti western as they do it.” (4401 Banks Street, 504-486-0258, www.banksstreetbarandgrill.com).
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
If you don’t want to sit in a bar and drink to get free food, then the Sunday Night Love Feast at the local Hare Krishna temple is a free meal for everyone that shows up. Food is served at 5.30pm and there are discussions and prayers from 6pm (2936 Esplanade Avenue, www.iskcon-nola.org).

I just put in a small system with a Reolink RLC-410 camera and I really like the camera. This one is wired, but since you rent, you might want to go wireless--the ones with little wifi antennas that just link up wirelessly to your wifi.

Reolink comes with a phone app that handles up to 16 cameras on your smartphone--I check my property from anywhere over the app whenever I want. I really like it, and the picture quality is awesome, as the Amazon reviews attest. Night vision is awesome, too. The infrared leds illuminate at least 65 feet out. Price isn't bad, either. Wireless will be more. Reolink has them; sorry to sound like a shill.

For recording the footage, I got a Synology NVR 216. A little pricey, but it did what I wanted--record about 2 months worth of 24/7 video feed for liability purposes.

This NVR is "diskless", which means that it comes without hard drives, which have to be purchased separately. I got one 4 TB Western Digital Purple, which is "optimized" for surveillance applications, whatever that means. The system has been recording a single camera's feed basically 24/7 since May 14, and has so far used 586 GB of the 3,000 GB available on this single hard drive, or about 17% of available capacity. Obviously, if you have two cameras, the storage requirement doubles; with four, quadruples. And, yes, I've already purchased another camera. I'll probably have four total, like you, in the future, when my requirements shift from liability to security. This particular NVR holds up to two hard drives, and an expansion kit allows up to 8 more. I really should get at least one more hard drive.

My particular system is currently set up as wired, meaning the camera and NVR are both connected to my wifi access point/router with network patch cables--those ubiquitous ethernet, Cat 5, RG-45 terminated "computer cables" that connect work computers to the jack in the wall, etc.

If you go wireless, especially with four cameras, you'll have to upgrade your local network to gigabit speeds. I should do that, too, and when I do, I'll probably go with a Linksys WRT AC3200. I'm currently running a Linksys WRT-54GL and, frankly, my local LAN bogs down a bit when I stream a movie while the video gear is running (which is all the time).

Guess I'm a bit of a geek. There are actually a lot of people here who are knowledgeable with DIY security CCTVs. I started from zero back in April or May, asked advice here, and actually went with Synology after it was recommended by a regular, here. I'll find that link, later; need to run right now. Update: You'll probably find this link interesting; it's a /r_neworleans thread from six months ago--lot's of perspectives different from my own that may work better for you.

One more thing: I had originally used DHCP to assign IP addresses to the camera and NVR, but the camera kept renewing its lease to a different address, and the NVR stopped recording when it lost the feed. I finally got around to puzzling out how to assign static addresses. Turns out that the WRT software assigns DHCP addresses at 100 and above. So, I just set the camera to 192.168.1.50 and the NVR to 192.168.1.51. Also, the Synology requires port-forwarding to be set up in your router--this was also dead simple. I read documentation for about an hour, then just forwarded some port, I think it was port 5000, in what looked like the right place in the router's set-up software, and it just worked. This way I can access the archive video from my smartphone, as well as the live feed.

I know all this sounds complicated, but it's really not, and there are people here who know this stuff and are more than willing to help out. Also, I know I spent around $1000, which is a lot of money for me. It was hard for me to pull the trigger on all this. But it covers a liability exposure that exceeds my net worth--in other words, an exposure that could force me into bankruptcy. In that light, it was a reasonable price to mitigate a serious risk. I'm satisfied with both the gear and the price.

And since this is /r/NewOrleans and we like to keep it local, check out this good read by Rich Cohen, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King

> When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and a plantation owner. He battled and conquered the United Fruit Company, becoming a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. In Latin America, when people shouted “Yankee, go home!” it was men like Zemurray they had in mind.

> Rich Cohen’s brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a hidden kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary, driven by an indomitable will to succeed. Known as El Amigo, the Gringo, or simply Z, the Banana Man lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments, from feuding with Huey Long to working with the Dulles brothers, Zemurray emerges as an unforgettable figure, connected to the birth of modern American diplomacy, public relations, business, and war—a monumental life that reads like a parable of the American dream.

Gumbo Tales - by Sara Roahan -- The most beautifully written book about New Orleans cuisine I've ever encountered. Hilarious, poignant, reflective, uplifting and sad. Don't read if you're hungry. Or if you're not near food because you will become hungry.

The World that Made New Orleans -- Ned Sublette -- A narrative history book that looks at all the cultures, people, government systems and all the historical events that shaped the formation of New Orleans. Great read, if only for the chapter where the author incredulously wonders why people would argue Thomas Jefferson didn't sleep with his slaves.

Nine Lives - Dan Baum -- An oral history of nine New Orleanians that lived through Hurricane Betsy and Hurricane Katrina. Includes tales from the wife of legendary Mardi Gras Indian Tootie Montana, marching band director Wilbert Rawlins (also featured in "The Whole Gritty City") and the President of the Rex Organization, among others. Beautifully composed and written.

City of Refuge - Tom Piazza -- Historical fiction following a group of people as they recover from Katrina. Looks at people from every walk of life in New Orleans and does a great job of transmitting their individual struggles in the wake of the storm.

New Orleans, Mon Amour -- A collection of writings and short stories about life in New Orleans. Probably the most romanticized of all the books I've listed but no less awesome.

I also have to second the recommendations made for Confederacy of Dunces (one of the funniest, laugh-out-loud books you'll ever read) and the Moviegoer.

(Edit: City of Refuge is fiction)

Will you follow Amazon links? Amazon is MSM, at least as a provider (no original content however). Don't get me started on their "1 click patent" bullshit.

• Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America -- from a previous post. Good background. It was published prior to Katrina.
  
  
• 1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina -- collection of stories from the Times-Picayune (before they became nola.com)
  
  
• The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina--the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist -- author is a civil engineer and looks at the science
  
  
• The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast -- first hand accounts from people on the ground. 700 pages.
  
  These are books that friends and relatives have asked me about which is why I list them. there are many, many more books out there. read some reviews and make up your own mind.

Gumbo Ya-ya gets into the history of certain groups of New Orleans, such as the Creoles, the Cajuns, the Knickerbockers and the like. Has some good old folk tales from New Orleans, as well.
Probably my favorite book about New Orleans (after Confederacy, of course).

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans.

Super engaging books that follows the true stories of 9 New Orleanians from Hurricane Betsy in 1960 through Katrina.
Their stories are intermixed through the book, so you read a chapter or two of one story before swapping to the next.
I think it introduces a lot of New Orleans traditions from a very personal perspective, and I learned a lot (especially about the Mardi Gras Indians).

It’s an easy, quick read and I highly recommend it.

Amazon Link

Unfathomable City is a really cool book. Some interesting maps overlaying various things about New Orleans History accompanied by essays.

Also, a book about the history of our street names: Frenchman Desire Good Children

One of the friends of our group got a DR Heater off of Amazon a few years back. It's a little infrared heater with a thermostat and a remote that is really good at heating up one room or creating this little heat bubble when your next to it. Four more peeps in our group have all gotten the same heater since then and we don't even use the window unit heater anymore. Here is the model we have...

https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Infrared-Heater-Portable-1500-Watt/dp/B002QZ11J6/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=dr+heater&qid=1573769975&sr=8-4

It's not face-to-face, but if online tutorials aren't your thing, I thought this book was pretty good:

https://smile.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Version-Control-Using-Starter/dp/1934356158

Cool, thanks for the rec Jester.

Another couple that I like:

Nine Lives

Managing Ignatius

Some that I love:

• The World That Made New Orleans by Ned Sublette
  
• Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales by Robert Tallant, Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer
  
• New Orleans Then and Now by Richard and Marina Campanella
  
• Eat Dat New Orleans: A Guide to the Unique Food Culture of the Crescent City by Michael Murphy

"Mr. New Orleans" is a pretty entertaining read that may or may not be actual history.

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-New-Orleans-Underworld-Legend/dp/0692237488

this is my mom's favorite gift to buy for my ex's: https://www.amazon.com/Whos-Your-Mama-Catholic-Make/dp/0925417556

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i think she's bought 3 of them so far.

Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children: . . . and Other Streets of New Orleans!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078HG4JBQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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dunno if it works, one way to find out tho and cheaper to try then a dozen fucking camera tickets.

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also not sure how "legal" they are if a state trooper catches you but honestly i would just let them ticket me over the red light/speed cameras.

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America

Link to Rising Tide on Amazon

Here's another great book on that topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702

Have you ever read Managing Ignatius?

Cause it's hilariously awesome.

New Orleans, Mon Amour is really, really, really good. Essays by Andrei Codrescu about the city: https://www.amazon.com/New-Orleans-Mon-Amour-Writings/dp/1565125053

read my book on how to get the "NOLA for Free" book for $0.98


http://www.amazon.com/New-Orleans-For-Free-For-Free-ebook/dp/B00IPQTR1O/

I just read Frency Brouillette's book and there is a lot of JFK talk in there. It's a kinda fun read.

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-New-Orleans-Underworld-Legend/dp/0692237488

> https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702

I'm putting that on my kindle. Thanks for the recc! I recently read 'Devil in the Grove' and 'Warriors Don't Cry,' too. Both really excellent examinations of integration efforts and the criminal justice system during Jim Crow.

You might like this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Frenchmen-Desire-Good-Children-Streets/dp/1565549317/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549598230&sr=8-1&keywords=frenchmen+desire+good+children

Here an Amazon link http://www.amazon.com/World-That-Made-New-Orleans/dp/1556529589/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319134042&sr=1-2-fkmr0

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0925417556

Who's Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make A Roux? (Book 1): A Cajun / Creole Family Album Cookbook