laststandonzombieisland

Living just an hour from New Orleans, the wife and I tend to day trip it frequently and have a list of haunts we stop in at.

Last weekend, being great weather (60-70 degrees, unlimited visibility), in need of some R&R time after a week in Vegas for SHOT, and a week before New Orleans is slammed by the Superbowl and the start of the larger Mardi Gras parades, seemed good timing.

The city was the cleanest I’ve seen in a long time, with seemingly every other building in the high-traffic touristy areas catching a new coat of paint. Also lots of new barricades and bollards, and a larger LE presence, specifically Orleans Parish S.O., for obvious reasons.

Plus, I was able to check in at a few of my favorite antique stores in the area and pick up several WWII-Cold War vintage French Foreign Legion badges, a familiar site in the city, and a couple of 54mm Wheat’s Tiger Rifles (1st Louisiana Special Battalion Zouaves), the latter from the Black Butterfly on Royal Street.

I don’t collect lead soldiers, but I do like the Tigers as I haven’t seen them anywhere else (they are made by a local hobbyist for the Black Butterfly) and Wheat’s motley crew of Zouaves certainly had one of the more colorful backstories.