The morning air tastes like salt and smells like sweat, everything outside is soaked with dew. Air drips from the trees onto the blacktop and heaving, broken sidewalks along Magazine Street, falling slowly like after a heavy rain.
It always sounds like Sunday, low muffled conversations heard up and down the garden lined boulevard, a yappy dog a block away barking at someone dragging garbage cans off the curb and flipping their big plastic lids. Kids playing basketball at the park on the corner, the rhythm of the ball and occasional squeaks of their sneakers rising and lingering in the air. Ears still ringing from the horns and pounding beat of Galactic the night before. Uptown, downtown, and down on the nearby grassy beach along the muddy river, people lounge in the late morning sun. All enjoy the cool respite before the sun turns hotter and cranks up the humidity and everyone seeks shade and a cool breeze. The volume along the street will rise with the heat and ease again at the end of the day, people will sit on their porches and fan themselves, couples will sit at sidewalk cafes and sip a Sazerac, maybe share a beignet, all knowing another Morning on Magazine is just a few hours away.
Wonderful. What a sense of place and respite after activity. That first paragraph sets it up brilliantly.
Ah, NOLA! I can feel it, smell it, taste it in your words. One of my all-time favorite cities!