Oak Street - Rue de la Course

You can usually learn a lot about a neighborhood - and city - by its coffee shops.

One of my older stomping grounds of Chinatown in Washington, DC literally had five Starbucks within a few blocks of my apartment.  Translation - yuppie central.  Near my mom's home in Birmingham, AL, the only local coffee shop is housed inside a Barnes & Noble found in a strip mall.  Translation - hello suburbs.

Here in Uptown on the corner of Oak St. and Carrollton lives Rue de la Course.  Many people argue that PJ's has better coffee, and that may be true depending on your tastes.  But what Rue de la Course does have is a great location and vibe.  This coffee shop is not part of a world-wide chain, housed in a Borders, or shoved into some strip mall.  Like many New Orleans establishments that have kept the class and dignity that comes with preserving older architecture, Rue de la Course has taken what used to be a bank and converted it into a coffee shop.  In a past life, this location was the Carrollton branch of the locally owned Canal Bank which went out of business in the 1930's, went through several other iterations as banks, before shifting to retail and now a coffee house.

Rue de la Course has a great aura as a result of its vaulted ceilings and antiquated interior.   It also seems to draw in a mixture of the young professional crowd grabbing a pick-me-up and also some of the more bohemian/hipster crowd as well.  While inside this morning, I snapped a quick photo of this guy rocking a badass top-hat, but I was unable to grab him to talk before he ran off.  He looked like he belonged in a magic show, though I would guess that this is just how he rolls.

Laissez les bon temps rouler.