They paved over Tastee Donut. They're putting up a parking lot.

When I first moved to this city, my trusty guide Christophe was constantly filling my head with New Orleans facts and 'firsts,' many of which I questioned because they seemed so absurd: "This was the country's first convenient store..." or "This Popeyes here, this one is the best," he would tell me, and I'd wonder aloud where he came up with the stuff. But as I came to know the city better, I came to understand that he was usually telling the truth, or some slightly embellished version of it, and I wished I'd been writing it all down.

Today I'm trying to remember what he told me about some famous-in-New-Orleans musician who penned some great jazz number at the Tastee Donut on Prytania St. (renamed the Tastee Restaurant in 1991), because on my way to work the other day, I watched them tear the whole thing down. Apparently Touro Infirmary is building a parking garage there.

Of course, this kind of thing happens all the time in other places, and has been happening here for the past two years. But it stopped me in my tracks to see this thing gone missing -- a pile of rubble was all that was left, and by now probably that too has been cleared.

I hope somebody knows what happened there. I hope somebody bothered to write it down.