Swampish Thoughts

Shoeless in Swamp City

2006-10-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Mea Maxissimoso Culpa for leaving either or both of you (previous estimates of readership apparently being off by an order of magnitude) hanging on my tale of Village de L'est. I did make it out there last Wednesday (although I had to break my own rules and take the car -- crossing the twin-span on a bicycle being akin to crossing the runway at LAX on a pogo-stick and therefore more befitting a Super Dave stunt than something I'd really be interested in doing, even for your sake, my blogospherical confreres). And I paid a follow-up visit over the weekend, dragging the wife along to sample some of the much-touted Vietnamese food out there. Alas, I've been too swamped (get it? no, I'm not above that) with work this week to upload the photos and type the tale. And in a tragic happenstance reminiscent of young Hemingway in Paris, I lost the little notebook I use to capture my impressions. (What, that doesn't remind you of Hemingway? It was a Moleskine, I swear!) So, it looks like I'll just have to wing it. Somehow, I doubt you'll notice the difference.

This is just to say, therefore, in the hallowed phrase of car mechanics everywhere, "'ey, I'm working on it, ok?" And also, I'm not going to be able to do a run this afternoon. I haven't even put the digital ping pong balls in the cybernetic turning cage for this week yet, so how can I possibly have the time to do the extensive historical, geographical, socio-cultural and, let's face it, metaphysical analysis you've come to expect. Plus I've got to get ready to go out of town again.

Anyway, lest it be said that my blog has come to consist of a series of elaborate excuses for not blogging, here's a youtube link that you really need to watch.

Is Libya too far for busing?

2006-10-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

Why I shouldn't read international and local news at the same time:

International: Libyan pupils 'to have laptops'
Local: Problems Plague N.O. Schools Recovery

So, every school-aged child in Libya (LIBYA!) might be getting
a laptop. And here in N.O., the kids don't have books. Or teachers.
Or classrooms.

Hey Professor Negroponte, how 'bout sending some of those lime-green toys
this way?

Off to Village de L'Est this afternoon. I'd better pack a sandwich.

Where I Got Them Shoes: Desire Area Edition

2006-10-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood: Desire Area
Flood Depth: 4-10 ft.
Bar: none
Drink: none

Before the Industrial Canal breached on the Lower 9th side, unleashing the explosive power that levelled block after block of that neighborhood and introduced "the Lower Nine" to a national audience, it breached on the upriver side, shredding the houses and apartment blocks of this neighborhood. The Desire project itself, in the process of being rebuilt before the storm, was shaken apart and soaked through, neither the new nor the old sections left intact. This was a neighborhood that was barely livable before the storm. Not only did it face the interlocking web of problems that gather around poverty, but it contained a Superfund site that activists claim is connected to the unusually high cancer rate in residents. Ringing the residential areas is an industrial corridor that contributes to the feeling of being out on the edge of things here, when really you're only three miles from the French Quarter. For a good introduction to the neighborhood, its residents, and its fate, you might want to check out this article.

Despite seeing the L9, Lakeview, and St. Bernard (both the parish and the housing project), I was ill-prepared for the devastation here. I guess I figured that, having seen the worst, nothing could surprise me now. I crossed the railroad overpass on Almonaster and headed up to Higgins, which would take me to the heart of the neighborhood. An electric transfer station hummed ominously; all else was still. There at the corner of Almonaster I had my first taste of the wreckage, a house completely caved in, a plastic chair in an upper room the only
immediately recognizable effect of the former inhabitants.

And it continued like this, for block after block after block. The only sign of repair seemed to be the occasional blue-tarped roof, long past its interim period of usefulness. The Desire project itself was deserted, save a single FEMA trailer. An entire exterior wall had been shorn away from a two-story apartment building. A statue of the Virgin Mary still stood before one of the apartments, abandoned and neck-deep in weeds. The only activity resembling recovery: a maintenance man running a weed wacker between sidewalk and street, cigarette dangling from his mouth, behind him, the school dark and deserted. As I passed by, he stopped his trimmer so that I wouldn't be blasted by severed weed tops, and he mumbled an apology. A heady whiff of pot smoke told me that that wasn't a cigarette in his mouth. Didn't seem like a bad idea, given the situation.

So far, these weekly treks haven't exactly been uplifting experiences. The luck of the draw has sent me to or through some of the worst-suffering neighborhoods in the city. Now, that either says something about the extent of the damage and the lack of progress or it says something about my luck. The former is definitely true, but I'm staying away from casinos just in case.

For the most part, Desire lacked even the smiles and waves I had seen from FEMA trailer residents in the St. Bernard area. It even lacked the FEMA trailers. But then, at the end of a block, I happened upon a cluster of six houses, all either repaired or undergoing repairs, four of them with FEMA trailers in the yard. I stopped to chat with one of the residents who was waxing his pristine red pickup. "Oh, we're coming back." He assured me. And he ticked off the names of each of his neighbors who was back, pointing out that nearly every house on his block had already been gutted. "They're just waiting on the money, you know. It's slow, but they're coming. By this time next year, I think we'll all be back."

There were three houses on the block too damaged to be repaired. Those, he assured me, would be torn down and rebuilt. Beside the row of repaired houses across the street was one still abandoned. On the plywood that still covered the front window, someone had spray painted, beside and partially covering the black search-team markings: "Do Not Bulldos Mr. Presiden." Apparently they ran out of space, but we get the message.

I headed up Almonaster to look for a seafood restaurant I'd found in the open restaurant listings. On the way, I passed a makeshift RV campground that had taken over a wide, curved section of the neutral ground. Three battered Winnebagos sat beside two truck campers, the kind usually attached over the bed of trucks, but here resting on cinder blocks. The campers were a rough looking bunch--mountain man beards and beer guts, relaxing in lawn chairs around a hibachi pit--and I figured they were a group of the storm chasers who've been amassing here, laborers and roustabouts who came looking for work from employers in need who may not ask too many questions.

The restaurant, "St. Roch Kitchen #2" (which, I assume, is owned by the same Vietnamese family that ran the seafood market and creole/asian plate lunch restaurant in the historic St. Roch Market near my house--either that or somebody is courting a lawsuit), was closed. Toddlers played inside while their older brothers mopped up and put the food away. I took a few turns around the Gentilly edge of the neighborhood but could find neither food nor drink at 7 p.m. So, glumly, I headed home.

Down on St. Claude, I decided to lift my spirits by enjoying one of the undeniable benefits Katrina's wake has brought us: the taco trucks. If you live in the Southwest, you're already privy to the wonders of the taco truck, but they are a new emergence on the culinary scene of New Orleans, arriving with the waves of hispanic workers who are doing the lion's share of the gutting and roofing and sheetrocking around town. These rolling restaurants, portable taquerias in delivery trucks, have set up shop on the parking lots of gas stations and building material suppliers. Like a spicy version of the ice cream man. My nearest truck is Taqueria Las Cazuelas. I was mentally practicing to order in Spanish until the grandmotherly proprietor greeted me with "How are you tonight?" Watching her prepare my tacos, I was struck by the unmistakeable care she showed: lime wedges cut on the spot, shredded lettuce artfully arranged, sauce and salt containers set in counterbalance to the two lime wedges, the plate carefully wrapped in aluminum foil. It was the antithesis of the distracted, rushed, slightly annoyed manner of the typical fast-food worker. The tacos were first rate, and the sauce--an edgy burn around the lips lent character and nuance by cilantro and tomatoes chopped infintely fine--is calling me back as I write this.

O Madonna of the Cazeulas, our Lady of the Double Tortilla:
wield your saute pan of mercy and dispense the balm of your chopped cilantro.
Fortify your faithful that they may vanquish the night of the blue roof.
And intercede for us with your Patron, who has granted us your vision as a sign of our renewal.
Amen.

TFW: Terribly Foolish Words

2006-10-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry, but I just have to get this off my chest. The TFW spray painted on a huge number of New Orleans houses by the search teams does not stand for "toxic flood water," as claimed here, here, here, here, here, and just about every other blog entry that a college student who spent his or her spring break in the L9 has made. Kids, thanks for coming, really, and please come back. But would you quit it with the Toxic Flood Water talk? Please?

First, it can't mean that. My house didn't flood; none of the houses riverside of mine flooded, and yet TFW is as common as TX-1 on the houses around ours, houses that all remained dry. Either TFW means something close to TX-1 (designation of the military unit making the search, which is where I'll put my money) or the rescuers decided to err on the side of caution and simply label everything in sight as potentially hazardous and uninhabitable. Which seems more likely to you?

Second, it's an especially unlikely abbreviation. It's along the lines of those "Fornicating Under Consent of the King" kind of urban legends, folk etymology taken as fact. "Toxic Flood Water?" Really? Why not just "TW" then? Or "TF"? If the flood water was toxic, then it's redundant to spray it on every single house. As far as I know every house that flooded on a block was pretty much flooded by the same water, toxic or not. And besides, there was already a pretty clear mark on the houses that flooded; no spray-painting necessary to let you know about that, thank you.

I was relieved to see that blogger Matt Robinson offers a much more likely origin, and a CNN correspondent confirms it. I'll admit that neither of these is a definitive explanation or an authoritative source (a key to the markings of our houses would have been a nice addition to the paperwork tacked on our doors when we returned). But they're both a good sight more convincing than Toxic Flood Water. Sheesh.

Okay, I feel better. Sorry I had to do that.

Visited Desire Area this evening. I'll fill you in later.

Oh, and the OED suggests ME. type fuken; others, Dutch, fokken, in case you were wondering.

Once Upon a Time in the Projects

2006-10-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

So, the fates and the GNOCDC map have conspired to send me back to the projects (or at least the area around a project). This week's flavor: Desire. I know that Desire was in the process of being rebuilt before the storm, but I have no idea what it's like now. Guess I'll find out.

All those railroad tracks surrounding the neighborhood make me think that, this time, I'd better take a little more care with the route.

Cowboys and Convicts

2006-10-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

When we were living in New York, my wife took to answering the question of how we met with the immediate and unblinking response, "prison rodeo." Fellow expat Southerners seemed to find this the most deliciously outrageous thing they'd ever heard. Non-Southerners, on the other hand, were often given a bit more pause. While not technically true (and by "technically" here I mean, "in any way resembling what is actually"), this response created an air of absurdity and strangeness that seemed about right for a couple from Louisiana. It's hard to think of two words that, yoked together, could produce a more curious setting or evoke a thicker fog of assumptions--a sort of short-hand cultural Rorschach test.

This past weekend, we finally got around to attending the famous rodeo at the Angola Louisiana State Penitentiary. It's something I've always wanted to do, particularly after reading Daniel Bergner's God of the Rodeo. If you know nothing at all about the Angola Prison Rodeo, a quick glance at the list of events is a good start. But you should also be aware that these events take place within a county-fair atmosphere: rides for the kids, dozens of food booths, and hundreds of craft stalls in which the inmates sell their handiwork. And the larger setting is "8,000 acres of the finest farm land in the south," accoding to the prison website. "The Farm," as the prison is commonly known, is indeed a massive working farm and ranch spread over gentle hills and manicured drives, a gorgeous setting when not viewed through razor wire. It is also the largest maximum-security prison in the U.S., a place in which (again according to the official website), "86% are violent offenders. Fifty-two percent (52%) of the inmate population are serving a life sentence and will never be released from prison." Okay, now imagine the county fair there again, kids with snow-cones, adults haggling for fine woodwork (rocking chairs, armoires, gun cabinets, toy trains and trucks) with inmates who stand behind a chain-link fence, just behind the tables on which their crafts are displayed. Add to that some novice bull-riding, the "inmate poker" game--inmates seated around a card table with playing cards in their hands who play a game of chicken with a wild bull loosed into the ring and taunted by the rodeo clowns into charging the table; last inmate still seated with his cards wins--and you have some idea just how surreal this event is.

The prison rodeo bears about the same relation to a professional rodeo that the tough-man contest bears to professional boxing, and it's probably the closest we come to the lesser spectacles of the Roman Coliseum. The day's final event, "Guts or Glory," pits man against animal in a way that taps into some primal neck-hair-tingling fears from deep in the evolutionary memory. A dozen or so inmates all vie for the chance to snatch a poker chip (worth $500) tied to the forehead of a 2,000-lb brahma bull. The bull charges erratically, flinging inmates into the air with a toss of its head, and the helpless contestants go airborn as though thrown by an explosion. A great gasp from the audience, the breath held until the contestant picks himself up from the dirt arena floor and scurries to climb the fence. The difference in scale between a 150-lb man and the mountainous bull is alarming, terryifying, and I must admit, exhilarating.

Many of my friends won't attend a rodeo because they consider it animal cruelty. The inmates have made their own decision, they figure, but any harm that comes to the animals in this display is inexcusable. They needn't have worried Sunday; the animals seemed to get the best of every contest. Serious human injuries were mercifully few, as well. One of the first bareback riders did come down hard on his shoulder and back, though; he wasn't moving when the EMTs hauled him away.

I wondered at the time and still do what exactly to make of the whole affair. The inmates are participating of their own free will (the m.c. on horesback was sure to make that point, when he wasn't engaging in Hee-Haw banter with his counterpart in the announcer's booth). But, honestly, given the prison statistics above, these men were not exactly choosing from a full menu. Life in prison or a quick and glorious exit before a crowd? Not a choice I want. There is, as well, a plainly sadistic element to the events dreamed up particularly for this rodeo. Standard rodeo events such as the "Buddy Pick Up" or even bull riding seem unexceptional beside "Inmate Poker" or "Guts and Glory." Each time the m.c. announced an event "unique to the Angola rodeo," I cringed, knowing I was about to watch something brutal.

And yet, it's impossible to experience the rodeo and not sense the honor that co-exists with the brutality. We saw some incredible acts of courage in that arena, and even if the inmate-cowboys had left behind the better part of valor when they walked into the ring, the indefatigable determination with which they took up these challenges--challenges for which they were ill-equipped and in many cases, it seemed, set up for failure--created a sense of dignity there. I watched a man sit, unflinching in his chair, as a bull lowered its head and smashed to splinters the table at which he was sitting. I saw that same man keep his seat as the bull lowered its head and charged directly into the man's chest. (The warden allowed that this particular inmate, although he was eliminated from the game, should receive $50 for hanging tough.) And the rodeo clowns, the same clowns who taunted the bull into charging the card table, performed extraordinary feats of courage as they turned the attention of enraged bulls on themselves and away from a prone and dazed contestant who had just been thrown. I also saw one of the contestants in the wild-cow milking contest dragged across the arena floor, refusing to let go of the rope, in some impossible hope that he could muscle the cow to a standstill. After the rodeo, I saw this same inmate, his striped prisoner/cowboy shirt streaked with red dirt, step out into the crowd of visitors milling among the crafts (one of the trusted inmates allowed beyond the fences). He was maybe forty, his hair thinning a bit, his mustache thick and dark, his face as filthy as his shirt and deeply lined under the dirt. And he was beaming.

Lafitte est mort. Vive Lafitte!

2006-09-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

Looks like the steel plates are coming down from the Lafitte housing project.
Looks like the Lafitte housing project is coming down with them.

I'm not sure yet how I feel about this development. From the Walmartification of St. Thomas, I think we should learn to be very wary of developers and Big-Idea public housing initiatives. Hell, the history of the superblock public housing trend should in itself make us wary. Across the country, cities have been tearing down their superblock housing for something more livable (often, something resembling what was there before). Whose bright idea was it to create massive blocks of poverty, anyway? I know that, when I saw the banners at the St. Bernard complex, claiming the "right of return," I couldn't help but ask myself, "return to what?" If the only way we can imagine bringing back the residents of these complexes is to put them back in the same substandard, dangerous situations, then that seems to me a dire failure of imagination.

So, on the one hand, a mixed-income development seems to make much more sense. And, on that same hand, the group that is planning the Lafitte redevelopment sounds pretty noble, promising "All 865 residents/families will be welcomed back. Additionally, we have a commitment for a one-for-one replacement of the 896 subsidized units located on the site prior to Katrina." But then, there's that other hand, on which decades of empty promises are stacked like a Dagwood sandwich.

Where I Got Them Shoes: Lakewood Edition

2006-09-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood: Lakewood
Bar: Semolina
Drink: Pinot Noir, Sangria, Piña Colada (blame Lainie)

The Lakewood neighborhood isn't actually near the lake. It also isn't very woody. And, from what I can tell, it isn't really a neighborhood. Apparently, it's one of the many "official" neighborhood names that would make no sense to someone who actually lives in that neighborhood. The people I talked to in this odd uneven paralellogram of earth called their neighborhood Mid-City, a name which, in itself, might be confusing to someone from, say, New York, where Midtown finds itself in the unsurprising space that separates Uptown and Downtown. But to look for Mid-City New Orleans between Downtown and Uptown would be like looking for Madison Square Garden in Madison Square. Mid-City is midway between the river and the lake, lying in casual disregard of the Uptown-Downtown relationship that orients the river-dwellers.

But whoever created the 73 divisions used in the GNOCDC map seems to have approached his or her task with a sense of near-Adamic license, and Lakewood seems to be the rhinoceros of New Orleans neighborhoods, strangely named and oddly shaped. Its sidelines are the 17th St. Canal (border with Jefferson Parish) and the I-10/Pontchartrain Expressway (originally the New Basin Canal). The dominant features are massive cemeteries and the New Orleans Country Club. In addition, the neighborhood is further subdivided by railroad lines and a curve of the interstate. All of which, I'm hoping, excuses the rather embarassing fact that I was effectively lost during much of my visit.

My planned route was simple enough: straight up Canal, left on City Park Blvd., circling the neighborhood by running along the 17th St. Canal up to its upper reach, and then winding through the streets to get a feel of the place. But City Park Blvd. was right-turn only, and every time I tried to make my way back to my original path, it seemed I ran into a new obstacle: the Interstate, a dead end, the railroad tracks. I was riding around singing to myself the old REM tune, "Can't Get There from Here." In the end, I had to double back and be satisfied with seeing only the lower portion of the neighborhood. I'll have to figure out how to get to the upper reaches of "Lakewood" some other time. (Maybe up there they really do call it "Lakewood," after all.)

In addition to the country club and the mammoth Metairie Cemetery (which, as you've probably guessed by now, is not in Metairie), this neighborhood is home to the Longvue House and Gardens, creating a near-contiguous expanse of green space not to be trod upon. Which didn't stop the jogger I saw, in biking shorts and polo shirt with collar turned up, iPod buds in place, setting out along the gravel paths of the cemetery. It did leave me with the continual sense of being on the perimeter, but there were some fairly compelling sights even in the borderland.

One of the things that I found most striking along the route was the direct correlation between the size of a house and the likelihood that its occupants were back in it. The great majority of the stately houses lying between Metairie Cemetery and the canal had lights burning in them. On the front lawns of the few unoccupied ones, FEMA trailers were less likely than port-o-johns for the construction workers. The more modest homes, in the area bounded by the curve of the I-10/I-610 split (which might technically be part of "Navarre," another neighborhood no one seems to have heard of), were even-parts occupied, FEMA-trailered, and ghostly. And a fair number of the houses in each category had "for sale" signs out front. I snapped a photo of a house that seemed to make a definitive statment, "Can't get fooled again." Then there was the neighborhood at the lower edge of the country club. Here, where the smallest houses of the area congregated, I saw fewer FEMA trailers and more remaining debris. It's not that there isn't a general correlation, citywide, between financial status and the chances that you're back (with some major exceptions), it's just that this area provided the handy graphic to go with that data: little green Monopoly house means struggling to get back; big red Monopoly-hotel-sized house means "we're back and love the new kitchen."

By the way, the cemeteries here are "cities of the dead"--to use the goth-club-cum-drama-club tourguide term of choice--just like the more famous St. Louis Cemeteries. But the vaults and monuments in Metairie and Greenwood Cemeteries are much grander. I love the great elk stag standing guard at the Elks club tomb at the gates of Greenwood. But, since biking around cemeteries after dark isn't exactly a hobby for me, I decided it was time to find a drink.

In my quixotic circumnavigation of the neighborhood, I had crossed a number of promising local taverns, but none of them appeared to lie within the bounds of the Lakewood neighborhood as defined by my trusty map. Under the shadow of the I-10 at Metairie Rd., however, was the lately reopened Semolina pasta restaurant, a place I had heretofore only seen from the vantage of my car at 60 mph. A sense of duty to my self-appointed task combined with the fact that I had skipped dinner seemed to make this place my next logical stop. Now, in another lifetime, when I was living in Baton Rouge, the Semolina franchise there once seemed the height of culinary hipness, their world pasta serving as the culinary equivalent of "world music." So, on minor special occasions (e.g., payday), we would sometimes indulge ourselves by going beyond our usual burger budget and attempt such exotic delicacies as Pad Thai. Since then, Semolina had somewhat fallen in my estimation and had become for me (unfairly, I must admit) a local would-be Applebees. So, to be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this visit.

My visit began unpromisingly enough with an apology from my bartender (later identified as Lainie, accomplice to a more liquid evening than I had anticipated) for the lack of top-shelf booze behind her bar. The bar seemed to have a dispraportionate number of liquors that generally contribute to the psychedelic hue of the Bourbon St. gutter sludge on spring break weekends, bottles whose labels promised unholy infusions or announced the physical repulsion appropriate to their contents ("Pucker?" Espresso-laced vodkas? (yes, "vodkas," plural)). So, I decided to play nice with a glass of Pinot Noir and a plate of shrimp portofino over linguine (which turned out to be a succulent treat).

If my embarrasing failure to navigate the neighborhood had not been humbling enough, Lainie's contention that I was still a tourist in New Orleans (because I haven't lived here 10 years yet) certainly sufficed to put me in my place (or make me wonder what that place might be). (Although her residency test--ability to find one's way around on the West Bank--did seem a bit arbitrary.) I asked her how the neighborhood fared during the storm: "Well, we had water everywhere. We were living in Venice for three days, I always tell people." Apparently she and her boyfriend, both bartenders in town, had loaded up on ice from their respective bars, stockpiled food in the deep freeze, filled the bathtubs with water, and rode out the storm. Surrounded by water, they grilled out, lit mosquito coils, and waited for the flood waters to subside. "We'd see the police coming by in boats, and they'd call out, 'Y'all need anything?' And we'd say, 'No, thanks. Y'all want something to eat?'" And, according to Lainie, everything was fine until they were forced to evacuate, when they spent two nights sleeping out on the I-10 by the Kenner Galleria, suffering sunburn and dehydration while awaiting a bus that would accept them with Laine's three dogs, one 17 (with two teeth, she says), one 12, and one year-old puppy. Eventually, they were picked up, but they weren't allowed to stop in Baton Rouge (where she has a brother). Instead, they were forced on to Houston, where they had to rent a house until they could get back into the city.

In the middle of her story, a waitress named Gabriella came over to the bar and insisted on watching "America's Next Top Model" on the bar television. She solicited opinions from fellow waitstaff as to whether she should attempt Tyra Banks's latest hairstyle. Lainie wondered aloud whether she should be tending to her tables, but Gabriella insisted, "Hey, I'm doing them a favor." ("Them" apparently meaning the management.) "You're doing them a favor by watching 'Top Model?'" "Girl, I'm doing them a favor by being here. They know I don't work on Wednesdays when my 'Top Model' is on."

Gabriella was slim and sassy with sculpted, high-fashion makeup, but I kept finding myself looking at her hands and wondering if maybe . . . if maybe she was only a part-time female. Lainie quickly cleared that up for me before I could find a way to phrase it: "All my gay friends just love that show. Particularly the ones who do drag." And maybe it was just the effect of the series of lagniappe drinks that somehow found their way in front of me (the first, a glass of red Sangria mistakenly poured for a customer who had ordered white sangria--something none of us at the bar had ever seen), but whatever the reason, I immediately became quite fond of the place. Watching Gabriella go about her shift reminded me that, even at its outer reaches, New Orleans is still New Orleans.

I took Lainie's advice and headed home via Esplanade, rather than Canal. It was one of the handful of temperate nights we get each year, and the city's wild and distinctive odors spread out along the night air, each waiting to ambush my senses. From the fungal, fetid dankness of rotting sheetrock to the seductions of night blooming jasmine, I could mark my progress (and the city's, it seemed) nearly by scent alone. Down by Port of Call, I passed a couple skirting a tiff: he hung back, an "aw-baby" sheepishness in his step and on his face; she strode ahead, knowing he was coming after, knowing he'd better be coming after. And half a block past them, her perfume caught up with me, stronger than the jasmine, and I thought I felt some hint of her sway.

Down on Frenchmen, every bar had a band worth seeing. I peeked in at Walter Wolfman Washington before checking out my friend Sticky-T's all-girl blues band. When I finally decided to call it a night, the girls were playing "Don't Advertise Your Pain," and I wasn't feeling any.

Back to the Lake

2006-09-26T15:27:00.001-07:00

Pulled a number from the electronic hat: it's off to Lakewood tomorrow.
Starting to seem like a conspiracy to get me out to the farthest reaches of
Orleans Parish.

Oh, and by the way: Who dat?

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

2006-09-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the anniversary of Hurricane Rita. (On an inconsequential note, it was also the anniversary of my first post on this site. Rita received slightly more national attention.) On hearing that the commemoration would include a cattle drive in Cameron, led by General Honore, I knew right away that I had to be there. To be honest, I thought maybe I could put together a longer piece tying together stories of Rita and stories of Katrina, looking at the events of the past year in a larger essay about the two very different communities affected by the storms of '05. I was hoping, immodestly, that I might even be able to sell such a piece (now, the four of you know you're my only real readers, but I have to admit that I do sometimes fantasize about seeing other people; it's not cheating if it's just in my head, right?). Alas, the longer piece was not to be (at least not yet), so you'll have to settle for my vague impressions in this forum. Tant pis.

The cattle drive was scheduled for 9 a.m., at the corner of Trosclair and Jimmy Savoie roads. When I asked directions, my father told me just to go to the end of the earth and hang a right, which ended up being surprisingly accurate.

Cameron is due south of Lake Charles, which is where I grew up. It's the Parish seat for Cameron Parish, the largest parish in Louisiana, running along much of the western Gulf Coast of the state. The people of Cameron Parish are largely fishers and shrimpers, oil and gas workers, cattle ranchers and farmers. As I drove down from Lake Charles, I was having a hard time imagining these people at the center of a national media event. I needn't have worried.

I stopped at the Boone's Corner convenience store for my morning coffee. Several older guys in camouflage baseball caps were milling about, heckling each other and the bemused woman behind the counter:
"You going down there?"
"Yeah, he's going. He's gotta talk to the governor."
"Gonna get you a free hotdog?"
"I got some ducks to pick up. That's the only reason I'm going."

Clearly these were men with a proper sense of perspective.

Along the route, the marshy prairies stretched out low and wet and wide, and I remembered taking long drives out along these roads to work off some of my teenage angst. Not many buildings on the horizon, but then there never were that many buildings to be seen here. Where there had been homes, though, now there were only slabs or piers. On empty lot after empty lot, only the concrete steps the once led to the front porch remained. By some estimates, as many as 90% of the homes here were destroyed. If you want a strong visual, check out the beach photos from what was once the Cajun Riviera, Holly Beach. Acres of beachfront camps were tossed aside, disappearing in the marshes or raked back into the gulf. I once spent a 4th of July down at Holly Beach, swimming and crabbing, setting off bottle rockets. I remember a parking lot full of pickup trucks parked around a local bar, the cajun crowd overflowing into the lot, supplementing the music from the bar with their truck radios. The good news, which I heard repeated everywhere I went, was that there were no reported deaths resulting from Rita. The people of Cameron had learned the lessons of Katrina and had mostly wisely evacuated.

The riders were already gathering at the starting point when I arrived. There must have been 70 people of all ages on horses of varying ages and condition, warming up for the ride. A three-year-old girl rode in front of her mother. An eight-year-old had her own mount. Everyone, it seemed, wore cowboy boots, some tucked under pant legs, others, knee high, pants tucked in. I saw four or five different kinds of spurs.

The serious cattle handlers were taking their horses through their paces: a rider would suddenly make a quick dash near the cattle pen and then swing the horse around, pulling up. The true cattle horses were wild-eyed with excitement, and they whinnied from time to time all around. Ernest Broussard, the trail boss, looked the part. A big man on the ground, he's a giant on horseback, and everyone looked to him for direction. He wore a shirt advertising his rodeo credentials and a pair of the tallest boots around, and he scared the hell out of me when he dashed by, just a foot away, warming up his restless horse.

Not a single journalist was on hand for the start, although some local newspaper and t.v. reporters did show up eventually, and I saw an AP photagrapher from New Orleans later in the day. A woman with a camera asked me who I was "with." I stammered something about being an "independent journalist," which is one of the more ludicrous phrases to pass my lips in some time.

Soon the politicians began showing up: Governor Blanco, wearing flower-embroidered jeans and looking more than a little awkard in a tiny leather hat with chin tie. Her ass-skyward mount into the saddle was less than graceful, but once up there she seemed to know what she was doing. Mary Landrieu arrived in double denim and hopped on a speckled horse like she'd been doing it all her life. Then Mitch Landrieu showed up with General Honore. People largely ignored the politicians, but everyone wanted to shake Honore's hand, have a picture taken with him, tell him how much good he had done for the people there. I overheard one man telling him, "You may not remember, but that night you asked me what we needed, and I said we needed some helicopters. You turned to the guy next to you and said, 'Got that, Ford? We need two 'hooks, a Black Hawk . . .' The next morning by 9:30 it looked like Iwo Jima out there. We saved 2, 3 thousand head of cattle because of that.'" Honore was given a horse named Preacher, and he took him through a couple of parade turns before lining up with the others. Later I saw the mayor of Lake Charles on horseback, looking like a man who often wears cowboy boots on his day off. I overheard someone ask if "Chairman Powell," the Bush Administration representative for the recovery, had found a horse yet. "Yeah, he's on, but he's never ridden." David Vitter was at the ceremony at the end, but I don't think he rode--I didn't see him on the trail, and he was wearing the standard Republican casual, loafers and blue button-down, when I did see him on stage.

Fortunately, the parade of politicos headed up the drive, with the real riders hanging behind and actually managing the cattle. Being horseless, I was relegated to the rear in my Jeep. As soon as the politicians had cleared out, the gate to the pen was opened, and the cattle--horns long and short, stretched out wide or curving down--began to trot out. Almost immediately, one of the steers broke from the herd, tearing across the Trosclair Road and through the tall swamp grass on the other side. Three of the cowboys headed after it, lassos at the ready. As they circled around, disappearing in the swamp grass, the steer lurched up from the ditch and barrelled across the road just in front of my Jeep. A cowboy yelled, "Ho!" and crashed out after it, finally throwing a rope over it and bringing it in.

I must admit, this was a bit more excitement than I had expected. For better or worse, though, that was the full extent of interest for the day. After a half-hour ride that went two miles down the road, we arrived at the tents and stage for the official event, sponsored by Shell Oil and America's Wetlands. About as many people showed up for the staged event as actually participated in the cattle drive itself, and they seemed none too impressed by the speeches. I saw one woman at the drive with a poster, "I lost my cows, so I don't need your bull." Fair enough.

The politicians said what needed to be said. They made a fairly strong economic argument for restoring the Gulf Coast. But of course, they were preaching to the choir. They mentioned the staggering material losses--20-30,000 head of cattle, 80-90% of the structures--and were thankful that no lives were lost. General Honore addressed the crowd in French and said it was good to be home. I lasted through most of the speeches, ate my free hamburger, and headed back to New Orleans.

On the way back to Lake Charles, I stopped off to look at a house where I had spent part of my childhood. (You probably won't believe me, but it was just off Black Bayou. I come by my blogger name honestly.) The old clapboard house was gone, and in its place was a half-finished McMansion, straight out of the suburbs. Tant pis, indeed.

Where I Got Them Shoes: St. Bernard Area Edition

2006-09-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood: St. Bernard Area
Bar: B&L Lounge (not in the St. Bernard Area)
Drink: Gin Tonic, High Life

Empty, empty, empty. That word kept circling through my head as I rode around the neighborhood of the St. Bernard project. One house after another, gutted, abandoned, silent now as they were a year ago. Front doors standing ajar reveal the bones of houses, two-by-four skeletons of dark rooms that left me feeling like a spectator at an autopsy, something simultaneously compromising and clinical. On streets whose names conjur luxury and glamour--Cadillac, Paris--there is instead an oppressive and pervasive torpidity, the weight of destitution.

Where the Lafitte complex seemed fortified against reentry, the St. Bernard project seems forgotten. True, it is shuttered as well, and metal plates do cover some of the windows and doors, but far more doors and windows are left wide open, and children's riding toys, bicycles, barbecue pits stand where they were one year ago. Inevitably, Pompeii comes to mind.

Back in June, protestors demonstrating for the right of return had set up a "Survivor's Village" on the neutral ground across from the main entrance to the housing complex. The tents they had pitched are now abandoned, the signs and banners left to the weather. Across from the tents and banners, behind the hurricane fence, weeds grow up around the sign marking the St. Bernard complex. Looking at the shells of apartments in this shell of a neighborhood, it's hard to imagine anyone ever returning here, hard to imagine wanting to return. But the call of home has its own ineluctable pull. That much I do understand.

A fair scattering of FEMA trailers mark the houses in the surrounding blocks where some have already returned. Functioning cars are interspersed among the abandoned wrecks, parked outside houses and apartments whose second storeys were undamaged. I heard a hammer here and there. One older gentleman was burning trash in his backyard, a sight quite common where I grew up, but, as you might imagine, not so common in urban New Orleans. He smiled and waved, seeming eager to strike up a conversation. I waved but kept pedaling, reluctant, for some reason, to stop.

On the fields behind the deserted Edward Henry Philips Jr. High School, the football team from McDonough #35 was wrapping up practice. I was drawn to the sound of kids' voices, bantering, clowning, as they loaded the buses for home. I watched them for a while but, beyond asking the team's name, I still didn't much feel like talking. Broken windows marked the face of the jr. high school, and weeds nearly covered the nursing home across the street.

I passed a couple of small groups of neighbors and family members who carried on the tradition of stoop-sitting in the only way they could now. One group had set lawn chairs outside the 7-foot hurricane fence behind the housing project, where they chatted over an Igloo ice chest full of bottled Miller's. Another group gathered around a picnic table under the I-610 overpass. A lone old-timer sat on a lawn chair in front of his FEMA trailer. He seemed excited and surprised to see me, smiling and waving as though to a fellow castaway just spotted on a neighboring island.

As I pedaled past, my reluctance to stop and chat with these people weighed more and more heavily on my mind. I knew that, in part, it was related to my sense of survivor's guilt. But this was more than the self-consciousness of the disaster tourist. It was also a nearly subliminal awareness of the racial barriers separating me from the people who lived in the St. Bernard development. Before the storm, to bike around the project, around its immediate neighborhood even, would have been unthinkable. And even now, I couldn't get past feeling that I was an alien here. I had internalized those barriers, and even the welcoming faces of the few returning neighbors couldn't convince me on the deepest level that those rules no longer applied.

On my way back downtown, I came across one of the few hopeful signs I encountered: Stop Jockin Barber & Beauty Salon, which had expanded its business to include a snowball shop, had evidently reopened since the storm. A snowball is the New Orleans version of a snowcone: a flavored ball of shaved ice. I had my mouth set for some creamy flavor--maybe a peach cream (drenched in condensed milk, of course), but apparently they had decided to close up shop a little early. I still had fifteen minutes, according to the sign, but no one was around. Two FEMA trailers, where I imagine the proprietors are living, were set up in the side lot on what used to be a basketball court. I took a photo and headed back down St. Bernard Ave. toward the Marigny, passing the first (and only) "Re-elect Congressman Jefferson" sign I've seen.

Since there were no bars open in the neighborhood, I decided to have my official drink back downtown, and I knew immediately where I would have it: the B&L Lounge on Rampart St. It's the one bar in my neighborhood that I had never visited, and I had never visited it because I knew I would probably be the only white guy in the place. Many times I had walked by and smelled fish frying or crawfish boiling; I heard great blues from the jukebox through the open door. I recognized some of the people milling around the crawfish pot as my neighbors. Why should the simple act of having a beer with them be so damned fraught? (Well, besides the whole 300 some-odd years of past history, of course.)

Racial relations in New Orleans are impossible to understand from outside. And they're nearly impossible to understand from the inside, as well. I have never lived in a place more integrated than New Orleans. Black and white people know each other here in a way that is rare elsewhere in the country. But at the same time, in ways as subtle as the tilt of a head in greeting or as flagrant as the bigotry of the old Carnival krewes, New Orleans retains deep lines of racial segregation. Add to this the complexities of Creole identity, and suddenly you're faced with an intricate system of relationships, secret signs and subtle understandings that no one born elsewhere can really understand and no one born here can adequately explain. So, in the end, I decided, "To hell with it. I'm not going to understand it today, I'm probably not going to understand it tomorrow, and I'm certainly not going to change it. I'm going for a drink." And I did.

The B&L is pretty much exactly what you want your local to be: great jukebox (Aretha, Irma, Sam Cooke), cheap drinks, pool table. I had a gin-tonic and divided my time between watching the muted disaster movie on television and watching the bartender flirt with a patron. I was one of six customers at the time (two of whom never looked up from the video poker machines while I was there). I had a hot link (approaching, but not crossing, the line between spice-pleasure and spice-pain) washed down with a High-Life. It reminded me of nothing more than bars where old Cajuns hang out near my parents' place, bars in which old R&B is as likely on the jukebox as country songs or cajun two-steps, and in the afternoons and early evenings drinkers sit for long spells and listen to the music from their younger days and let their thoughts drift back. Like those bars, the B&L has its livelier side as well, event nights that bring the crowd and the rowdiness that force the afternoon drinkers from their reverie. By the time I left, the bartender had invited me back for the Thursday night fish-fry and the Monday night red beans and rice (a New Orleans tradition). There are squares open for the football pool, too, I hear. So, when the media frenzy descends for the reopening of the Dome, I think I'll stick to the neighborhood, wander back to the B&L and try out the red beans.

Swampish and the City

2006-09-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not in New Orleans this week; instead I'm sitting in rainy New York, trying to finish up some longstanding business. So, there won't be "Where I Got Them Shoes" for this past Wednesday.

But New Orleans is never far from my mind, and yesterday I saw something that made me think about home. To explain, maybe I should back up one step. Or a couple of steps.

You see, everyone living in post-K New Orleans has dealt with the realities "on the ground" (as they say) in his or her own way. Some people have tried to ignore the changes. Some have decided to become activists, joining neighborhood associations or attending city government meetings. Some people have apparently decided to shoot one another. We all have our own way of dealing.

One of my friends spent some time in the role of (in her words) "Crazy Letter-Writing Lady." Filled with righteous zeal, she would fire off blistering letters to the editor flaying local ineptitudes and plain bad decisions. And more than once, Crazy Letter-Writing Lady found her way into print. My wife has now decided to become (again, in her words), "Crazy Trash-Pickup Lady."

Each day, when she walks our dog, she takes along a trash bag and picks up the garbage that litters our neighborhood, some of it dropped casually by callous passersby, some of it spilling from overfilled trash cans awaiting the not-quite-reliable weekly pickup, some of it left in the wake of the trashmen's nonchalant efforts. Each week, the size of the trash bag has grown, from a convenience-store sack in the beginning, to the tall kitchen, and finally to the full-on contractor size, the only size that faces the problem honestly. A couple of weeks ago, I took a photo of her in action:

So far, she still hasn't been able to make it the four blocks to the river before completely filling the trash bag. Is there a size beyond Contractor? Government Contractor? Halliburton?

In New York, though, they always manage to go that extra mile past the mild lunacy of the provincials and assert their claim as neurosis capital of the world. So, I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw New York's version of Crazy Trash-Pickup Lady, decked out in jogging clothes and straw hat for the effort, wearing latex gloves, picking up every cigarette butt and candy wrapper on sidewalk and in gutter using a pair of metal tongs. I congratulate you, New York Crazy Trash-Pickup Lady, you clearly claim the crown, brushing aside legions of amateurs with their brooms and rakes and shovels. You, my dear, put the pulse in "obsessive compulsive."

So, next Wednesday it's off to the St. Bernard Area. Wish me luck.

Where I Got Them Shoes: Lakeshore/Lake Vista

2006-09-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood: Lakeshore/Lake Vista
Bar: Pontchartrain Point Cafe
Drink: Abita Amber (Draft)

From river to lake, New Orleans must be around eight or nine miles. Following Orleans Ave. all the way from Tremé, the terrain changes so completely that it feels much farther: setting out at the empty and vast Lafitte housing project--metal plates covering the doors and windows, No Trespassing signs on every unit--you wind your way up through haggard and half-empty Mid-City, out past Bayou St. John (more drainage canal than bayou), up through the tranquility of City Park, where kids play soccer again and the green has returned, continuing on up to the very top of the park, past the riding stables where I saw an Appaloosa placidly cropping new grass, and finally arriving at the park-studded cul de sacs of Lake Vista, nestled between park and lake shore.

Lake Vista is the closest New Orleans comes to suburban idyll. If not for the great Live Oaks that shade the communal parks, this neighborhood could be anywhere. Well, anywhere affluent. The residents had posted hand-lettered street signs to replace those that disappeared in the storm. A particularly lovely one graced the corner of Warbler and Swallow: a trompe l'oeil pattern imitating decorative ceramic tile, complete with images of the eponymous songbirds.

The pattern of damage here is almost impossible to trace: seemingly untouched houses stand next to gutted shells or houses with no visible damage except the tell-tale FEMA trailer. A resident I asked explained that the water from the 17th St. Canal breach flowed out toward the city before settling back in these areas when the water levelled. Still, it's puzzling to see houses just yards from the lake utterly untouched by the flooding.

Speaking of the lake, last Wednesday the view there was ridiculously beautiful. Sailboats bobbing on placid water before a sherbet-colored sunset. It reminded me of one of those inspirational workplace posters: "Dreams: Believe in your own; crush those of your underlings." Or something like that.

From the lakeshore, I doubled back to my intersection of the week, Gen. Haig and Jewel, which just happened to be the site of one of the few levee system upgrades that the Corps of Engineers finished on time. It was here that I saw perhaps the surest sign that things are changing. So, I took a photo of it:

You can imagine my relief.

I pulled up to one of the canal levee walls and leaned my bike against a tree, studiously ignoring the security patrol car that slowed and hovered near my bike. At the top of the levee, I surveyed the scene. The Orleans Ave. Canal did not breach (although, apparently it did overtop nearer Midcity). Each side of the canal itself is bordered by boulders and stones not native to this part of the country. Giant stands of bullrushes spring up in a bend upstream. Mullets jump purposelessly. Across the way, a man fishes, pulling a long lure across the canal's surface. Above him, a massive construction crane is frozen in the act of lowering a large curved pipe, like something on the deck of a cruise ship. Cicadas sing.

I left the tranquility of Lakeshore and decided to find a beverage. Around West End, the Lakeshore takes on the air of an oceanfront town, and here you could once find rows of seafood restaurants just across from the yacht club. It was getting dark as I passed Joe's Crab Shack, but still I could tell it wasn't coming back anytime soon. Sail boats still appeared tossed about in the docks. Many were under repair, some back under sail, others looked abandoned.
At first I thought the restaurant row was completely deserted, but then I saw a sign announcing one place "Opening Soon," and down a side street I saw the parking lot of the Pontchartrain Point Cafe full of cars.

Inside, I ordered a half-pint and eavesdropped on lawyers talking cases and politics. The customers not wearing suits wore polo shirts with yacht-club insignia. Employees or members? Not sure. Beside me at the bar, two middle aged guys who hadn't seen each other since the storm went through the standard litany: for one, no flooding but a new roof, mother-in-law's Biloxi house completely washed away, so he had bought her a house nearby, tree recently removed; the other's place? he shook his head, named the neighborhood; that was enough. His boats? Lost one of the three; not complaining.

Alex, our bartender, knew everyone's name, including mine after my first drink. She turned to one of the guys at my elbow: "Mike, how you doing?"
"Crazy as a shithouse rat."
"Well, I knew that. Scotch?"
"Yeah, and a menu. I always order the same thing, but it still takes me an hour to decide. Go figure."

I struck up a conversation with Mike in the usual way we have now, "How'd you do in the storm?" Surprisingly easy to get into it. He said his was one of three houses on the block that didn't flood. His house is 7 feet above grade; his nextdoor neighbor at 6' 8" had flooded.
"Felt guitly as hell about it for three months. Depressed. Everybody's telling me I'm crazy, which I guess I am."

I asked him if people were coming back to the neighborhood. "Here, yes. In Lakeview, no."
We talked about his mother-in-law's place, the relative merits of Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria as places to evacuate. "Baton Rouge has no culture. There's maybe one, two decent restaurants in the entire place. Well, before. Now they got Galatoires, all the rest."

A friend of his stopped by and chided him: "I thought you'd quit drinking."
"I did. I go back and forth, you know."
"Well, I'm just gonna make sure you only have one. You need to take it easy, now."

Later on we started discussing the bad habits we'd readopted in the past year. He told me he used to be in AA, and there was one guy in his group who was the pillar of AA, the member everyone else relied on. After the storm, he sees the guy in a liquor store, carrying a case of beer and a bottle of Dewars. "I ask him, 'How you been doin?' 'Not so good,' he says."

I took the long way home, looping around the other side of City Park. I crossed the I-10 overpass in near-total darkness. To my left, the L.S.U. dental school building looked like a deserted prison. (Of course, in the best of times it looked like a working prison, so there you are.) I could see the lights of the CBD off in the distance, but not much light between here and there.

Riding my bike around the lake front reminded me of the Abitaman triathlon I'd seen up there the summer before the storm. I was in training for a triathlon myself (and no, I'm not kidding), although since I'd only been training for four months, I didn't think I was quite ready yet. At the very back of the pack was a competitor who must've weighed nearly 300 pounds. As he came out of the water, I wondered, first, how he could possibly finish the race, and second, if he could do it, why couldn't I? I watched the leaders finish the bike portion, and met up with Sarah for a long walk along the lakeshore. As we headed back to the car, we saw the race crew folding up the water station tables, picking up the orange cones that marked the route and throwing them into a moving van. A few minutes after they passed, along came the big guy, completely forgotten by the event staff, not even part of the race anymore, but not giving up, either. He lumbered along, in obvious pain, and he still had another mile left. We applauded him as he passed, but I don't think he noticed.

So, as I stood on the I-10 overpass and looked back toward the city, I thought about that guy, and I thought about New Orleans. Sure, we weren't in the best shape before this all began. And, yes, it's true that everyone else will probably move on, and we'll be forgotten, chugging along far behind pace, receding into irrelevance. But remembering that big guy somehow made me feel a little better anyway.

Near the end of my ride, down on Esplanade, I heard the unmistakeable strains of a dixieland band, the clarinet carrying high out into the street. St. Anne's Episcopal Church had started a weekly supper and concert series to support New Orleans musicians, and this week's band was just wrapping up its set. I leaned my bike against a pole and watched them joke and laugh as they put their instruments away. And I thought to myself, "Go 'head on, fat boy."

Laboriously

2006-09-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

What I did not do on my Labor Day vacation: manage to take in the festival whose name I relish above all other Louisiana festival names: Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. Let us hope that I can get my act together for the second place winner: Basile Swine Festival. Yes, it's fall, my friends. (Not officially, of course, but since they kicked out Pluto, who listens to astronomers anymore?) So, the mean reds of August are behind us, and the long season of Louisiana festivals is underway. Every town has one: "Cameron Fur and Wildlife Festival," "Crowley Rice Festival," "Ragley Heritage and Timber Festival," "New Iberia Sugercane Festival." You get the idea. Many of these places took a beating in Rita last year, but you can bet your last link at the Broussard Boudin Fest those Cajuns are gonna come back and have them some festivals this year!

Speaking of coming back, here's what I did do on my Labor Day weekend: checked in with the Grand Reopening Party at Quintron and Miss Pussycat's Spellcaster Lodge. One of the grave omissions in my Ninth Ward experience has been a visit to the Spellcaster, and the grand reopening seemed the perfect opportunity to redress this lack. Although the visit was brief, I did get a good gander at the place, enough at least to convince me to come again.

In some ways, the Spellcaster is an underwater-themed fantasy lounge, simultaneously whimsical and avant-garde. In other ways, it's the sweaty, overcrowded ground-floor basement of Quintron &Miss Pussycat's 9th Ward house. So much depends upon the frame of mind, you see. And, to be honest, there was ample ventilation in the main room--a post-K improvement, I understand.

I convinced a couple of my more daring friends to come along with me--the Spellcaster was old hat for them; so they came, not for the novelty (nor for my company, if I'm completely honest with myself), but for the chance to catch DJ Jubilee,1 one of the originators of Bounce music (another indigenous New Orleans art form). Seduced by the strains of "Back that Ass Up," they led me into a much hipper world than I'm really fit to inhabit. Neither DJ Jubilee nor Quintron was playing when we arrived, however. Instead, we were treated to the oddity that is Uncle Flim Flam's Electric Nightmare, a particularly ingenius variant on the one-man-band tradition. Uncle Flim Flam, who sports a fine Ron Jeremy mustache and has been known, I believe, to play Tuba for Egg Yolk Jubilee, performs on the lead tri-tom, that staple of the high school marching band, complete with metal harness. And while the tri-tom might not seem the ideal lead instrument, it makes perfect sense when backed by the "portable calliope bandwagon."2

Now, the portable calliope bandwagon looks a bit like an instrument designed by John Carpenter. Or, for another horror movie analogy, consider what might happen if, rather than a man and a fly climbing into that teleportation device, you put inside a player piano, a polka band, a small steam ship, and a marching band. And say that what emerged on the other side was electric powered and in the shape of a three-foot cube. That should give you some idea of this device. I was mesmerized by the tiny mallet striking the minature bass drum in time. While we were there, he performed some John Philip Souza, a couple of dance numbers, and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." During set break, we decided to grab some air and quickly realized that we weren't making it back in for the other sets. The yard had become as crowded as the bar area, and people continued to stream in somehow. Apparently we weren't the only ones in town who thought this seemed like a good idea. I still vow to see Quintron and Miss Pussycat perform there, but this wasn't the weekend for it.

So, about my ongoing project. Two things:

Considering changing the name. Rather than "Where are we now," I think I'll call it "Where I got them shoes." (If you've been here, you'll understand.)
Gonna be an interesting week. Rolled the dice, and here's what came up: Lakeshore/Lake Vista. I think this is a shot of the neighborhood during Katrina.

Off now to see Alex McMurray and Luke Allen at Mimi's (how convenient is that?).

1Sidenote: looking for a DJ Jubilee link, I came across this page for the album Take it to the Saint Thomas. The content-related ads popping up: Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. Ah, the all-knowing interweb; it does all cohere after all.

2This term is from the artist's description on the tip's foundation site: New act on the scene:A portable calliope bandwagon with hundreds of songs of all types,from original wurlitzer arrangements to Santana,to Jethro Tull and even Professor Longhair.Fascinating to watch and hear.38 calliope pipes,percussion,glockenspiel and automatic accordian.Electric-powered ,not steam.Operated and manipulated by Uncle Flim-Flam himself.Suitable for indoor or outdoor use.AKA: "Crescent City Calliope"

Broadmoor Lives

2006-08-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

The Broadmoor neighborhood has clearly decided that one of the keys to recovery is proper signage. Every yard has at least three signs, it seems, among them "Emergency Contracting Services," "No Dumping," "Hold the Corps Accountable," "Broadmoor Lives." This last, the neighborhood slogan, appears on bumper stickers as well as yard signs and is omnipresent; a simple statement of fact, it's as well a statement of defiance of fact, or at least of odds. For Broadmoor, we must admit, is deep in the bowl. In fact, it's right around where that flowery decoration would be, the one that turned out to be the "surprise" my aunt promised I'd find if I finished my bowl of gumbo. (Few promised surprises have been more disappointing since.) It's not hard to see why urban planners called in for the Mayor's BNOB Commission would have envisioned a park replacing this neighborhood.

But contrary to odds and what may seem reason, Broadmoor is most certainly alive. In fact, because the neighborhood was built with nuisance flooding in mind, many of the fancier places here were already raised well above the floodline, the ground floor demoted to basement service. So, these people and their signs are back. For the most part. The evidence of return is ubiquitous: flatbed trailers filled with house guts, FEMA trailers in front or side yards, lights newly strung across front porches. It's as though the word had spread from house to house, "look busy."

Taunted by my wife for proposing to take the bus, I decided to ride my bike up from the Marigny, crossing nervously (and perhaps illegally) across the Broad St. overpass and travelling up to Napoleon Ave. that way. What seemed on the map like a day's journey turned out to take less than an hour. I always forget how small this place really is.

After pedalling around a bit, I found what I thought would be the perfect pair of photos to illustrate my impressions of the place. First, the photo above, illustrating the "Broadmoor Lives" spirit in all its tenacity: the hostas freshly planted to replace the landscaping surely wrecked by the salt water, a fresh coat of paint disguising but not completely effacing the first-responders' X, and of course the requisite sign. The other was to be a photo of the house across the street: still apparently abandoned, darkened jumble of patio furniture on the enclosed front porch, yellowed grass along the sidewalks. But as I held up my phone to take the photo, I heard a voice behind me, "You gonna buy it?" I turned to see a middle-aged man, his mop-headed dog on leash beside him.
I felt guilty; suddenly I was the interloper, the disaster tourist. I made a weak attempt at a joke, "Well, it looks like someone needs to buy it." But that seemed to trouble the man even more.
"I knew the old guy who lived here. He was meticulous about this place, always keeping the grass and plants neat, always . . ." he looked away. "I'm pretty sure he would come back."
I wasn't sure what to say. It seemed so implausible to this man that his neighbor wouldn't be coming back. "Well, you know," I managed, "maybe he's just waiting on insurance money or something before he can come home."
"If that's the case, I sure do pity him."
As he and his dog walked away, I asked him where I could find the nearest bar. He told me a place, explaining, "But it's just a hole in the wall."
"Sounds perfect."
I left, forgetting to take the photo. I also managed to forget my bike lock somewhere, so I had to take a rain check on that drink. I want to go back there anyway. Something was there that I couldn't capture, couldn't make sense of without more talk and more time.

Anniversary Night

2006-08-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night was 007 at the reopened Saturn Bar. Now, as long as I've known it, the Saturn bar has barely had room for customers, much less a band. It's one of the world's great dive bars, but of late, the broken jukeboxes and air conditioners had started to accumulate (apparently O'Neil was a handy guy who couldn't say no when friends asked for repairs, hence the appliance graveyard); also, the cats had become less than finicky about what constituted a litter box. So, it became almost a chore for me to show my friends from out of town the great Saturn Bar.

O'Neil made it through the storm but passed away in December. I thought at first perhaps the Saturn Bar had run its course; whether closed forever or given a new incarnation, the Saturn Bar was gone. It stayed closed for months, becoming the cause of much Marigny speculation. Finally, at a benefit reading to promote a lovely little anthology of New Orleans writing a few months ago, we had a sneak preview: gone was the jukebox graveyard, the cats, the jumble that had taken over the back half of the bar; booths and pool table were suddenly visible in the back, the path to the bathroom unobstructed. And somehow the new owner, O'Neil's great nephew Neil Broyard, had managed to clear the place out without losing any of the eclectic charm. It was still the Saturn Bar, but there was more of it now (well, more bar, less stuff).

Tuesday night's show at the Saturn was therefore a great milestone. It has been, I believe, a full decade since live music was seen at the Saturn Bar. The place was crushing-full, and both Egg Yolk Jubilee and 007 had the crowd jumping. All my favorite Marignians and Bywaterites were on the dance-floor or bellied up to the bar. The odor of hipness had replaced the stench of cat piss.

I stepped outside for air and saw a National Guard humvee parked on the neutral ground. The Guardsmen had come across the street to ask about the bar and were now flirting with a girl with a full-on brassy yat accent. For a second, I thought about curfew, wondered if they were enforcing it. Then I remembered, we come a long way dawlin.

Anniversary

2006-08-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

I said I wasn't going to do it. I said I would, at all costs, avoid the nostalgia, the forced and fabricated gestures of rejuvenation, the scylla and charybdis that shadow the survivor's path: the stone way of infinite regret or the rapids of pollyannism. Instead, I was going to keep to myself, spend the evening with my evacuation mates, and promptly forget the significance of this date.

And yet, and yet. Of course I should have known that New Orleans wouldn't let me walk away quite so easily. Ask any of the numberless people who came here once, just for a visit, that was then extended into a vacation, that became a sublet, that became the past twelve years. So, my wife and I were just going to head down to Decatur in the French Quarter for lunch at Stanley's (which is the informal side of upscale restaurant Stella). Before we'd even made it out of the Marigny, though, we heard the siren call of the second-line: da dat DAAA daaa. To which, we responded, as though by no will of our own, "HEY!" And we were in. She ran off to snap some photos, and I chained our bikes to a stop sign and caught up. This was the activists' second line, beginning at the Industrial Canal (border between the Lower Ninth Ward and what has become, by default, the Upper Ninth Ward, where I live. Before all the national attention on the L9, the Upper Ninth was just the Ninth Ward.). The mix was about 60%-40%, I'd say, between locals and out-of-town activists and organizers. Lots of anti-Bush stuff, lots of stuff about the horrors of OPP. There were anarchists and communists and National Black United Front members. Oh, and a brass band. And some Zulu stilt walkers in blackface. This is New Orleans, afterall. And yes it was angry and righteous, but it was also clownish and fun.

I passed on the nostalgia special at Stanley's; it was a burger or bocaburger with salad and chips served on a paper plate, the same menu they served as one of the pioneer restaurants reopening just weeks after the storm. Instead, we had oyster po-boys. Whoever had the idea of putting the sweet cole slaw in the po-boy . . . sheer genius!

From there we rode our bikes down to the Convention Center for the official event, complete with Mayor Nagin. I was busy watching the Black Men of Labor and Treme Brass Band (both groups featured in the Spike Lee movie) warm up, milling around in the press of the Press (there were undoubtedly more cameras than second-liners on hand), when I heard a short burst of applause behind me. I turned around just in time to see General Honore march by. A woman held a sign nearby, "General Honore, You are my Hero." Nagin received no such welcome.

The band played hymns as we waited, "Oh What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "Glory Land," and "Amazing Grace," in which the lyrics soon faded into a simple repetition of two words, "Praise God, Praise God, Praise God, Praise God." Hands joined and raised all around, and in the last lines the words shifted again: "I'm back, I'm back, I'm back." For a moment, I could forget about all of the cameras.

We finally got the media show on the road. I figured I'd make it down Convention Center Blvd to Harrah's and then peel off. But, as I've said, these things have a way of drawing you into them. The farther we walked, the closer we came to the Super Dome, marching from one icon of post-Katrina misery to the other, the less it felt like a staged event and the more it felt like a genuine expression of the people there. Anderson Cooper stood in the neutral grounds shaking hands as though he was running for office. I felt like thanking him for keeping the light on for us, but I didn't want to miss a beat.

Outside the Super Dome, everyone stopped and the band started up their hit, "Gimme my Money Back," changing the words to "House Back, House Back" and "City Back, City Back." And then the two hundred or so remaining paraders passed under a covered drive, singing "His Eye is on the Sparrow." I learned the words from singing at St. Aug's. Today, I taught them to a woman in from LA: "I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free. His eye is on the sparrow. I know He watches me." A very, very good walk, my friends.

I will not be neutered, either (too late for my dog, though)

2006-08-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

GWB hath arriven! Let us rejoice and be glad. For with GWB will surely arrive the news that our progress is great, that our work is hard, that he is duly impressed with our love of freedom, or something.

And all this good news couldn't have come at a better time. This Advent, if you will, coincides with a darkish time in a swampish land. For today was a day when a generous soul and a fine good-natured Ohioan (sharing his state of residence with the memory of our great mystic American Poet Hart Crane, btw) who has been coming down here all year long helping to rebuild houses (this is, I believe his 5th trip; he stays with us when he's in town) injured himself working on the finishing touches of a Gentilly rebuild and was given for his trouble a tour of our troubled city as he searched for an open hospital, a functioning clinic, a paramedic (which, by the way, he is). He was finally able to find a doctor to stitch up his ankle (cut to the bone, I hear) at the Operation Blessing clinic. The volunteer doc there sees 100 patients a day, and today he was so overwhelmed that the office manager had to glove up and dive in to assist the stitching.

But if only my friend had injured himself tomorrow, after the benedictions of GWB have been poured on our burning heads, surely, surely, an army of paramedics would have descended on the scene, ported him off on angelic wings to one of the 6 (rather than 2.5) operating hospitals in the area.

Someone call me when tomorrow is over. Until then, I'll just keep looking for the sunflowers in the rubble.

'Cause that's the kind of guy I am.

Broadmoor Dead Ahead

2006-08-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

By the way, I've figured out my method for selecting the sites of my weekly forays.

First, check out the GNOCDC's map of New Orleans Neighborhoods.
Then make a list of the 73 neighborhoods represented, in alphabetical order.
Next select a random neighborhood each week using the Random Integer Generator
Finally, go to the neighborhood-specific map on the GNOCDC site and find a spot at approximately the center of the map for the chosen neighborhood.

So, the first spin of the Crescent City wheel of misfortune turned up: Broadmoor, in particular the corner of S. Rocheblave and Napolean. This one will probably entail a bus ride (I'm a downtown boy, afterall), and I may need to wait until the weekend. But I'll do my damndest to keep to Wednesday: what's life without dedication to a set of arbitrary, self-imposed, and meaningless rules?

Elks Place Pt. II

2006-08-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

So, when last we left off, I was standing in front of the newly reopened Walgreen's, looking at the boarded windows of the commercial buildings across the way and waiting for the light to change so I could check out the library, epicenter of my visit to the CBD. Here's a shot of the still-boarded windows to get you in the mood.
With me now? Okay, good.

Among the many questions concerning the hurricane that have echoed endlessly during the past year (why didn't the levees hold? why didn't everyone evacuate? does George Bush really not like black people?), none has been more prominent than the sometimes desperate, sometimes angry strains of "Where was FEMA?" Well, apparently this is one question we can stop asking. FEMA is alive and well and working at the library, along with the mysteriously delinquent Small Business Administration. The library, of course! That's just where I used to hang out in high school when I didn't feel like working. I'd sequester myself somewhere in the stacks and skim through giant volumes on world geography. I also managed to learn hypnosis, juggling, and and the basics of internal combustion engines. I hope that FEMA and the SBA have found their time in the library as enlightening.

But it was good, after all, to see something happening at the library. The main branch now has wi-fi, and it's starting to extend its hours. They're also offering a disaster relief smorgasbord: along with FEMA and SBA, they have an IRS office, the Blue Roof program (bit late for that, eh?), Vets Affairs, Medicaid, insurance mitigation, and coping assistance (there's a bar in the library, too? man, they thought of everything).

New Orleans' public libraries, running on a shoestring before the storm, were on the verge of extinction afterward. They've received some amazing nationwide support (they had to stop accepting book donations after they found they couldn't keep up with the cataloguing). Also, the American Library Association had its annual meeting here--the first major convention to come back after the storm, as far as I know, so take that you lilly-livered surgeons!. Oh, and according to several reliable French Quarter bartenders, the librarians tear it up like nobody's business--voted wildest of the conventioneers, and that's quite a feat. And apparently librarians are very generous, as well. My local branch reopened this summer, thanks in part to their efforts. Fearless boozers who love New Orleans and get to hang around with books all day, definitely my kind of people.

While I was scribbling down the various services available at the main branch, the security guard came over and glowered at me through the glass doors, so I figured it was time to move along. Since I was so close to Poydras, I decided to meet the wife and a good pal for dinner and to complete the final portion of my task at a nearby restaurant. Dinner was sushi, drink was Sapporo. Oh, and this is what happens when Komei Horimoto gets playful, the Rocking Dragon.
And it tastes even better than that, really. Actually, it's a bit of a crime to order rolls in that place; I feel that every piece of fish there should come with a resume, or at least a brief bio.

From the restaurant, we went to the Circle Bar to hear McMurray perform. He was in a foul mood at the start, which made for a brilliant show. He did cheer up enough that he managed not to wrap his guitar around the neck of the dude who requested "She Talks to Angels." Shame, that. Oh, and McMurray has a new song about post-K N.O.: "You gotta be crazy." Not my favorite of his, but far and away the best Katrina-related song I've heard to far. Ay-yi-yi, what miserable maudlin pap it all be, my dear temporizing triumverate. WWOZ has been relentless with the stuff over the past few days. And the anniversary is bearing down: NYT has a new page 1 on it every day, and now that silly paper with all the color graphics is joining in with stories about the important work of football running backs in the recovery effort, and everyone in the national media was just salivating at the thought that Ernesto, that headless puta, would help us mark the anniversary with a little reenactment. Christ. I think I'll reenact instead one of my favorite scenes from Walker Percy and crawl up in a tower overlooking a forest somewhwere, a bottle of Bourbon tucked in my jacket pocket. There may need to be a priest on hand, if this is to be truly faithful to Dr. Percy. Yeah, I think that's how I'll spend the anniversary. To hell with Thanatos.

Twenty-Four?

2006-08-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

Can this be right? New Orleans is number 24 of the country's 35 most drunken cities? Astounding, but according to Forbes.com, Milwaukee stands (sways? leans?) atop the heap of alcohopolises, while New Orleans is barely a burp on the boozy radar:

Curiously, several towns with a reputation for partying and drinking didn't rank very high on the list. You might be able to score a free cocktail in any Las Vegas casino, but overall, the city comes in at only No. 14. New Orleans is home to Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras, but it only ranked in 24th place. And spring-break party spot Miami placed all the way down at No. 33 of 35.

Ah, but these are pre-K numbers, back in those days of yore when tourists swilling Hurricanes and Handgrenades really did account for the largest portion of the alcohol flowing through this town. Back in 2004, when the CDC study Forbes uses was conducted, imbibing was for most New Orleanians largely celebratory, and where celebratory drinking ends, bitter drinking is just getting started. Let 'em run the numbers now, and I'd bet we could all go put our giant foam hands on.

Elks Place (Where Are We Now 1)

2006-08-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

I set out Wednesday evening with my brain set on record. My goal was simply to report objectively on the state of affairs around the corner of Tulane Ave. and Elks Place. I imagined a grim task, but as always, N.O. managed a surprise.

I started taking notes at Armstrong Park, and my route would take me down Basin St., past St. Louis Cemetery #1, past the Iberville projects (one of the first public housing developments to reopen post-K), across Canal St., and into the medical center "corridor" of the Central Business District. This was a walk through what was once Storyville, "back of town," the infamous redlight district where jazz spent much of its infancy. As tourists who take this path often find to their disappointment, there is hardly a remnant of the Storyville period remaining. After dark, the cemetery is unsafe (every guidebook warns of this now), and unless you have an interest in the fate of public housing in New Orleans, there isn't much to draw you here. And I should probably admit that I had second thoughts about walking this route as I saw the sun getting lower in the sky. I quickened my step a bit as I rounded the corner at Armstrong Park, but a little boy dancing on the sidewalk stopped me cold.

He was holding a shoebox and dancing his own interpretation of the "Cabbage Patch": his hip jutting out to one side for a bit, he'd shake it and swing his butt back to the other side. And he was singing a song: "I got new shoes. I got new shoes." I don't think he could've been more than three years old. He held the box up for my inspection, and I nodded appreciatively at the white sneakers inside. "They give out shoes here," he said. "These are gonna make me jump high, high!" And he pantomimed jumping without leaving the ground. His younger sister had her own shoebox, containing a pair of pink and violet flowered sneakers. But she was absorbed by staring at the playground equipment inside the fence. They were standing behind Covenant House, a center for homeless youth and, apparently, a distribution point of clothing for kids who need it. I asked new-shoe boy his name and if I could take his picture with my camera phone. Edgar.

Already this wasn't the sort of reportage (it's French, bitch) I was expecting, but as I left Edgar and headed down Basin past the cemetery, I saw in the distance the flashing lights of at least four police cars, all parked outside the Iberville project. "Grim," I thought. But figuring my self-imposed task demanded that I get the story, I continued down the street. A block or so closer, and I could make out horses standing behind the sheriff's cars, cropping grass from the neutral ground. Another block, and I could see that the men on horseback were wearing fezzes. Yes, fezzes.

I stood in the neutral ground staring at them for a bit, looking from the befezzed horsemen to the Iberville residents milling about in front of their apartment block. And then I looked down the street, past the sheriff's cars and realized that this was not the scene of some new and bizarre crime, but a parade lining up, waiting to head down Canal St. Clowns of various sizes wandered up and down Basin St., performing with puppets for the children who had gathered. In addition to the horses and cars bearing beauty queens, there were golf carts and dune buggies, and anyone without a clown wig seemed to be wearing a fez. And everyone in the parade, in fact everyone on the street, was black. A black Shriner's parade--I couldn't quite wrap my brain around it. I mean, I'd never heard of black Masons before, but here they were, black Shriners in full regalia. And they were from around the country: New Jersey black Shriners and Washington, D.C. black Shriners. Their home cities were enblazoned on the backs of their shirts, along with the requisite Mason signs and symbols.

I finally asked one of the clowns, and he confirmed that it was the annual Shriner's convention for Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Last year, apparently, 8,000 of them had come down. This year, only 4,000. "You know," he said, behind his giant glasses, "it's a little smaller this year. Some people didn't come back." I told him I understood how that felt and welcomed them to town. I shook his gloved hand and headed up Basin St.

Can anyone still wonder why I love this place?

I worked my way through the Shriner's parade and up to Elks place, looking for the corner at Tulane Ave. Signs of rebirth: Walgreen's drugstore had reopened. On the other hand, several businesses remained closed. A pile of trash remained outside the darkened Smoothie King and PJ's Coffee. Plywood shuttered the buildings across the way.

At the focal point of my journey, on the corner of Elks and Tulane, is the main branch of the public library. Ah, but this post is long enough. I'll tell about the library in part 2.

Where are we now?

2006-08-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Anniversary. It's just around the corner, and frankly, I'm just not ready. I thought I had toughened up a bit over the post-K year, thought I would be ready to face the barrage of images, the swell of remembrances. But then I read an online diary, one person's experience losing a parent following the storm, and I nearly lost it. Then I hear Chris Rose on NPR, reading a piece I've already read, the "New Orleans Girl" essay from One Dead in Attic, and he starts to choke up at the end, and his interviewer starts to choke up at the end, and then I do lose it. Right there in my car, somewhere just past the 6-10 split. This is not a good sign.

I'm not stable enough for the rehash yet, thank you. I'm still working on the hash. And it ain't going down easy, pal. I'm furious daily for no reason--well, for every reason, I imagine, but my fury is usually disproportionate to the proximate cause. And because of this anger, I liked the Spike Lee Katrina documentary more than I expected: it resonated with the anger that people here have been feeling for a year now, anger and helplessness and more anger. And it also made clear that this was not a natural disaster. Without the engineering failure that was and is our levee system, New Orleans would have experienced a lot of "wet ankle syndrome." (I heard an engineer not in uniform use that term on t.v., and I had to repeat it.) Bottom line, we didn't get the worst of the storm itself (look east, dear reader, for the true force of nature; Mississippi was levelled). No, what we got was a forty-year-long political, bureaucratic, administrative, and technical failure courtesy of the wonderful folks at the Corps of Engineers, the New Orleans Levee Board, and assorted politicians at local, state, and federal levels. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the failed response after the gingerbread-house levees melted away.

So, I'm angry, and I got to share that with Spike Lee, the Rev. Al Sharpton, C-Murder (how'd he get the ankle bracelet off?), and 6,000 of my fellow citizens in the New Orleans Arena last week. And then there were the things I didn't like so much about that movie--like the floated claim that the levees were intentionally demolished during Katrina and Betsy as they were in the flood of 1927. Bollocks, that. How many independent studies of the levee failure have taken place so far? Spike should know, he interviewed members of two of the three studies. So, why didn't he ask them why their multi-million-dollar studies failed to find any evidence of sabotage? Oh, and the Trump-like "land grab" for the Lower 9th Ward we hear about, a claim that goes as essentially unchallenged as the dynamite story? The property values were just skyrocketing in the L9 before the storm, I'm sure. Why, just look at all those high-priced sales recorded there in the past year. Oh, what's that you say? Well, then, of course there have already been massive buyouts in the L9 since the storm, huge developers buying up acres and acres for pennies, right? It's all there in the real estate transactions of the Times Picayune, isn't it? Well, I guess we don't really need evidence for such claims in the end, because after all these are the things the white establishment would do, so why can't we assume that they did do them? The film succumbed to Michael Moore syndrome, wherein valuable and salient points are muddied and undermined by more specious claims.

Did I mention I'm angry yet? Yeah, better double that. I'm angry that nothing--nothing--is happening in the devastated parts of town. That nothing--nothing--seems to have been gained by the much-touted chance at a new beginning. I'm angry that my favorite bar was robbed Saturday night. I'm angry that we need National Guard patrols in my city. I'm angry that without those patrols the murder rate had leapt up to the pre-K rate, which means the per capita rate would have doubled from the bloodbath we'd already become accustomed to. And I'm tired, tired to death of being a victim. The Corps didn't meet its own standards; it lied to the city about the protection it was afforded. But is waiting for the federal bail-out and bitching some more the very best that this great and infinitely creative city can do?

At any rate, I've decided to start a new feature here as a way of

Getting this blog restarted.
Sublimating some of my anger.
Making some headway toward answering for myself the question for which there is no good answer: So, how are things down there?

This is the plan: I pick a spot in New Orleans--each week a new spot and, say, 4 square blocks around it--and I see what's going on there, what has opened and what's still closed, what needs to be done, what the feel of that little postage stamp of earth is like. And then, my three dear readers, I will report my findings back to you here.

Work for you?

I'm calling the feature: "Where are we now?" And I've already chosen my first spot. Go to Google Maps and type in "New Orleans, LA." A specific place shows up, the corner of Tulane Ave. and Elks Pl. I'm assuming this is the post office, but I can't quite picture it tonight. So, let's say Wednesday afternoon, I intend to treck over there and to check out the area. I'm thinking I'll start at Armstrong Park and make my way down there. Which reminds me of another arbitrary rule I've set for this experience: I'll only travel sans car. If there is public transportation, I'll take it. Or I'll walk it if necessary. Or, if it's too far to walk and there's no public transport, I'll bike it. That way I'll see more of the city on the way. Promise I'll note anything interesting here, too.

And then the following week I'll need to think of a suitably random way to generate the next pinpoint on the map. If you're out there, my precious trio suffering through my blubbering, send along some ideas for how to randomize. I'd like to divide all of Orleans Parish into a 52-square grid and randomly pick one square per week.

Oh, and last arbitrary rule: if there is a bar within the four-square blocks, I will have a drink there. If shopping and seeing Broadway plays was GWB's recovery plan for September 11, then this will be mine for N.O.

Swampish Rules for Road Radio

2006-06-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've done my share of long-distance road tripping, much of it solo, and much of the time sans cd player. As I was driving back to New Orleans from the swampland today, sending my radio's seek function on its usual quixotic quest for something I can stand at least until the next commercial, my mind inevitably wandered from the aural lobotomy that is commercial radio, and I started thinking of the intuitive set of rules I've acquired for listening to radio in unfamiliar territory. So, I thought I'd share a few observations on the subject.

These, to my mind, are truisms. They might also be plagiarisms, I'm not sure:

1) "Today's best new music" isn't. Next station.
2) The only difference between New Country and old pop is the accent. If you've got a soft spot for Hank Sr., you may be tempted to listen past the song intro. You've been warned.
3) Hip-hop only sounds good when it's coming from your own car. Appropriate for a road trip, but 3 song max per station, otherwise you'll start to think you actually like it.
4) Gospel music is occasionally your friend; Christian rock never is. On the other hand, if you find yourself kind of digging a song and then realize it's Christian rock, don't beat yourself up about it. Just move on quietly and pretend you didn't notice.
5) Sometimes Tom Petty seems like the greatest thing you've ever heard. Sometimes, not so much.
6) If it's Zeppelin, leave it. The worst Zeppelin is better than what's playing on every other station right now.
7) Greatest idea for a format that I'll never listen to: Christian Country. Why it doesn't exist yet, I don't know. That it doesn't exist yet makes me nervous.
8) If you're over 30, you'll inevitably hear a song from high school on the Classic Rock station, so get used to it. And that's if you've been good; if you've been bad, it'll be "light rock."
9) Give college radio dj's a lot of slack (4 song minimum). Just think of all the listening time that went into dredging up that esoteric crap.
10) Every station that plays the "best hits" of the past half-century seems to have only three cds from each decade, and they aren't the ones you liked.

So, my three readers, there are my rules for road radio listening. Feel free to add, dispute, whatever. Hey, man, it's your radio.

Ashes, Ashes . . .

2006-03-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the Carnival blogging idea didn't exactly pan out. But in the Lenten spirit of reflection, I thought I'd take a moment to sift through the events I didn't get to blog and try to offer a moment or two worth keeping.

When last we saw the masqued crusaders, it was the wee hours of Saturday morning, and I was planning my costume. After a full four hours of recovery, we set about collecting the materials for our costume-making evening. The costume shop was relatively insane (they had reached maximum occupancy, and we had to wait for three satisfied, wig-carrying customers to leave before we could get in). Jefferson Variety, on the other hand, was oddly calm. Only a few Mom's Ball goers, faced with the options of costuming or nudity, had decided at the 11th hour to take the former option and were there perusing the silky fabrics, feathers, and beads for something suitable. Somehow Jefferson Variety managed to reopen despite being in a stretch of warehouses damaged not only by Katrina but by the late-season tornadoes that decided to join the KatRita dogpile on our good city. Amid the twisted wrecks of metal buildings, at the end of a barely passable street, there it stood, land of the stuff that makes a Mardi Gras Indian suit. A sign on the door read "Pardon our dust. We are remodeling (NOT BY CHOICE)."

Sunday, I drove to Baton Rouge where I met a dear friend and returned expat of the swampland, rearrived from NYC just the day before, and we headed to Churchpoint to view the Courir du Mardi Gras -- the country, cajun cousin of this urban madness. It was there that I tasted what may be the Holy Grail of all gumbos; the town's best cooks had been up since five o'clock cooking chicken and andouille for 1,000 (at least), and I can say without a doubt that I have never tasted better. Also going strong by the time we arrived were some of the best zydeco/cajun dancers I've seen. I had been there fifteen minutes at least before I noticed that the band was made of teenagers, so expertly did they play in every regional style -- wailing waltzes, bump-shuffle zydeco, straight-ahead two-step. And the dancers literally never missed a beat, never returning to their chairs for the entire set.

While the cooks and dancers warmed up the destination party, everyone else in the town seemed to be following along with the Courir itself. We arrived on the scene just in time to have a chicken land at our feet, immediately followed by twenty or more wild-eyed, drunken high school football players, all in motley and pointed hats, all slipping and diving along the muddy pasture, tumbling over each other in pursuit of this terrified bird. I had to step up on a flatbed float to avoid the crush, and city boy that I have become, I must admit I was a tad concerned. One of the younger boys belly flopped on the bird and came up with it tucked under one arm, stroking its head as though that could make up for the bodily harm inflicted, and beaming proudly. My friend had the video camera rolling, and I hope she caught it all: "So, is that the first chicken you've caught?" "Yes m'am." "Is this your first courir?" "No m'am. This is my . . . fifth." "How old are you?" "Fifteen." All the time stroking his catch and smiling beatifically.

Nor was that first chicken run the only scare of the day. At the heart of the Courir is the combustible combination of a full-day's drinking, a rough and tumble athletic competition, and an equestrian parade. By noon the horses had clearly had their fill and were understandably skittish about being mounted by the incoherent riders (occasionally two at a time). More than once a horse spooked just in front of us. And we did see one 20-year-old take a hard tumble from flatbed to asphalt, where he lay for a good three seconds before retrieving his 90-ounce tumbler of something and moving on. But miraculously I didn't see a single injury or fight the entire time we were there.

What I did notice was just how thoroughly this festival absorbed the entire community. The parade that accompanied the riders into town must have included forty flatbeds, and there were easily half-again as many people in the parade as there were watching it. At every stop along the route, where traditionally the riders would beg the ingredients of the gumbo to be made back in town, there were house parties and barbecues, sometimes with their own band. I've never been to the more famous Courir in Mamou (grand Mamou, as it's known) because it runs on Mardi Gras day, and I've never been willing to sacrifice that time in New Orleans. The story goes that the Capitaine of the Mamou Courir and the Capitaine from Church Point flipped a coin, and Church Point lost -- thus the Courir du Dimanche Gras. Another fact I hadn't known: at every stop, the riders sing the same song, a plea for the gumbo ingredients they're trying to collect (hence the tossed chickens). It's a song I had heard before in a number of versions, but I never knew why.

One final memory of the Courir: one of the floats stands out in my mind. On its front, three flags were waving: in the center was Old Glory; to the right, the state flag of Louisiana, and on the left, the stars and bars of the Confederacy. And blasting from its sound system? Hip hop. A more incongruous sight I'd be hard-pressed to come up with than a bunch of drunk country boys rapping along to hip-hop while waving the battle flag of the Confederacy. Baby steps, you know.

We ducked out of Church Point in time to make the drive back to New Orleans for the evening parades. Bacchus, one of the super krewes, was already scheduled to roll Sunday evening, and Endymion had been rescheduled from Saturday to follow it. (The official excuse was the threat of rain, but I have it on good authority that the deciding factor was that someone had forgotten to stock the floats with ice for the riders' drinks; believe what you will.) So, we were presented the unprecedented spectacle of two super krewes, with their giant, multi-story floats, rolling back to back. The crowds along St. Charles near Lee Circle seemed to me as thick as last year's, and the racial mix felt like New Orleans, too. The only real difference anyone seemed to notice was that people seemed to be unusually polite, a phenomenon I recall from the early weeks in New York after September 11, as well. Many of these folks were back in their city for the first time in months, and they were still treating each other gingerly. The riders were also apparently especially generous with the throws: even the 40-year-old men in the crowd seemed to be rolling in beads; I imagine the young girls and children needed wheelbarrows.

From the parade (this is still Sunday, mind you), we stopped by the Narcissy show at the Big Top. The crowd was too weary to muster sufficient punk-rock attitude, but we did manage to embrace the "all request night" game Jay likes to play (before each song, the audience chooses one from a pair of categories: e.g. "True Stories or Baldfaced Lies?" or "Country Songs about Punk Rock or Punk Songs about Country"). We even got to suggest some categories of our own and let Jay puzzle out the appropriate songs. By the way, if you haven't seen the Narcissy video for the Ostrich Song, check it out. We have filmmaker Charlie Brown to thank for this excellent absurdity.

From the Big Top (yes, it's still Sunday), we headed back downtown. We stopped in Mimi's, where Spike Lee happened to be milling about and, more importantly, Alexis was celebrating her birthday. We tossed back a couple few there, gathering up forces for the 3 a.m. start of the Bass Parade over at the R Bar.

But let's leave that for another post. I'm exhausted just writing this; I can't believe I made it through alive.

Bass Parade blogging and more TK (plus, if we're lucky, the Mrs. will provide some more photos.)

Carnival Blogging Day 2.5

2006-02-25T02:50:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes. The second day of Carnival, and already I've broken my unmade promise.
So it goes. My pal Sawyer arrived yesterday, straight out the 201, as they say (I'm 504ever, according to the solid authority of the Decatur St. t-shirt shops), and we partook of the festivities. Hence my dilatory post. So it goes, so it goes.

Yesterday was our first day of Uptown parades, and what a time it was. We watched the parades on St. Charles and Clio (Cleeo, Clyo, or CL10; pick one), nestled amongst the muse streets, finding inspiration for more wine and song. Babylon rolled first, much to the confusion of the crowd. No one seemed to know who they were, even the children in front of us, catching the beads and cups. It didn't help, of course, that they used recycled beads (Hey, wait a second, this isn't Orpheus. Or if it is, Harry, what happened to you?). But eventually we caught on, and it was, after all, a real parade.

Bablyon was followed by Chaos, which contains the remnants of one of the oldest krewes. For better and worse, the original Krewe stopped rolling for idiotic reasons I'd rather not think about if you don't mind (I'm trying to have Carnival over here, no reason to bring things down). There was some outrageous political satire, some of it funny, some of it not so much, and none of it really to my taste. So be it. The parade itself was quite lovely. Here's a memory: the "Headless State" float, which rolled without the usual Papier Mache head at the front. In its place was a bare steel rod. The riders wore stark white costumes, and the float itself was white on white. They threw cups that, at first, appeared to be blank, but on closer inspection turned out to have the Chaos logo embossed on them; again, white on white. Make of it what you will; it kept me in mind of the ghosts at our elbows.

Muses followed shortly thereafter. It's one of my favorite parades -- a female krewe that inevitably has the most creative throws. Two annual floats always stand out, a neon emblazened giant shoe, emblem of the krewe, and a bathtub made for forty, playpen for the "bathing muses". Their theme this year had something to do with the games we play, and again Katrina was a prime subject. Take for instance the Operation float, which depicted George W. Bush as the familiar patient from the board game with a price tag for every operation he needed (remove foot from mouth; oil addiction treatment, you get the idea). Given the theme, I figured we'd see the "Blame Game" float soon enough, and I wasn't disappointed. I won't detail every float; that's what Charlie Brown gets paid to do on parade cam, and he's much better at it than I am. I will note, however, the power of the MAX band. Three local private high schools, St. Mary's, St. Augustine's, and Xavier Prep; all victims of the storm, have united to form a mighty musical force, a strutting, shimmying, pounding, blaring, funky, proud ensemble that stretches for three city blocks. Kids, you looked fantastic.

After Muses, we stumbled back to the Big Top gallery, where the Tin Men were playing. The Tin Men are (as if you didn't know) New Orleans' premiere tuba, guitar, and washboard combo. This was the second day in a row I'd seen Alex McMurray and Matt Perrine perform (Alex played his standing Wednesday night Circle Bar solo gig and, despite a touch of the flu, blew the house down. He may be -- and I do not say this lightly -- the most gifted song writer working in New Orleans today. Look, the guy brings to mind the Gershwins, Rogers and Hart, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello; let's just say he can write a song. He's the cigarette-ravaged voice of Royal Fingerbowl, but to my mind at least, as his song writing has become less far ranging, less ambitious on some scores, he has gathered his forces undiluted, moved from scythe to switch-blade (which would you want in a street fight?).) The Tin Men were in top form, playing everything from Mo-Town and old New Orleans R&B to sea shanties, Zeppelin and The Who covers (did I mention they play tuba, guitar, and washboard? Yeah, it's like that.) They also played a fair number of McMurray originals, including one of the tunes he wrote about his experience working as ambient entertainment at Disney Sea Tokyo (as the titular character of "The Ballad of Cap'n Sandy," he was paid to stroll around the park singing sea shanties. Just don't call him a pirate, though). While neither Alex nor Washboard Chas was born in New Orleans, I really can't imagine this band springing up anywhere else, and I can think of few better arguments in defense of New Orleans than that it allows for this sort of lunacy.

That takes us to tonight (it's nearly six a.m.; I'm taking one for the team here -- the team being the two people who read this blog (to you I say, Right On!). Today I commited what may be the Cardinal sin of Carnival; I worked all day. This shall not happen again, I promise. But the evening was salvaged with a heroic pub crawl that took in a number of beloved dives (should I sing the praises of Smitty's bar, where we found polar beers, an open pool table, and a Barry White medley on the juke box? Oh, let me count the ways! Or perhaps I should extol the virtues of The John, with its brimful cocktails, a wall of Elvis album covers, and assorted toilets stationed along the wall of the main room -- functional furniture or art piece? all depends on the time of day. Then there was Molly's, one of two stalwarts of the French Quarter where locals outnumbered the guys wearing store-bought grapefruit-sized compensation beads (the other? well, I'll give you a hint. It didn't close during the storm. I think Anderson Cooper may be downing a dearly-needed pint there as we speak.)

And finally we rolled into One Eye'd Jacks, where we saw the Morning Forties put on a show that would have sent even Anderson off on a three-week bender. But as McMurray reminds us, "there's a new bender waiting around the next bend," and I'll need to freshen up a bit before it starts.

Tomorrow is costume-making day, and honestly, I haven't a clue which direction I'll take. Fortunately, we've accrued the obligatory box o' Carnival foolishness, which is typically stored somewhere out of sight, just in front of last year's beads. I brought the box down yesterday (ok, so it has grown to two boxes of wigs, chiffon, face paint, masks, capes, a tiara or two, boas of various feathers, Thrift City cast-offs from float-riders of days past, a glue gun, glitter, sun glasses, a rubber pig snout or two -- and those are just the items I can recall without opening the box (it is nearly six a.m., after all)).

So, I hope to post a bit more coherently tomorrow. Again, no promises, you two. But I'm hoping to get a second to step back and look at this madness, something utterly impossible when I'm chasing that next chaser.

Until then, may you feel as blessed to be where you are as I feel to be here today.

Cheers.

Carnival Blogging

2006-02-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras 2006 promises to be unlike any other for all the obvious reasons, so I've decided to try keeping a daily blog entry going throughout the festivities to record my impressions. In the thick of things, this might get a little difficult, so no promises (even to myself). Let's just see what happens.

We kicked off Carnival season two Saturdays ago with a party for Krewe du Vieux, an old-fashioned parody parade with small, mule- and horse-drawn floats, outlandish costumes and themes -- all unspeakably ribald and damned good fun. Mr. Bill creator Walter Williams was the reigning king, and Katrina themes were the topic du jour, of course. I caught a toy gold croissant from the mime on the "Buy Us Back, Chirac" float (a much better throw than the more traditional fake dog poo). But I didn't get one of the "FEMA Condoms" from the Krewe of Spermes sub-krewe (the tip of each condom was neatly perforated and "guaranteed to leak"; I heard my neighbor say, "man, I'm a coon-ass*, that's no problem for me; I'll just put some duct tape on it"). Spermes' theme this year had something to do with "mandatory ejaculation" or "premature evacuation." You get the idea.

I didn't make it to the parades last weekend, unfortunately. Not even Barkus, the French Quarter dog parade. Instead, I went back to St. Augustine's for Mass. Fr. Ledoux was even more charismatic and engaging than I'd heard; more St. Aug's blogging to come.

That brings us to yesterday and the first annual Krewe t' Screw, a 9th Ward marching group centering around two of my favorite haunts: Bacchanal wine shop, at the very bottom of the Bywater, and Mimi's in the Marigny. Chris from Bacchanal and the eponymous Mimi were king and queen, and they made an elegant, decadent couple:

We had a couple of small trailer floats, a brass band that included James Andrews, Kevin O'Day, and Matt Perrine, and a couple of flat-bed based electrified bands at different stops. We second-lined behind the band all the way from Poland Ave up to Franklin, descending upon thirteen bars (or so I heard) along the route. Here are a few photos courtesy of my many-talented wife:

Extra credit to Tony for keeping the theme -- those are not satsumas!

Happy Carnival, y'all. More to come.

*Coon-ass: derogatory term for Acadians (Cajuns) now proudly taken up by the Cajuns themselves. A common bumper-sticker where I grew up read "Registered Coon-Ass" and included a cartoon of a mooning raccoon. No one can claim we take ourselves too seriously.

Swampish Goes to Mass

2006-02-12T17:04:00.000-08:00

I went to Mass today. It has been a while; no weddings or funerals in my life for some time, I guess. But I went today because I had heard some bad news about a church I had always wanted to visit. St. Augustine's, in the Treme, is to be closed. Since even before I moved to New Orleans, St. Augustine's has been on my list of New Orleans things to do. It's a list that's shorter since the storm; some things I won't be able to do now. But I still hadn't managed to make it to St. Aug's.

One reason is that attending the Sunday Mass there is a real committment: no half-hour quickie service for these folks. The gospel-jazz Sunday Mass is legendary, as is the charismatic pastor, Father LeDoux. I had heard of his ranging, stirring sermons, the powerful music, the Kiss of Peace--in my experience a brief, staid series of handshakes and mumblings of "peace be with you" directed at the people within arm's length--during which the parishoners spilled out of the pews and greeted everyone in the church. St. Augustine's is not, let us say, your typical Catholic church. It is, in fact, the oldest African American Catholic church in the country. And it is a deep and variegated slice of what New Orleans means.

Looking around the church is a glimpse into New Orleans history. The parishoners are every color of coffee, from the richest French roast to the brightest au lait, and a latte or three with some international flavors. Once, it is said, the cultured Creole elite of St. Augustine sat proudly in the center pews, while slaves occupied the side pews. And now, St. Augustine's is among those cultural tourist attractions that European tourists seem to discover long before their American counterparts.

And, more importantly now, St. Augustine's represents something of the real New Orleans. The congregation is small but fervent; they're slowly coming back from Houston and Atlanta and all points North. The choir is powerful, of course, but it isn't a show choir of professional musicians. With the exception of Sun Pie of the Louisiana Sun Sports, they are just average parishioners with above-average voices, praising in the way they know best.

And now this, too, may pass. Another vestige of the real New Orleans may become a historical footnote. So, I went to Mass, and I'm going back. Father LeDoux may be back next Sunday, and I don't want to miss it. And for me to attend Mass twice in the same month must count as a minor miracle on some scale. Maybe it should contribute to the beatification of Fr. LeDoux; maybe enough of these minor miracles, and he'll reach the stature of Fr. Seelos, and then they'll have to keep St. Augustine's open. The time is ripe for a miracle or two down here.

Good news

2005-12-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

Maybe, just maybe, this means something. I know, I know: gift horse, mouth. So, hurrah?

To do list

2005-12-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

1) Read this
2) Get mad
3) Sign this

Don't make no sense

2005-12-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

New Orleans doesn't make any sense. Not to the rest of the country it appears, anyway. That's why I have to hear from a friend of mine who headed for higher ground in Austin that "no city in America is owed an existence." That's why also a writer who has been bidding us ta-ta and singing the dirge of our untimely demise for so long has now decided to kick us off himself. New Orleans doesn't make sense to America, it seems, because we make no economic sense. Where's the payoff, the dividend from keeping us around? America, once guilty of knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing, is now looking to Walmart for an even lower price.

But New Orleans hasn't made financial sense in many a long year. It was something I registered at the first New Orleans party I ever attended. After four hours of conversation and drinks, I left the party realizing that no one--no one--had asked me what I did for a living. And I didn't know what anyone else did in their hours bought and sold, either--well, one, but that's because the party was a send-off for him on his way to study Chinese medicine. I did know what kinds of music people listened to, who they had seen at Jazz Fest ten years ago, a couple of stories of the horrors awaiting all owners of old houses. But the topic of how we managed to make a living just never seemed to surface. And it has been that way consistently in every gathering here I've attended. Only somone fresh off the plane from Chicago or LA extends a hand, gets the name, and asks, "So what is it you do?" It seems that in New Orleans we go by the assumption that what we "do" isn't really who we are. We generally aren't making money (certainly not much money) doing what we want. We have the jobs of teenagers and roustabouts, we're service industry workers and freelancers of different stripes, but generally that's the least interesting part of the story. No one comes to New Orleans to make money. There was a time,perhaps,when people came here to save money, but those days have been fading ever since the French Quarter went condo. So, when someone from San Francisco provides a friendly opening for conversation, it doesn't make sense to them when a New Orleanian answers, "You know, this and that."

And we fail to make economic sense in a specific and time-worn way. When it comes down to it, we're a goddammed cinematic archetype. We're the hooker with the heart of gold. We're the Magdalen of cities. We take you in when you need to wrestle free of a life that makes sense too completely. We're good for a tumble, let you listen to the music that no one likes where you live. We're a good kid, really, but you always feel a little sheepish as you leave, after, as even George Bush admits, you've enjoyed yourself "a little too much". And God help us if we "get in trouble"; we should've known,after all. We've practically been asking for it. But we heard him, if no one else did, when he whispered, "You'll see, baby. Next time I'm in town, you'll see. I'll set you up right. Get you a little apartment. I'm not gonna forget about you, baby." And even this simple financial transaction is too complicated for us; we get involved, believe that maybe he really means it this time. So, maybe it's a bit much now to expect him to come riding down Elysian Fields to the sounds of Verdi, standing up through the sunroof of his limo, bearing roses. It's okay, baby. We don't need the flowers and the opera. We know you've got big business on your mind. Just leave the money on the dresser when you go.

PKSD and you (and me)

2005-11-15T14:33:00.000-08:00

I went to see Theresa Andersson at the Maple Leaf this past weekend. She has a fantastic voice (some Bonnie Raitt and early Rickie Lee Jones in there, plus some wild trills of her own that probably have a Scandanavian origin I'm too ignorant to recognize), but I wouldn't really call myself a fan. I went to meet some friends there.

What struck me most about that evening, something that hadn't really occurred to me before, was what a hard-drinking town New Orleans seems to have become. Now, it may seem ludicrous to say that hard-drinking is an indication of something different here. After all, public intoxication has always been about as common as cheap beads in the street after Endymion; yes, I'm aware that this is the site of the cocktail's invention, land of the go-cup and home of the hurricane. But I'm not talking about heavy drinking or freqent drinking or even outrageous levels of intoxication. I mean hard drinking. I mean Nick from "It's a Wonderful Life" leaning in to Clarence and sneering: "Hey look, mister - we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don't need any characters around to give the joint 'atmosphere'. Is that clear, or do I have to slip you my left for a convincer?"

Oh, Nick, that's not the way it used to be.

Now maybe it has something to do with Theresa Andersson. Maybe her distinctive brand of flirty, swirly performance, her country-pop melodies infused with virtuoso vocals combine to conjur a particularly bitter following. Seems unlikely to me, though. She's so sunny and, well, damned good looking.

I think it's more likely a symptom of a more general syndrome, something like Post-Katrina Stress and Disorder. Which is what we're generally feeling. I've heard it from so many friends now: the mental treadmill effect that consumes half an hour of wandering thought to bring you back to "now why was I in the kitchen again?"; the inability to complete the most mundane tasks (and particularly the most mundane ones--been shopping lately? keeping up with email? Suddenly writing a business letter is one of the labors of Hercules); the constant urge to self-medicate (just give me gin and cigarettes; I'll be fine).

Chris Rose describes it perfectly. We're all nuts, and we're all at least somewhat aware of our insanity.

Still, it was more than a little disconcerting to see my fellow drinkers pouring down the booze as though something in their stomaches needed dousing. Strange to get elbowed aside repeatedly at the bar, like I was trying to order shots of Jager at the Boot.

Oh,well. Guess I'll go give out a couple pairs of wings.

Lap of Luxury

2005-11-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

Everything's a luxury here. Hot showers. Lights. Garbage pickup. High-speed internet. Let me tell you, we're living large now, and I'm basking in it.

Of course, we need reminding. And maybe that's why some of my friends are happy about the bi-weekly power outages in the Marigny-Bywater (the last two have lasted longer than 12 hours). Better than any mint on the pillow, any plush towel and robe combination, these timely plunges into pre-modernity set our high life in relief.

And maybe we need reminders on a different level, as well, signposts that tell us again just how far we are from normal in this town. In a narrow band of neighborhoods bordering the river, a band that stretches from the Industrial Canal all the way to Audubon Park, it's quite possible to forget that we're still living in a disaster area. Sure, it takes a willful effort, a decision never to cross St. Claude or the Industrial Canal, never to venture past St. Charles Uptown. But many of my neighbors are willing to make this effort. It's a necessity, they say, for maintaining their sanity.

And I can't help but think that those among us who willfully ignore the destruction just out of sight are among those who are already returning to the petty, suburbanite, soul-killing grievances that infected the neighborhood association meetings and email lists before the storm. They are the same folks who complained about the free food available in Washington Park and had it shut down (reportedly 30 complaints). These are the vigilant neighbors who hear that a coffee shop has reopened with live music and complain about zoning for live entertainment. They raised their voices along with those who screamed at the Entergy reps when we lost power overnight weeks ago.

To these folks, I say, there's a tour bus leaving for the L9. Maybe we should all pony up and charter one. After all, isn't part of living in the lap of luxury our ability to play tourist in our own hometown? C'mon, I hear it goes by Fats Domino's house, too!

Look for my Joy

2005-10-30T21:16:00.000-08:00

Lately, I've started thinking more and more about joy.

Yesterday morning, I had breakfast with a few friends. Jay was there. He had just gotten back to town a day or so before and had been able to salvage only "some cheap guitars and a couple pairs of dirty blue jeans" from his Mid-city place. So, you might say he was playing Kubler-Ross catchup with the rest of us. But he told us one thing in particular that stayed with me: he said, "I've decided just to go for joy now. Happiness . . . happiness is out here"--he gestured in the air, to some spot beyond arm's length--"so I'm settling for joy. I'm going to get whatever joy I can get."

This announcement seemed fitting, not least because Jay, punk-rock poet and master of the nearly-inscrutable one-liner, starred in a short film called "Tortured by Joy." But the reason it struck me particularly had more to do the way it echoed my own recurring question over the past several weeks. More and more often, when faced with a decision, I find myself asking, "Where's the joy in that?" And I mean joy specifically--not happiness, not pleasure, certainly not benefit or value or use. I mean quite simply the unmediated groundswell: brief, ephemeral, unsustainable, effervescent, unquestionable. The pursuit of happiness is a fool's game (pace Jefferson et al). It's a three-card monte: the target bobs and weaves, slips under and around. We pursue it, doggedly, but we bag the decoy every time. Always the rubes of happiness. And pleasure, let's face it, turns ugly in the end: the late-rock-star puffiness, the glassy-eyed incoherence, the troubling eventualities in the gastrointestinal track. And I live in New Orleans; I feel I know a thing or two about pleasure. Also, I'm Acadian (Cajun), so I understand appetite. But joy is not pleasure, and to be honest, it appeases no appetite.

Maybe because it corresponds to no immediate but lesser need, there is no adequate way to prepare for joy. You can't set your mouth for joy the way you anticipate the first bite of of a creme brulee. C.S. Lewis called his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and that title seems to me to get it right. Joy is sudden, surprising, even when expected. But if you can't get the jump on joy, you can still keep an eye out for it (even if your chances of finding it in Slidell are even slimmer now than they were when Lucinda Williams wrote that song).

I found a bit of joy this weekend unpacking my books. I came across a John Berryman poem called "The Ball Poem," which juts up out of his early work obliterating everything he'd written up to that point. I can't stop re-reading it, and I can't read it now without some thought of what's happened to the city. I also now have an excuse to go back and re-read Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library," one of the tastiest essays I know.

I got a jolt of joy the other day when I first heard WWOZ on my car radio again (Soul Rebels' "Let your Mind Be Free"was playing). Last week, I recognized Orion from the window of the Ryder truck, watched him in his eternal pursuit range across the sky as we made our way at four a.m. back from Alexandria with all we had accumulated there, and that gave me a taste of it. Our roof, which shed a fair number of tiles, remains untarped, and I'm still not ready to take the plywood off our windows, but we bought two shrimp plants for the front of the house, and they're blooming.

So, if you can't pursue joy, you can at least create the conditions for it to arise. And that's where my question keeps coming in: "Where's the joy in that?" I was walking past the Lutheran church in my neighborhood the other night and stumbled upon a neighborhood association meeting I had meant to attend already in full swing. A palpable hostility had gathered in that room and was spilling over into the street; it stopped me cold, and I couldn't go in. I listened to my neighbors scream at our City Councilperson, and I asked myself that question: "Where's the joy in that?" So, I turned around and went to pick up my friend who was cleaning out her flooded basement uptown.

I've been thinking, though, that I should ask the question in earnest as well: "Where's the joy in that?" This weekend, the city seemed like it reached a point of critical mass, tipping over into an abundance of joy that was wholly unexpected. It was a mini-Mardi Gras, and we ate, drank, and danced for three solid days. Friday night, Kermit Ruffins played in front of Fat Harry's for a show put on by nola.com (my wife works there). I have to admit that Fat Harry's is not a bar I usually frequent (too far uptown, far too collegiate). And the live webcam show, the bourbocam scene, isn't really for me, either. But I knew as soon as I saw the crowd that this was the place to be, the best party in town.

The crowd, which was meant to be contained on the sidewalk or across the street on the neutral ground (that's the median if you're in any other city but New Orleans), kept spilling out into the street. NOPD had every right to shut it down, but instead the Lieutenant on the scene simply said "New Orleans needs this," and they blocked off St. Charles at Napolean Avenue and let the impromptu block party roll. People costumed--although the spirit of the costumes was more Carnival than Halloween. I didn't see anything scary, unless you count the guy dressed as a duct-taped refrigerator (trust me, they're scary; I've heard rumor that someone has constructed Fridgehenge from a group of them, but I have yet to confirm it).

A smaller crowd was back Saturday night to see the Storyville Stompers. (The larger crowd was at Tip's seeing Rebirth Saturday.) Both nights I recognized, here and there throughout the crowd, the unmistakeable strutting, syncopated second-line dance of the native New Orleanian: it involves an upward hitch on the one beat, the signature move of the sousaphone player; in its flashier form there's a one-foot shuffle between beats, a bit of flair borrowed from the grand marshall. I've been trying to get it down for nine years and I'm still nowhere close. I'm beginning to think you have to be born here to do it right, and there's still too much two-step in me.

And then I found out Saturday morning that the New York Dolls were playing the one-day Voodoo Fest benefit here--no, really, the New York Dolls. And we were there with California weather and room to lie on the grass, a few thousand locals, a couple hundred rescue and relief workers. Morning Forty Federation's set on the smaller stage felt like finding a bottle of Old Grandad in the back of the liquor cabinet--back behind the daquiri mix and the banana liqeur, just before you start to drink the Amaretto.

Nine Inch Nails closed the show, and that's an act I've wanted to see for a good decade or so. (By the way, for someone with that volume of angst, Trent Reznor is surprisingly buff these days. Just didn't expect that.) He brought out Saul Williams, who performed "African Student Movement" with its refrain, "tell me where my niggas at"--another question, albeit differently worded, that most folks I know have been asking since coming back.

We lost some good neighbors last week, one of the two black families remaining on our block. They took the FEMA loan--after thirty years of renting one half of the double next to ours, they're building a house in Mississippi, where most of their family had moved. Of course I should be happy for them. But Ms. Grace was one of the few stoop-sitters left around; she was there every evening, knew and was known by everyone who walked our street. She'll be replaced by someone who stays inside, uses the air conditioner, minds their own business. Where's the joy in that? In the Lower Ninth, the city is bringing the residents in by bus for a last look. The houses remaining have no services: not gas, not electric, not water.

Any shade of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-ism is obscene. To look for the bright side of the last two months is to court a willful, malignant ignorance. I think that must be said, and I think it must be true. So many days this city seems to be slipping into unrecoverability. And yet I'm beset by joy. By this very place and in this very moment. And that, I know, is true as well.

Confessions of a pigman

2005-10-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

Today, I've been back in the city for nearly a week. I intended to return to Alexandria late last week but never got around to it. New Orleans is like that--it's still like that. More friends arrive, more businesses open, and the weary traveller gets distracted. I've never been quite sure whether the island of Circe or land of the Lotus Eaters is the proper classical parallel.

Early impressions of the city on my third trip back:

Crossing the Crescent City Connection into the West Bank, I see blue-tarped roofs spotting the suburban landscapes like the swimming pools shimmering among green squares stretching
forever, seen on landing when we glide over Long Island and down into New York.

On our side of the river, refrigerators stand sentinal up and down the block, their festering contents seeth inside, bound by duct tape. They've become ad hoc bulletin boards, grafitti canvasses: "Voodoo Day 5," "Heck of a Job, Brownie," "Deliver to: George W. Bush, Pennsylvania Ave." I was invited to a Day of the Dead party coming up "You'll see flyers around. Check the refrigerators."

Stood outside the big Uptown Rue de la Course, amid the garbage stink, chasing off the fat buzz of flies, checking my email. They were open by Saturday, overrun with traffic for the Clean Up Magazine St. effort. That in itself was mightily impressive: four or five groups per block, volunteers and homeowners, National Guardsmen, hired hands, all dragging contractors' bags, sweeping, sweating. By Sunday we all swore Magazine was cleaner than before the storm.

Elsewhere is another story. I drove through Gentilly, Lakeview, 8th Ward. A few haggard residents there, dragging things to the street, dust masks perched on their foreheads. They don't look up and wave as I drive by. So still everywhere, I feel my jeep makes a wake in the dust. In City Park rows of amputee oaks, vast stretches of dust-colored grass.

In the Marigny, everyone waves and talks now. The talking has become compulsive: "how'd you do in the storm? when did you leave? where did you go?" Everyone wants to tell the story and tell it again. Some of my neighbors stayed through the first week after the storm. They tell their stories piecemeal, not the rushed recitation of the evacuees, but one detail at a time, usually in response to something I've said:

"I heard everyone had firearms Uptown."
"I had a gun. We all did. There were three checkpoints on the block. When I went out at night, I'd flash the spotlight, once to that house there, once to the house at the end of the block, so I wouldn't get shot."

Reconstruction of the Fables

2005-10-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

New Orleans is not Baghdad. I keep telling myself that, hoping that maybe it'll help me sleep at night. Yes, we've always known it was a bit of the Third World, the "northernmost Caribbean city." It was bad enough thinking we lived in the American Port-au-Prince. But now, with the reports of mercenaries roaming the streets, Haliburton and that gang of thieves getting no-bid contracts to set the city right, and the President talking about the "hard work" ahead there, it seems we've found our real sister city.

Sarah went to Lakeview yesterday and came back shaken. In a city inundated with refuse, sanitation workers are losing their jobs. French Quarter businesses untouched by the storm remain shuttered. If they reopen, their insurance dries up, and there's not much market for boas and jester's caps these days.

Without those boas and billiard-ball sized beads, without the jester's caps and the "bitch fell off" t-shirts, how will folks even know they're having fun? Will they still know to yell "woo-oo" at punctuated intervals? Will they still be able to tell how "crazy" they're being?

These things disturb me as well, and not just because I, like many New Orleanians, tend to sport a feathered boa from time to time. They bother me most of all because, when I close my eyes and try to imagine where New Orleans is going, a great chasm starts to open up. The flood-drenched parts of the city--L9, the East, Lakeview, Gentilly--we know even less of their future than we know of the future for the t-shirt shops on Decatur St. And if we can't count on the feathered boa trade, if we can't know for certain that at any hour of day or night we can still find an alligator claw keyring, what can we know of the future for the rest of the city, the reclaimed swamplands that radiate out from the river.

In New Orleans, we lived with the devil we knew. Abysmal school system. Generations of poverty. A war zone's murder rate. Government corruption so entwined in the roots of the city as to be ineradicable. A third-world economy precariously balanced on a fickle tourism industry where the disparity between the worker's wage and the profit margin fortified the invisible walls of race and class that sectioned city blocks like post-war Berlin. But what fresh hell awaits us now, creeping in with the profiteers who siphon away the stream of generosity and opportunity born of federal shame? Will we recognize that devil's face? Will it be content to gobble its gains and let us go on about the business of being New Orleans?

New Orleans is not Baghdad. It's not. It isn't Baghdad. Good night.

Ruminations on Candlelight Urination

2005-10-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

Friday was my second return to New Orleans. I left early and barrelled down Highway 61, trying to get in ahead of the 200,000 returning residents who were now legally allowed in. (Our zipcode is conspicuously absent from the list of early returns; apparently it extends into some of the worst flood zones in the city.) As I neared Causeway, traffic bottleknecked predictably; I took a deep zenBreath(tm) and steeled myself for the hours of waiting that never came. Traffic picked up almost immediately, and I soon found myself on the nearly deserted streets of Uptown once again.

The National Guard presence is lighter now. No large encampment at Audubon Park that I could see, fewer Humvees in my rearview this time. I also took a slightly different route and saw more downed trees, more wind damage Uptown than I remembered. The new views of the destruction combined with the empty streets doused the bouyant spirits my last trip in had raised. But then I stopped by Slim Goodies for a quick chat with Kappa, and all was right again. She was deep in the weeds and having a ball, it seemed. Alone behind the counter, she plated the pancakes a customer volunteering as short-order cook was pouring and flipping.

Finally, I made it down to the Texaco building, where I brought the Nola.com office back online--alas, no bourbocam yet, but the office cams were soon sending out photos of what's left of New Orleans. The building was closed again at 2 p.m, so I headed back to our Marigny house. The Marigny is funkier than ever, at least in the old sense of the term. So was our house. I checked on Mimi's (the bar) and Mimi's (the house). Went to Bourbon street to confirm that Cat's was indeed still shuttered and plywooded. There was a Jersey Swat Team contingent strolling about and what appeared to be a few tourists drinking Handgrenades (were they relief workers who extended their stay? news crews out on the town? Who were these people, this beadless skeleton crew of the usual suspects?). Mounds of trash with a pungence indescribable but only quantitatively worse than the normal French Quarter stench.

From the Quarter, it was back uptown to check on a friend's grandmother's house at Audubon park. Again, I was caught off guard by the extent of destruction. The neighbors who were there appeared to be gutting the groundlevel basements of their raised houses. Limp sheetrock, mottled couches, drowned stereos and entire entertainment centers, small hills of trash lined the street. My friend's grandmother's place showed no external damage, and the water line appeared to be below the threshold everywhere on her place.

Having given him a phone report, I turned toward the Maple Leaf and the first music show of post-Katrina New Orleans. Walter "Wolfman" Washington was playing, with Kevin O'Day on drums. I could think of nowhere else I would rather have been and only wished that Sarah, who introduced me to New Orleans music, could have been there. The gig was set for 5:00, to skirt the curfew, but true to New Orleans form, it was closer to 7:00 when the beer was finally chilled and the band warmed up. The crowd was small but enthusiastic, a cross section of the usual Maple Leaf characters--a few student types, dancing the gangly-armed hippie dance, some middle-agers with wedding-party swing moves, one or two old timers beaming at the scene. When I heard the trombone, I knew I was home, and when Walter broke out "Oop poo pah doo," I settled into my bliss. And yes, I peed by candlelight, the generator power reserved for beer coolers and amplifiers. The MSNBC crew insured that the place was brighter than it has been for any Rebirth show I've seen there, but the men's room was lit by a single votive, perched ritually atop the urinal. Even the Bud Light tasted rare and remarkable for this night. When I finally had an Abita in my hand, and the band was rolling through an extended version of Kansas Joe McCoy's "When the Levee Breaks," I knew that the spirit of New Orleans was still haunting that empty cityscape, just waiting for enough of us to gather around and call it back to life.

First Thing

2005-09-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

Exiled in Alexandria, waiting out the floodwaters in New Orleans, waiting for the arrival of the Lake Charles contingent who are fleeing Rita, waiting for something to seem normal again.

The great American disasters of the 21st century are clinging to me, tracking the path of my personal history and changing my story. I try not to take it personally.

On the morning of September 11 2001, I was on a PATH train from my home in Mid-town Manhattan to work in Jersey City. I came up from the darkness of the train tunnels to a crowd looking back over the Hudson at two burning towers. "That's terrorist shit," I heard someone repeating. A man in a suit came up the escalator behind me, talking into a cell phone: "I was on the last train out. They just stopped all trains from World Trade."

A year later, Sarah and I moved to New Orleans. I've never felt as much as home anywhere. But for now, Katrina has chased us out.

And now lovely Rita has decided to wreck the town I grew up in. Lake Charles is emptied; my relatives, people who would normally never evacuate, are heading up to Alex.

As I said, I'm trying not to take this personally. But blogs being the self-indulgent medium they are . . .