ANTEDILUVIAN NEW ORLEANS
New Orleans Photoblogging (part six)

Completing the series of pictures I took in New Orleans last May. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5).

This Friday, Becky and I are going to the French Quarter to celebrate the New Year. This will be my first visit to the city since Katrina destroyed it and I'm not sure what to expect. Sure, my beloved Vieux Carré, largely undamaged, appears to be up and running again, and the curfew has been lifted--I know I'll be nicely toasted come midnight on the 31st. But the Crescent City is not alive. Indeed, the New York Times editorial board ran this ominous essay on December 11th, via truthout:

Death of an American City

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

Click here for the rest.

It looks like everything I feared is coming to pass. Disinterested officials in Washington do nothing while local officials argue among themselves: something called "New Orleans" will survive but New Orleans Square at Disneyland will probably be more interesting given the way things are going now. And I think the people of New Orleans, both there and across the nation, are starting to realize the awful truth.

Again from the New York Times:

Hurricane Takes a Further Toll: Suicides Up in New Orleans

Mental health professionals say this city appears to be experiencing a sharp increase in suicides in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and interviews and statistics suggest that the rate is now double or more the national and local averages.

At least seven people have killed themselves in the four months since the storm, officials say, here in a city whose population is now no more than 75,000 to 100,000. That compares with a national rate of 11 suicides per 100,000 for all of 2002, and a rate in New Orleans of about nine per 100,000 for all of 2004. There is broad agreement that the problem is likely to get worse.

And

Officials have also reported suicides among evacuees in cities like Houston, where large numbers of them have settled.

Click here for the rest.

This sense of despair and depression makes complete sense to me. New Orleans, before the flood, wasn't just a location where people lived; it was a place of authenticity where its collective humanity amounted to far more than a sum total of individuals and property. Its cultural worth defied valuation in terms of dollars. These people haven't simply lost their dwellings and neighborhoods: they've lost something that most Americans cannot possibly understand. I'd be totally morbid myself if I dwelled on it all.

That's why I'm a bit nervous about going there this weekend. That's also why it's taken me five months to finish this photoblogging series. I didn't want to think about it--thank god I've been so busy this past semester. So, somehow, it seems like now is the right time to finish this up.

Here goes.

(A quick note: most, but not all of these shots are from the French Quarter, which was, as I said, largely undamaged, but now, without a thriving city surrounding it, without the cultural gumbo bubbling up out of the Ninth Ward and other black neighborhoods, I fear that the Vieux Carré will be a shell of its former self. Remember that when looking at these pictures.)



Above: an old cast iron hitching post shaped like a horse's head. Lots of these around the quarter. Below: a close-up of a mini fridge in a bar on Bourbon St.



Below: dining alfresco on a balcony on Decatur St. Note the small irony of sitting in the heat next to an AC unit, which increases the heat.





Above: a couple of drunk guys eye a Lucky Dog stand on Bourbon St. Without a doubt, Lucky Dog, all over the Quarter most nights, makes the best hot dogs I've ever had. Are they back in business yet? I'll guess I'll find out this weekend.



Above: looking into an art gallery in the Quarter. The sculpture in the window strikes me as being very post-modern. It seems to be inspired by the weird, avant garde, and very entertaining Blue Man Group. So what we have here is art imitating life, which is very modern, of course, but it doesn't stop there: the life being imitated also happens to be art. So it's art imitating art which is also life. As for what the Blue Man Group is imitating, I have no idea. Anyway, my seeing this statue brings the art back to life, my life at any rate, but my posting this picture on a blog called Real Art kind of makes it art again. Confused yet? Good. That's how post-modernism is supposed to work.

Below: a house on Royal Street near Esplanade. I did't notice the Moon in the shot until I got home and looked at it. Cool, huh? I also really dig the way a shadow from a telephone pole across the street makes the angel look as though it's being crucified. I only get cool pictures like this once every decade or so.





In an earlier part of this series, I observed how the closed quarters of the Quarter make for interesting bits of mystery. In the pic above, you see two alleyways, both of which lead to two private spaces--like courtyards in the villas of ancient Rome, many houses in the Quarter have an exterior green area away from the public. One walks past gates like this all over the place, and sometimes one gets teasing glimpses of cool and wonderful gardens and whatnot.

Below: another mysterious corner of the French Quarter.



A naughty store on Bourbon.



Shooting pool at the R Bar on Royal Street.



A cool old house in the Quarter, complete with foliage growing out of the garage.



Still another mysterious corner of the Quarter, complete with a mystery woman named Becky who just happens to be my wife.



A street car on St. Charles Street near Tulane University. This is outside the Quarter, and, if I understand correctly, was totally flooded when the levees burst.



Decatur Street scene.



A French Quarter side street; I forget which one.



A pricey but cool resale shop on Decatur.



Bikers strut their stuff on Bourbon Street.



Thousands of old poster corners and staples for thousands of live shows by thousands of live bands on a big bulletin board on Decatur near Esplanade Street.



Okay, this officially ends my New Orleans Photoblogging series. I hope I've done a good job getting across what makes, or made rather, the Big Easy so incredibly wonderful to me. Ultimately, that's impossible, I know, but maybe I've provided a sense of it all, a glimpse into my own subjective understanding of the Crescent City. I don't know. I don't know what's waiting for me there this weekend, either.

Man, we can't let this city die.

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