Day 947: 31 Months After, A Drive Through New Orleans

Ms. Maisnon just departed after a very long weekend in New Orleans. Visiting from San Francisco, our sister city in character and characters, she spent a lot of Saturday with D and me. Like any good American, she was determined not to stay in the Quarter and wanted to see some parts of the city that flooded and how they have changed over the years.

Everywhere we went were people bent over working on their homes, brick by brick, wall by wall, leaf by leaf. Hear me correctly, I said people. No cranes, no government-led earthmovers and pavers. Just regular folks and miles of broken-down infrastructure around them.

Our drive took us first to the Lower Ninth and Arabi, where, for an hour, we maneuvered the potholes, questioned the stability of the new Industrial Canal wall and marveled sadly at houses untouched and that had fallen onto themselves. Somewhere at the corner of Deslonde and Missing Street Sign, Maisnon suddenly got a better feel for the place – the empty, overgrown lots that once bore houses – and just how barren it is now compared to almost three years ago. There were folks on almost every block working on their property, each of these individual people or small groups working on the only house on an entire block of devastation. This is a big part of why I didn’t take many pictures on this drive (the other reason was I didn’t know what of the million possible choices to take pictures of). If some woman were to pull up to my house, yank out her little digital camera and take pictures of me putting in my new front path, I’d put one of those red bricks right in her windshield. There’s a fine line between seeing what you’ve got to see and turning it into a tourist attraction. Let me note here that I stopped on Florida Avenue to give Maisnon an idea of what the deepest portion of a drained-swamp-turned-into-residential area looks like and that there was indeed an elderly gentleman putting in a red-brick front path that worked its way towards a house that wasn’t there. Nope, not even a solitary concrete block with which to raise it. One’s got to start somewhere at property reclamation, though, and my hat is off to this old man.

Next, we drove towards downtown and into Central City. This neighborhood has to be the most underrated in New Orleans mostly due to its crime rate, but is not in the American vernacular to the same extent as Lakeview or Lower Ninth Ward. It’s older, more historic and possesses an architectural beauty that shines brighter than most of the other flooded New Orleans neighborhoods, yet gets short shrift. Maisnon and I saw old New Orleans shotgun-style architecture that is waiting to be bought, renovated and loved by someone, but not many are so motivated by the prospect of living in the Triangle Of Death. Kudos to Poppy Brite who has made a home there and tries so hard to give her area a voice. It’s way past time the Times Picayune hosted a column entitled The View from Central City.

Then up Claiborne into the Broadmoor neighborhood which I pointed out as part of the bowl within the bowl, but where the neighborhood association bravely works in the name of people, place and all a neighborhood association should be. We stopped at the Arts Market at Palmer Park where Maisnon bought some prints and I window-shopped for a while. By then, it was lunchtime, so down St. Charles we went to pick up Senor D. Following a short wait outside and a short downpour during that wait, lunch was delicious po-boys at Liuzza’s By The Track in MidCity.

The postprandial excursion took us along a very full Bayou St. John into Lakeview, where we showed Maisnon the odd juxtaposition of Friend A’s barren lot right across the street from the new mansion on an expanded dual-lot of Friend B. This led to questions.

Maisnon wondered out loud, “Why go bigger?” “Why have a good number of these folks gone bigger and not necessarily higher?” I countered. D, the ever-analytical, replied, “Their neighbors aren’t coming back, they got the land for cheap and, face it, they’re probably never going to get flooded again.”

Me: “They’re NEVER going to get flooded AGAIN?”

D: “Not in their lifetimes. What do they care?”

That’s a pretty ballsy statement, in my opinion, because I don’t trust new and existing levee protection to protect us within my lifetime. Or the lifetimes of New Orleanians currently in their 80s. Call me mistrustful.

Evening was upon us, so we headed down Elysian Fields Avenue into Gentilly. Our drive ended in the Maringy and there began the walk down Frenchmen St. (where we ran into Mr. NOLA Rising at another Arts Market outside Cafe Brasil) and cocktails at Spotted Cat. For a few minutes in the Cat, I found that elusive thing – a smile-inducing relaxation – thanks to the soft melodies of three jazz musicians, a very comforting spring breeze to match the music and people I like to be around. We’ve all go to do this more often.

Maisnon is originally from the DC area and remarked twice during our drive how much this recovery reminded her of that city’s path back from hell. How do crime corridors form in New Orleans, DC, L.A. and Detroit that mimic each other? At what point does one say that police force is not the only answer to combat the result of growing frustration? When do we stop excusing corruption and are we given effective tools to weed it out? How long will a place suffer while caught in the tweezer hold of government cluelesness and the apathy of a majority of its citizens? Will it return to its previous state if some pressures are removed? What other similarities could we think of, what was their common cause and is studying this worth it?

To reiterate what I said at the beginning of this post, this recovery is completely the burden of the citizen. Forget the government here – just as rescue from the floodwaters was bungled by these fools, so is the recovery. There are problems unique to this area that hold it back in so many imaginable and unthinkable ways. Maisnon asked me if I would consider running for political office in New Orleans or Louisiana. “No,” I replied, “I want to remain a part of the solution, not forced to play their game and eventually become a part of the problem.”

Armchair analysis aside, how to break this to the tax-paying homeowner who, without knee pads and gloves, rebuilds his Lower Ninth Ward home’s front path? How does one say, “You have every right to be here, sir, but you’re on your own” and get away with it? This is what’s happening in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in the United States of America, and I encourage every one of you to come see it and help answer these questions. Be a part of the recovery, be an American.