New Orleans, The City That Care Forgot
I was apprehensive about visiting New Orleans on this trip. I had spent a lot of time in the city between 1997 and 2000, and I haven't been back since Katrina hit. I wasn't really sure what to expect and, at first, nothing really looked all that different. The Superdome had a pristine new roof, but the downtown area and the French Quarter appeared much the same as when I was last there. (These areas were built on higher ground, so flooding was less of a problem when the levees broke.)
We spent the night on the 36th floor of the Sheraton, which is downtown on Canal Street. The high-angle perspective, looking down on the city, didn't reveal the devastation that might lay within:
In the morning, we walked down by the river and had beignets at Cafe du Monde. Again, everything was much the same as I remembered.
After checking out of our hotel, we headed uptown on St Charles Ave, towards Tulane University, which is the area of New Orleans I knew best. I saw the Columns Hotel on St Charles, which was a popular hangout for students because they used to serve free food at the bar in the evenings. (Mmmm, Catfish Fridays!) It was still there and looked good. Indeed, much of the Garden District and uptown looked just like I remembered it.
As we progressed on St Charles, however, I started to notice signs of damage that could have been hurricane related. One or two shops were boarded up:
Many lampposts and street signs were blown down or crooked:
The biggest sign of Katrina in the uptown area, however, was an absence: there were no trolley cars working their way up and down St Charles Ave. The trolleys usually run on tracks on the grassy median in the middle of St Charles. The median looked muddy and the grass was overgrown. We passed only one work crew digging around the tracks; it looks like it will be a while before the trolleys will run there again.
I tracked down an apartment I used to live in on Pine Street. I thought it might not be there anymore, because it was below street level, but it looked fine. The only sign of Katrina I saw on Pine Street was an X that had been spray-painted on a building across the street:
As we left uptown, we saw similar spray-paint markings on buildings elsewhere in the city. The markings provided information about what search crews had found in the property. It lends the whole tragedy a distinctly biblical set of imagery, and can be seen on all different kinds of buildings (click to enlarge):
Sometimes the spray paint simply had words written instead:
As we drove away from uptown, down Martin Luther King Blvd and past the sealed and deserted Projects, we started to see more of the devastation. The poorer sections of New Orleans contained cheaply made wooden houses that often crumbled under the hurricane conditions. Many looked vacant, some were only shells now. The Projects, however, didn't look too bad in comparison:
They were brick built, and it looked from the street like it wouldn't be all that hard to fix them up. My guess is that middle-class and affluent areas – such as downtown, the Garden District, and where I used to live in uptown – have received the most help from the city, and could afford to hire contractors. Institutionalized racism, however, makes government and industry feel they have more to gain from not letting the black underclass back and from not restoring the Projects. As real estate goes, the land on which the Projects reside is in a prime location for downtown. In a few years, it will no doubt all have been transformed into upscale condos.
The devastation got worse as we headed north of downtown to Gentilly, which was one of the areas of New Orleans that was hit hardest by the flooding, as it's close to where the levees broke. From the main business streets, we could see a lot of restaurants, motels and gas stations that had been heavily damaged – although a pristine-looking McDonalds was on the same strip! It was starting to look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, like something out of Day of the Dead:
Heading into a residential section of Gentilly, we witnessed street after street of devastated houses (click to enlarge):
We saw some reconstruction taking place at a couple of residences. Apparently, New Orleans witnessed an influx of Mexican workers for the cleanup and reconstruction, and most of the workers we saw were Mexican. A while back, I heard a sociologist describe how this would forever change the racial demographics the city.
We also saw telephone poles on every corner that were covered with signs advertising businesses related to the Katrina reconstruction (click to enlarge):
I think the second of the above photos is particularly rich for the different narratives that it contains. The top sign – "We Tear Down Houses" – stresses that the company is locally owned, perhaps to suggest that Americans will pull down your house rather than Mexicans. Two signs below this is another sign that instead proclaims that "We Buy Houses!" – no doubt from one of the many companies looking to buy up land on the cheap. Below this is a sign advertising ... signs!
The building behind the signpost tells a story of its own. The roof has a big hole in the top, which looks a lot like something the owner might have made to find higher ground to escape the flood waters. On the side of the house, there is a sign declaring "We Are Rebuilding." Indeed, it appeared like a lot of this particular community – working class, but more affluent than the projects – is in the process of staking a claim to their property, refusing to let the city or other outside forces take possession of it. Throughout the neighborhood, residents had moved back to their properties, but were living in RVs parked in front of uninhabitable houses:
One house we drove by had this display in the front:
It seems that one of the main battles being fought right now is over the shape that the new New Orleans will take. In other words, the battle over who gets to define what the city is. Will it be the people of New Orleans, many of them living in low income neighborhoods that were dealt the cruelest blows by Katrina? Or will it be the governing institutions and the Haliburtons, who are already erecting track housing in the neighborhood next to Gentilly, which we could see from the 10 Freeway as we left the city?
What we witnessed confirmed my suspicions that there are multiple strategies being employed by the governing institutions to gentrify and Disneyfy this "City That Care Forgot." The reason that this will likely happen, aside from all the economic and political might behind that push, is that it was the hidden side of New Orleans that was hit the worst. In the eyes of the casual tourist, New Orleans will look just like it used to. Downtown still looks good; the Garden District and uptown still look good; the French Quarter continues to party on. The image most people have of New Orleans lives on, so most people won't dig deeper into how the city has been transformed, and they will be complicit in letting further transformations take place. They will let the Haliburtons have their way with the city.
New Orleans has always been a tourist destination. Once the trolleys are running again and the PR machine is at full speed, it will regain that celebrity. (Watch closely how next year's Mardi Gras gets covered on TV to gauge this.) But there was a whole other side to New Orleans that I remember and that I fear will be gone for good. One in which the locals hated the tourists who'd descend on French Quarter to flash their boobs for beads. One in which I could find the best food and the best jazz in divey holes-in-the-wall far from the noise and the glare of Bourbon Street, such as the time Harry Connick Jr wandered into a neighborhood bar to start jamming with Kermit Ruffins while my friends and I chowed down on ribs from the barbeque in the back of Kermit's truck.
I am happy, though, that by moving to Tallahassee we are only half a day's drive to New Orleans. I hope to check in on the city again sometime soon...
We spent the night on the 36th floor of the Sheraton, which is downtown on Canal Street. The high-angle perspective, looking down on the city, didn't reveal the devastation that might lay within:
In the morning, we walked down by the river and had beignets at Cafe du Monde. Again, everything was much the same as I remembered.
After checking out of our hotel, we headed uptown on St Charles Ave, towards Tulane University, which is the area of New Orleans I knew best. I saw the Columns Hotel on St Charles, which was a popular hangout for students because they used to serve free food at the bar in the evenings. (Mmmm, Catfish Fridays!) It was still there and looked good. Indeed, much of the Garden District and uptown looked just like I remembered it.
As we progressed on St Charles, however, I started to notice signs of damage that could have been hurricane related. One or two shops were boarded up:
Many lampposts and street signs were blown down or crooked:
The biggest sign of Katrina in the uptown area, however, was an absence: there were no trolley cars working their way up and down St Charles Ave. The trolleys usually run on tracks on the grassy median in the middle of St Charles. The median looked muddy and the grass was overgrown. We passed only one work crew digging around the tracks; it looks like it will be a while before the trolleys will run there again.
I tracked down an apartment I used to live in on Pine Street. I thought it might not be there anymore, because it was below street level, but it looked fine. The only sign of Katrina I saw on Pine Street was an X that had been spray-painted on a building across the street:
As we left uptown, we saw similar spray-paint markings on buildings elsewhere in the city. The markings provided information about what search crews had found in the property. It lends the whole tragedy a distinctly biblical set of imagery, and can be seen on all different kinds of buildings (click to enlarge):
Sometimes the spray paint simply had words written instead:
As we drove away from uptown, down Martin Luther King Blvd and past the sealed and deserted Projects, we started to see more of the devastation. The poorer sections of New Orleans contained cheaply made wooden houses that often crumbled under the hurricane conditions. Many looked vacant, some were only shells now. The Projects, however, didn't look too bad in comparison:
They were brick built, and it looked from the street like it wouldn't be all that hard to fix them up. My guess is that middle-class and affluent areas – such as downtown, the Garden District, and where I used to live in uptown – have received the most help from the city, and could afford to hire contractors. Institutionalized racism, however, makes government and industry feel they have more to gain from not letting the black underclass back and from not restoring the Projects. As real estate goes, the land on which the Projects reside is in a prime location for downtown. In a few years, it will no doubt all have been transformed into upscale condos.
The devastation got worse as we headed north of downtown to Gentilly, which was one of the areas of New Orleans that was hit hardest by the flooding, as it's close to where the levees broke. From the main business streets, we could see a lot of restaurants, motels and gas stations that had been heavily damaged – although a pristine-looking McDonalds was on the same strip! It was starting to look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, like something out of Day of the Dead:
Heading into a residential section of Gentilly, we witnessed street after street of devastated houses (click to enlarge):
We saw some reconstruction taking place at a couple of residences. Apparently, New Orleans witnessed an influx of Mexican workers for the cleanup and reconstruction, and most of the workers we saw were Mexican. A while back, I heard a sociologist describe how this would forever change the racial demographics the city.
We also saw telephone poles on every corner that were covered with signs advertising businesses related to the Katrina reconstruction (click to enlarge):
I think the second of the above photos is particularly rich for the different narratives that it contains. The top sign – "We Tear Down Houses" – stresses that the company is locally owned, perhaps to suggest that Americans will pull down your house rather than Mexicans. Two signs below this is another sign that instead proclaims that "We Buy Houses!" – no doubt from one of the many companies looking to buy up land on the cheap. Below this is a sign advertising ... signs!
The building behind the signpost tells a story of its own. The roof has a big hole in the top, which looks a lot like something the owner might have made to find higher ground to escape the flood waters. On the side of the house, there is a sign declaring "We Are Rebuilding." Indeed, it appeared like a lot of this particular community – working class, but more affluent than the projects – is in the process of staking a claim to their property, refusing to let the city or other outside forces take possession of it. Throughout the neighborhood, residents had moved back to their properties, but were living in RVs parked in front of uninhabitable houses:
One house we drove by had this display in the front:
It seems that one of the main battles being fought right now is over the shape that the new New Orleans will take. In other words, the battle over who gets to define what the city is. Will it be the people of New Orleans, many of them living in low income neighborhoods that were dealt the cruelest blows by Katrina? Or will it be the governing institutions and the Haliburtons, who are already erecting track housing in the neighborhood next to Gentilly, which we could see from the 10 Freeway as we left the city?
What we witnessed confirmed my suspicions that there are multiple strategies being employed by the governing institutions to gentrify and Disneyfy this "City That Care Forgot." The reason that this will likely happen, aside from all the economic and political might behind that push, is that it was the hidden side of New Orleans that was hit the worst. In the eyes of the casual tourist, New Orleans will look just like it used to. Downtown still looks good; the Garden District and uptown still look good; the French Quarter continues to party on. The image most people have of New Orleans lives on, so most people won't dig deeper into how the city has been transformed, and they will be complicit in letting further transformations take place. They will let the Haliburtons have their way with the city.
New Orleans has always been a tourist destination. Once the trolleys are running again and the PR machine is at full speed, it will regain that celebrity. (Watch closely how next year's Mardi Gras gets covered on TV to gauge this.) But there was a whole other side to New Orleans that I remember and that I fear will be gone for good. One in which the locals hated the tourists who'd descend on French Quarter to flash their boobs for beads. One in which I could find the best food and the best jazz in divey holes-in-the-wall far from the noise and the glare of Bourbon Street, such as the time Harry Connick Jr wandered into a neighborhood bar to start jamming with Kermit Ruffins while my friends and I chowed down on ribs from the barbeque in the back of Kermit's truck.
I am happy, though, that by moving to Tallahassee we are only half a day's drive to New Orleans. I hope to check in on the city again sometime soon...
