Archive for the 'big easy' Category

November 9, 2008 | Filed under: VloMo08, big easy, Holiday! Celebrate!

WEEKEND REWIND!

March 2006, the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras. Join The Three Genes for some good clean Mardi Gras fun. FYI the near-constant interruption by Ray Nagin was provided courtesy of Gene3 (aka MichaelGene) and his “Mayor in your Pocket” key chain, a popular local novelty at the time.

July 18, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, misadventures

click here to for Quicktime if the movie won’t play when you click the picture!

Or, click here for Flash, if Flash is what works for you!

FYI, big frogs don’t usually have so many teeth. Objects in the video were closer that they appear. Seriously. There was a plank walkway along the swamp which could be crossed by aligators at any moment. I don’t know if the they ever do, but it was creepy enough to know that they could.

This tidbit is from back in May when we were still in New Orleans. I haven’t posted much in the last couple of weeks (Bad vlogger! Naughty, bad, bad!) for a couple of reasons.

A: I’ve been working and picking up OT in order to save up money to move to a bigger apartment

B: been to a delightful out of town wedding (congratulations Michael & Tara!)

C: attempting to convince my boyfriend fiancee that we should elope. That’s pretty much a full-time job in itself!

It’s also wicked hot in the Northeast–100 today– and I’m hard-pressed to be motivated to do anything more than lie very, very still and eat many, many popsicles.

I’ve also downloaded a whole mess of cool iMovie plug-ins that I’ve been fiddling with and learning how to use. All the better to vlog with, my dear.

June 21, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, misadventures

Watch the video

We ain’t moving. And that’s that. Why? Why? Why not move into a giant, lovely house that oozes potential and is currently hemorrhaging money? Why stay in NYC in my cramped apartment snidely nicknamed “The Shoebox”? Because, dammit, it’s dangerous in New Orleans, that’s why! The freakin’ National Guard have been called back! There have been 54 murders (six this week!) and a section of a New Orleans neighborhood has been dubbed “The Triangle of Death“! I’ve lived in New York City my whole life and there’s NEVER been a neighborhood saddled with a nickname like that.

About week before I left to return to NYC we found a posting in our local coffee haunt: a full typed page list of local crimes. Two weeks…one full typed page. And these weren’t just little crimes. These weren’t purse-snatchings. These were desperate, vicious and frightening. Stabbings, dogs being swiped from yards, people getting robbed at gunpoint, people getting robbed at knifepoint, people getting robbed at knifepoint on their own front porches, break-ins–one house got broken into twice in one week! On that single typed page there were three seperate attacks on pedestrians by a gang of young men brandishing a lead pipe wrapped in a towel. Three! In two weeks! They weren’t even out for anyone’s wallet–they’re just out to bust heads. I don’t have any idea why they bother with the towel…perhaps bonking people in the head with a naked pipe is too noisy. All of this occcured within 5 square blocks of the house within two weeks.

All that and hurricanes, too? Nope.

Deciding not to move was not an easy decision. Brian has a long history with New Orleans, and a lot of emotion wrapped up in that house. I don’t have any ties to it, but I really like New Orleans. I love its funky charm and it’s balls-out weirdness. I like that it’s all rickety-looking and battle-scarred and slow and sultry and hot. I like the people. I love that our neighborhood reaction to the crime includes a sidewalk ceremony held in the name of Ogou Achade, The Voodoo Patron of Iron And The Forge**, although I’d rather people felt comfortable calling the police, instead. I hate the giant insects, but I figured I could learn to live with the idea of them once we’d hermetically sealed the house as best we could. I thought it would be a good idea for me–a lifelong New York City gal with a rock-solid, impenetrable, liberal, Northern, East Coast backround to spend some time in The South for a change of pace. And every day…no, really every hour after we made the decision to leave something charming and singularly New Orleans-ish would makes us pause and reconsider…until that ol’ lead pipe story would creep back into our heads to bonk us back into reality.

In this instance, it was a raspberry Sno-Ball enjoyed in Audobon Park.

**You think I can make this stuff up? Hardly.

June 5, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, misadventures

click here for Quicktime

“The challenge of rebuilding New Orleans and providing housing for its residents is immense, with tens of thousands of families displaced, their former homes destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Across the metropolitan area, nearly 228,000 homes and apartments were flooded, including 39 percent of all owner-occupied units and 56 percent of all rental units (Brookings 2005). Residents have returned to some relatively unscathed areas, such as the French Quarter and Algiers, but the devastation in more hard-hit areas is overwhelming and it is not yet clear whether or how these areas will be rebuilt.”
Barely 30 minutes outside New Orleans on our way to Jean Lafitte National Park there is a massive housing boom. One giant brand new cookie-cutter home after another, only several yards apart, some in gated communities, some freestanding, few lived in. They’re going up so fast I was pretty sure there were new ones finished by the time we drove back home.

You know what’s being built/rebuilt in New Orleans? Seemingly nothing. Where are regular working folks supposed to live?

May 26, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, misadventures

click the picture or here for Quicktime!

It’s always something around here…and usually it has wings.