Archive for the 'big easy' Category

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

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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

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“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

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

May 22, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, misadventures

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The other day started off with opening the kitchen trash and finding hundreds and hundreds of squirming maggots (I drowned ‘em in Clorox…nothing can live in Clorox for long, right?), and then ended with the insect encounter you see here. It was not a good day.

I’m getting more than a little tired of the critter situation down here.

I’ll make an effort to post some videos from New Orleans that don’t involve vermin or household accidents from now on. I really will. But I can’t make any promises.

“Bugs”
The Detonators
Courtesy of The Podsafe Music Network

May 18, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, amigos, misadventures

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Care packages rock. There’s nothing better than receiving an unexpected box in a plain brown wrapper…especially ifyou open it and find a whole mess of snacks! I have really cool friends.

A brief update: Brian’s hand is doing just fine. The man has mutant healing abilities. We’re pretty much done making our little apt. functionable. Hot water, fans, a/c, stove and fridge are all now in working order. The perimeter is more or less secure–or, at least, it’s as secure as it’s going to get for now. All spare entry points to the house have been closed off to anything larger than a cat, and the fence is very nearly finished. I feel a lot safer all around. Lonely and bored (Brian is out of town for a few days), but safer.

“05-Harmonie-Chaos” by Vincent Bergeron
podsafe music network