SB2: Sam Bouman's (or Silent Bob's) Spring Break
lj-cut not work. make pictures disappear. maybe i'm caveman, but i don't understand.
Pictures of Nwarlins....this here is the 9th ward from up on high:
we lived here for a week, but in another area with tents:
on the outside (used to be an egg-packaging warehouse, then a crapload of art studios, then there was a hurricane, now Common Ground Collective lives there. which is a bunch of people who gut homes and distribute food and supplies to residents):
this is one of our groups outside a house...when the army came through just after the flood, they marked the houses with those "x"s. the top number is the date it was searched, the bottom is bodies found inside, and one of the others is the unit name that searched the house.
these are my friends alex and kevin removing an appropriate-looking ceiling fan...we all got bourbon faced on shit street together...another story...as far as what they're doing: all the houses were flooded for about three weeks, so they're full of toxic flood mold which is unsavory to breath in. hence the tyvek suits, respirators, gloves, goggles, and boots. also explains why we have to remove everything from the house, including furniture, tiles, drywall, insulation, ceilings, toxic flood gunk, animals that may pop up (two puppies...cutest thing...), everything except the basic frame of the house and the exterior. Then other people who aren't dumb muscle come in and bleach, reinstall electricity and water, put in insulation, etc. It sucks big time for the homeowners, but they're unbelievably strong people.
it looks like this:
we ate fairly well here...it was me and three other people in the our tent...me alex kevin and klayr. we all got high alot, expecially after the four of us bought an ounce on bourbon street on st. patrick's day. so food was our friend.
here's some pictures of more devastation in the 9th ward...i worked down there most days, and it's obscene how little has been done to clean up and get people back since fucking september...organizations like common ground and individual citizens and businesses have done more to help the city's worst-hit areas than the government, fema, or the red cross have...and it's getting to the point where nobody even wants to bother asking them for help anymore...since the people themselves are gaining more and more control over their future. oh well, here goes:
A LITTLE BACKSTORY
This is in case you aren't already aware of what's going on down there: the government, local and national, wants to do mass buldozing in areas that were hard hit BUT SALVAGEABLE. these are people's homes...there's nowhere else for them to go (though the govt did bus a bunch of people to empty naval dorms in alaska...nice of them). so Common Ground and a few similar organizations go into these neighborhoods (which are inhabited mostly by poor, black families, which starts the whole racism issue that haunts everything involved with the future of this city, but i don't want to get into that right here) and take over a house (illegally at first...the first bunch of people usually get arrested). then, once established, they get the word out to members of that neighborhood who have returned to flooded, toxic or completely missing homes and distribute neeeded food and supplies to them. then volunteers with the orginization go into the homes and gut them (residents who live in toxic houses get desperately sick very quickly). alot of these volunteers are college students, which brings us sort of full circle...kind of...here's those pictures:
a little awed as i was, i thought those stone blocks in the middle left were gravestones, but it turns out they're the foundation of that house on the left in the back.
the guiltiest pleasure of them all:
DANGER! DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!
noah turning off the electricity.
other people took these pictures, so there's none of me or my friends or anything we did, but this is the part that really mattered. there are some amusing anecdotes though...
--at every meal, at the end of the table, was a small box full of many-colored condoms. yum!
--at our orientation, a man with a mohawk named Munc told us that drug and alcohol use was strictly forbodden inside the property of the warehouse. "go do them in the street" was his suggested alternative.
--the french quarter was in full swing, i must say. i got bourbon faced on shit street and danced so hard my glasses flew off, into oblivion. then there was st. patrick's day.
--marlboro college is home to some the coolest folks in the united states...a word to the wise guy
--we almost got arrested for stealing license plates off abandoned cars. they really need the fines down there. we weren't even stealing the damn things, we found one on the ground. good thing we didn't have anything on us.
and more...i sleep now
ps...grant forssberg drinks now...
Pictures of Nwarlins....this here is the 9th ward from up on high:
we lived here for a week, but in another area with tents:
on the outside (used to be an egg-packaging warehouse, then a crapload of art studios, then there was a hurricane, now Common Ground Collective lives there. which is a bunch of people who gut homes and distribute food and supplies to residents):
this is one of our groups outside a house...when the army came through just after the flood, they marked the houses with those "x"s. the top number is the date it was searched, the bottom is bodies found inside, and one of the others is the unit name that searched the house.
these are my friends alex and kevin removing an appropriate-looking ceiling fan...we all got bourbon faced on shit street together...another story...as far as what they're doing: all the houses were flooded for about three weeks, so they're full of toxic flood mold which is unsavory to breath in. hence the tyvek suits, respirators, gloves, goggles, and boots. also explains why we have to remove everything from the house, including furniture, tiles, drywall, insulation, ceilings, toxic flood gunk, animals that may pop up (two puppies...cutest thing...), everything except the basic frame of the house and the exterior. Then other people who aren't dumb muscle come in and bleach, reinstall electricity and water, put in insulation, etc. It sucks big time for the homeowners, but they're unbelievably strong people.
it looks like this:
we ate fairly well here...it was me and three other people in the our tent...me alex kevin and klayr. we all got high alot, expecially after the four of us bought an ounce on bourbon street on st. patrick's day. so food was our friend.
here's some pictures of more devastation in the 9th ward...i worked down there most days, and it's obscene how little has been done to clean up and get people back since fucking september...organizations like common ground and individual citizens and businesses have done more to help the city's worst-hit areas than the government, fema, or the red cross have...and it's getting to the point where nobody even wants to bother asking them for help anymore...since the people themselves are gaining more and more control over their future. oh well, here goes:
A LITTLE BACKSTORY
This is in case you aren't already aware of what's going on down there: the government, local and national, wants to do mass buldozing in areas that were hard hit BUT SALVAGEABLE. these are people's homes...there's nowhere else for them to go (though the govt did bus a bunch of people to empty naval dorms in alaska...nice of them). so Common Ground and a few similar organizations go into these neighborhoods (which are inhabited mostly by poor, black families, which starts the whole racism issue that haunts everything involved with the future of this city, but i don't want to get into that right here) and take over a house (illegally at first...the first bunch of people usually get arrested). then, once established, they get the word out to members of that neighborhood who have returned to flooded, toxic or completely missing homes and distribute neeeded food and supplies to them. then volunteers with the orginization go into the homes and gut them (residents who live in toxic houses get desperately sick very quickly). alot of these volunteers are college students, which brings us sort of full circle...kind of...here's those pictures:
a little awed as i was, i thought those stone blocks in the middle left were gravestones, but it turns out they're the foundation of that house on the left in the back.
the guiltiest pleasure of them all:
DANGER! DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!
noah turning off the electricity.
other people took these pictures, so there's none of me or my friends or anything we did, but this is the part that really mattered. there are some amusing anecdotes though...
--at every meal, at the end of the table, was a small box full of many-colored condoms. yum!
--at our orientation, a man with a mohawk named Munc told us that drug and alcohol use was strictly forbodden inside the property of the warehouse. "go do them in the street" was his suggested alternative.
--the french quarter was in full swing, i must say. i got bourbon faced on shit street and danced so hard my glasses flew off, into oblivion. then there was st. patrick's day.
--marlboro college is home to some the coolest folks in the united states...a word to the wise guy
--we almost got arrested for stealing license plates off abandoned cars. they really need the fines down there. we weren't even stealing the damn things, we found one on the ground. good thing we didn't have anything on us.
and more...i sleep now
ps...grant forssberg drinks now...