Carnival Time
Okay so there was liquor involved. Not overly much though. Half a pint of scotch on Sat. Half a pint of gin on Sun. I don’t remember drinking at all on Monday. Wait, there was that watered down Whiskey Sour from Ms. Maes just because I could. Who passes up $1 cocktails? And beer on tuesday. And there was only two of those. Okay so one was a bottle of Shiner, so about 10-12 oz. The other was a 24oz Bud, and I was desperate for both liquid and coldness. It was hot as hell down here. And yes, I realize that two years ago I would never actually classify 72 degrees as hot as hell, but I over dressed. Shuddup.
Anywho, I had fun. I walked just about the entire Zulu route unintentionally. My feet are STILL swollen from all the walking and standing, but I missed this aspect of home. For the first time since I moved, New Orleans felt like home, and I desperately missed that.
Speaking of aspects though, the air of depression was not completely hidden by the Mardi Gras festivities. Mardi Gras is not New Orleans. It is a part of New Orleans. As such, it can lift spirits briefly, but when all is said and done, it can’t help us to forever hide from the reality that is a city still is recovery. Some of the things that struck me while in my hometown:
The same families still have a foot hold on the city. And for them life pretty much IS back to normal. Bagneris, Greenup, Chase, Oschner, Preston, yada yada yada and on and on. Those people have adapted and moved on. Their houses, business, children’s schools, all back open.
The middle class (the working folk if you will) are getting there, but it’s a struggle.
The poor, regardless of race or creed, are still fucked. Only now, they have even less of the nothing they had before and no way in sight for getting any of it back. The sheer amount of people still living in trailers 2 YEARS later is so monumentally depressing as to almost take your breath away.
Schools are still not opened. Yet they’ve reopened the projects. Color me baffled.
When a Mardi Gras route changes, particularly the Uptown route which is almost as old as Mardi Gras itself, you know the face of the city has changed. Particularly when one of the reasons cited for the changed was, “too many abandoned houses”. It’s so sad.
And yet you almost don’t want to focus on those things that might bring you down. Unfortunately that IS the city, and you can’t run from it. Hell you can’t even drive from it. Even Jefferson Parish can’t escape from it and those parts of town managed to escape mostly intact.
Bottom line, I feared several things almost immediately upon hearing (and seeing) about Katrina.
One was that opportunistic busniess folk would swoop in and snatch up all the prime real estate being abandoned. Some of that HAS happened. And I don’t know if it’s sad or not that most of that has been perpetrated by local Asian business owners. On the one hand, at least they’re local. On the other hand, where are the black people? Lundy Enterprises is barely rebuilding which strikes me sourly considering he has the money to come back. The big super church pastors have moved most of their locations away from the city. Where are the black people with money who always claimed New Orleans as home?
Another thing that I feared was the folks who got bussed out. I feared these xenophobic people would see the rest of the world, or rather the slices of it that exist outside the confines of the 7th Ward, Gentily, Lower 9, and etc, and begin to wonder why the hell they should return to the relative squalor that is my hometown, now moreso even than before. Indeed some of that is happening, but even that hasn’t been as bad as I thought.
The final thing that disturbs me is not something I even thought about directly as Katrina was happening. I indirectly feared the face of the city, which has been black for just about as long as I’ve been alive, would change. I just never thought it’d change from black to mexican and asian. For some reason that makes me angry. I’m not really angry at the immigrant workers or the local Asians. I’m bitter that my own people just cannot get their shit together. It pisses me off so much my blood pressure spikes just thinking about it. It pisses me off that as angry as I am about it, even I don’t want to come back and try to rebuild, drive people back home. Hell, I left BEFORE Katrina, when things were only mildly shitty in comparison to the present. I feel guilty that I’m giving up on my home town.
For as much as it gets on my last nerve, and drives me almost insane, it will always be a part of me, and I will always be a part of it. New Orleans is my home and always will be, even if only in my heart.
Anywho, I had fun. I walked just about the entire Zulu route unintentionally. My feet are STILL swollen from all the walking and standing, but I missed this aspect of home. For the first time since I moved, New Orleans felt like home, and I desperately missed that.
Speaking of aspects though, the air of depression was not completely hidden by the Mardi Gras festivities. Mardi Gras is not New Orleans. It is a part of New Orleans. As such, it can lift spirits briefly, but when all is said and done, it can’t help us to forever hide from the reality that is a city still is recovery. Some of the things that struck me while in my hometown:
The same families still have a foot hold on the city. And for them life pretty much IS back to normal. Bagneris, Greenup, Chase, Oschner, Preston, yada yada yada and on and on. Those people have adapted and moved on. Their houses, business, children’s schools, all back open.
The middle class (the working folk if you will) are getting there, but it’s a struggle.
The poor, regardless of race or creed, are still fucked. Only now, they have even less of the nothing they had before and no way in sight for getting any of it back. The sheer amount of people still living in trailers 2 YEARS later is so monumentally depressing as to almost take your breath away.
Schools are still not opened. Yet they’ve reopened the projects. Color me baffled.
When a Mardi Gras route changes, particularly the Uptown route which is almost as old as Mardi Gras itself, you know the face of the city has changed. Particularly when one of the reasons cited for the changed was, “too many abandoned houses”. It’s so sad.
And yet you almost don’t want to focus on those things that might bring you down. Unfortunately that IS the city, and you can’t run from it. Hell you can’t even drive from it. Even Jefferson Parish can’t escape from it and those parts of town managed to escape mostly intact.
Bottom line, I feared several things almost immediately upon hearing (and seeing) about Katrina.
One was that opportunistic busniess folk would swoop in and snatch up all the prime real estate being abandoned. Some of that HAS happened. And I don’t know if it’s sad or not that most of that has been perpetrated by local Asian business owners. On the one hand, at least they’re local. On the other hand, where are the black people? Lundy Enterprises is barely rebuilding which strikes me sourly considering he has the money to come back. The big super church pastors have moved most of their locations away from the city. Where are the black people with money who always claimed New Orleans as home?
Another thing that I feared was the folks who got bussed out. I feared these xenophobic people would see the rest of the world, or rather the slices of it that exist outside the confines of the 7th Ward, Gentily, Lower 9, and etc, and begin to wonder why the hell they should return to the relative squalor that is my hometown, now moreso even than before. Indeed some of that is happening, but even that hasn’t been as bad as I thought.
The final thing that disturbs me is not something I even thought about directly as Katrina was happening. I indirectly feared the face of the city, which has been black for just about as long as I’ve been alive, would change. I just never thought it’d change from black to mexican and asian. For some reason that makes me angry. I’m not really angry at the immigrant workers or the local Asians. I’m bitter that my own people just cannot get their shit together. It pisses me off so much my blood pressure spikes just thinking about it. It pisses me off that as angry as I am about it, even I don’t want to come back and try to rebuild, drive people back home. Hell, I left BEFORE Katrina, when things were only mildly shitty in comparison to the present. I feel guilty that I’m giving up on my home town.
For as much as it gets on my last nerve, and drives me almost insane, it will always be a part of me, and I will always be a part of it. New Orleans is my home and always will be, even if only in my heart.