Mardi Gras
New Orleans was interesting. The spot I was staying in was functional (electricity, water (though you need a filter to drink it), internet but evidently no garbage pick up, since there were numerous piles of it on the street). Another strange and constant sight was rectangular holes in streets about every other block about 4-5 feet deep. It was for venting gas lines, so none of them exploded or homes didn't fill with gas. One person backed their SUV into one of the holes. About half of the businesses around the area I stayed in (the bywater) were open, many just starting to get back online. Many closed randomly and any posted hours were best guesses, really. Once we got into the french quarter, though, most businesses were up and running (probably just anticipating mardi gras). There were a lot of people, one person estimated 160,000, for the festivities, but nowhere near what a lot of businesses were hoping for.
Eerie/weird: police presence was tiny. I hardly saw any "official" vehicles, since the city is bankrupt they just can't afford to do much policing, not to mention clean up costs after thousands of tourists get puke-drunk and throw their garbage all over the street. Also, there are spray painted X's on every house with different marks in the quadrants to indicate when rescue workers visited (an NE, for not entered), up top the date they visited, to the left the crew that visited and at bottom number of dead bodies. I didn't see any houses with anything but 0's (and the occasional pets), but it was a constant, fairly morbid, reminder. In one of the worse areas, I saw a road block set up with chunks of broken cement, barbed wire and trash cans such that you had to walk through a 2 foot walkway with a sign in front that said "Stupid tax: $2." I assume it meant that we were stupid for entering the area.
As for actual Mardi Gras, I can't say I liked Bourbon St. much. It was a lot like burning man, but with only weekend yahoos. But I only spent a few hours there. Mostly I was with friends and locals, the freak parades, freak weddings and dpw people. One man in a FEMA The Clown costume approached when Aerie and I were waiting in line outside a restaurant and spied my DPW shirt "Boy, we sure need more of you guys down here. You can show 'em how to build a city, and an interesting one." I saw another person who had made a fake screw sticking out of her chest about 2 feet, she had painted it with red and white stripes and white stars on blue. The anti-FEMA/Bush/Blanco/Anyone remotely involved was palpable, but most people (at least the ones that I saw, I stayed out of the lower 9th) had a lot of fun with it.
I got to hang out w/ Sponge, Julia, Ellen and Prost from Austin, and they got to see "The Xeno And Aerie Show," for those of you that have seen "The Xeno Show," It's similar but with slapstick violence and twice the energy. In fact, one stranger saw me slap Aerie (after obtaining permission) and came charging across the street yelling "MOTHER FUCKER!!!" I put my hands up and said "NO, no she asked for it." Which in immediate retrospect was not the appropriate verbiage to use in the situation. Luckily Aerie wasn't feeling mischievous enough to let me get killed and convinced the man that she did, indeed, ask for it. He wandered off shaking his head, "Crazy fucking idiots." The amount of people I ran into in NO that knew each other and me (13 and Rene, an ex-co worker from Austin, and Rich (Aerie's friend who put us up) and Rich's roommate (dpw) and his fiance (Aura) all knew each other and I knew them separately. It is a very small world for the genuine freak.
No, I did not return with any beads.
Strange coincidence: I was going to post about this church which was 2 blocks away from our host house (and I didn't manage to get a picture of) and angeliska beat me to it the same day.
Eerie/weird: police presence was tiny. I hardly saw any "official" vehicles, since the city is bankrupt they just can't afford to do much policing, not to mention clean up costs after thousands of tourists get puke-drunk and throw their garbage all over the street. Also, there are spray painted X's on every house with different marks in the quadrants to indicate when rescue workers visited (an NE, for not entered), up top the date they visited, to the left the crew that visited and at bottom number of dead bodies. I didn't see any houses with anything but 0's (and the occasional pets), but it was a constant, fairly morbid, reminder. In one of the worse areas, I saw a road block set up with chunks of broken cement, barbed wire and trash cans such that you had to walk through a 2 foot walkway with a sign in front that said "Stupid tax: $2." I assume it meant that we were stupid for entering the area.
As for actual Mardi Gras, I can't say I liked Bourbon St. much. It was a lot like burning man, but with only weekend yahoos. But I only spent a few hours there. Mostly I was with friends and locals, the freak parades, freak weddings and dpw people. One man in a FEMA The Clown costume approached when Aerie and I were waiting in line outside a restaurant and spied my DPW shirt "Boy, we sure need more of you guys down here. You can show 'em how to build a city, and an interesting one." I saw another person who had made a fake screw sticking out of her chest about 2 feet, she had painted it with red and white stripes and white stars on blue. The anti-FEMA/Bush/Blanco/Anyone remotely involved was palpable, but most people (at least the ones that I saw, I stayed out of the lower 9th) had a lot of fun with it.
I got to hang out w/ Sponge, Julia, Ellen and Prost from Austin, and they got to see "The Xeno And Aerie Show," for those of you that have seen "The Xeno Show," It's similar but with slapstick violence and twice the energy. In fact, one stranger saw me slap Aerie (after obtaining permission) and came charging across the street yelling "MOTHER FUCKER!!!" I put my hands up and said "NO, no she asked for it." Which in immediate retrospect was not the appropriate verbiage to use in the situation. Luckily Aerie wasn't feeling mischievous enough to let me get killed and convinced the man that she did, indeed, ask for it. He wandered off shaking his head, "Crazy fucking idiots." The amount of people I ran into in NO that knew each other and me (13 and Rene, an ex-co worker from Austin, and Rich (Aerie's friend who put us up) and Rich's roommate (dpw) and his fiance (Aura) all knew each other and I knew them separately. It is a very small world for the genuine freak.
No, I did not return with any beads.
Strange coincidence: I was going to post about this church which was 2 blocks away from our host house (and I didn't manage to get a picture of) and angeliska beat me to it the same day.