Noteworthy in Nola

We took a quick trip out along the Gulf and this shrimper just stopped not far from where we were sitting to rinse out his nets & get everything stowed away.

I’m not going to get into a whole 5 year hurricane retrospective, but if you’d like one, they’re everywhere. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to commemorate the weekend, but when the neighborhood association decided to build a new Kaboom! playground for the anniversary, that seemed just about perfect. Better to get out, work with neighbors and do some lasting good rather than navel gaze, right?

This build came together much faster than the others we’ve done, because we had this very specific target date that wasn’t very far away. It seems we’re all old hands at this now- we’ve done 3 others in the neighborhood, one also with Marriott, and Kaboom! has this down to a science.

The hotel has been amazing- after things went to hell here, the Marriott family put out the call to their employees around the world and took donations to insure all of their affected employees had the money and the shelter they needed for as long as it took to get back on their feet. When everything was done, many millions of dollars were left in the pot and they’ve been using that money to fund community improvement projects where the employees who received the help do the work while the donations pay for the logistics and materials.

The organizers were out there around 6, with another 275 volunteers arriving at 8 to build a playground from the ground up in one day- not to mention making picnic table & shade structures, fixing & painting everything in sight and more. Plus the neighborhood raised well over our goal and will be able to buy the kids new football uniforms in the fall.

Kaboom!’s founder was there in person, as were Marriott execs, the police chief, City Council president and more, and everybody had the same message: Forward. I couldn’t agree more.

Although it poured for awhile in the afternoon, everybody kept at it, and even that is pretty symbolic, no?

In the Garden District…

Last year I missed this event, and honestly, I would have again this year if not for a friend who was dead set on going. So down to the French Quarter we went, along with 5,000 people who’d gotten up before 7 on a sweltering July Saturday for the privilege of being beaten on by plastic bat wielding roller derby girls.

Clearly, the New Orleans participants have rather different concerns than their brethren in Pamplona. While a cocktail might not be the wisest choice before having to zigzag in front of a ton of hurtling bovine, the runners here weren’t so concerned about sobriety. Nearby bars were doing a brisk business in sangria, bloody marys and beer while the Rolling Elvi and lovely girls in bull helmets were arriving on the scene. A big blue bull mascot was doing a rather…uh…interesting dance that highlighted his uncastrated state.

I happened to catch the eye of a woman in running attire. Clearly a tourist and not used to such things at such hours, she’d pulled up short and was walking cautiously up to the crowd, so I smiled and waved her over to join everyone, but she stayed back on the sidewalk, beckoning me over instead. I’m not sure why I thought an explanation would convince her we weren’t nuts, but I did my best. She took the information in, considering.

“You know,” she said after a long, thoughtful pause, “we couldn’t do this in New York. Too aggressive. Someone would bring a real bat, the runners would fight back. People would get hurt for real.” She looked at the size of the crowd and the few cops scattered around. “You really don’t think that’ll happen here?”

I laughed. “No way, and besides- these are roller derby girls! They can kick the asses of pretty much anybody here.” She didn’t quite seem to know how to take that, so I added, “It’s too mellow, everybody’s just out for a good time, no worries.”

“You know, you people should be the longest lived people on the planet. You know how to have a good time, everybody’s relaxed, friendly. It’s not the same rat race, and it it’s not like it is at home- nobody’s asked me what I do, nobody seems to much care how much I make.” She continued surveying the crowd carefully. “There are all kinds of people here and they’re just having fun- it’s all that stuff the doctors tell you to do, stop and smell the roses, all that.”

A group of men dragged their wagon past us, a huge cooler barely wedged inside. A random Elvi sauntered up to them, had a beer planted in his hand and, raising a toast to the donation, he wandered back to his scooter.

“Yeah,” she said. “If you’d all just take it easy on the drink and the fried food, you people would live forever.”

That one made my eyebrows go up- it’s not a phrase one often hears here(shirt on Bourbon St reads: “NOPD: Not Our Problem, Dude.”), and coming from a middle aged black lady it seemed somewhat surreal, but she was completely sincere.

“Very good with people,” she said, nodding. “I’ve been watching them dealing with drunken idiots, and I don’t know how they do it. They’re always in control, friendly, personable. I’ve been amazed.”

“Um, yeah. They have a lot of practice, I guess- we have a lot of festivals and parades, so they really are the best at crowd control. Absolutely.”

By then things were ready to get underway and my new friend scooted out of the way and onto a sidestreet. The “bulls” were getting their instructions- runners would be sent out in a steady stream and every 45 seconds or so an airhorn would blow, signalling the release of a half dozen bulls.

And so it was:

It was hysterical- when the airhorn blasted, everybody but everybody screamed like crazy- and the people were really running… like, RUNNING running.

Running with go cups, true, but hey. Sure, maybe we could be the longest lived people on Earth, but if you take away our food and our drink, maybe you take away the magic.

In the end, maybe it’s best not to tamper with the delicate formula, and just let New Orleans be New Orleans.

I know, I know. I’ve got to find something cheery to post about…but this is pretty much New Orleans in a nutshell. Give us something awful and we’ll find a way to bring people together and if that isn’t the definition of ‘lemons into lemonade,’ I don’t know what is.

Beth alerted me to the newly formed Krewe of Dead Pelicans, which was having a Second Line this afternoon in the Central Business District. It wasn’t a protest, exactly, nor a fundraiser… I think it was mostly a chance to have a community outpouring of the rage and despair we’ve all been dealing with.

And the costumes, of course, were amazing, especially since they were just thrown together. A band played, and everyone marched on.

Click to see the larger images:

And a brief video of the beginning of the Second Line:
(again, sorry about the audio- I’m quickly discovering that it doesn’t take much to overwhelm the Nikon’s mic, but once the police motorcycles move on the audio’s okay)

The latest bunch of eBay photos have a few really interesting shots, though most are of your typical floats and such- a couple in from Seattle for Mardi Gras.

There are two that caught my attention, though- the first is just how different Bourbon Street was… hats, coats, kerchiefs… totally civilized. Shockingly so, really:

The other was this one:

I’d love to know where this was, who they were, what the celebration was. And mostly I’d like to know how a couple of tourists who, as far as I can tell, did not stray off Bourbon and Canal got to something like this.

And then I’d like to go, too.

Here’s hoping they and their brethren stay safe. The brown pelican was only recently removed from the endangered list and many are worried that they’re headed right back onto it.

New Orleans is about to lose a huge whack of Mid-City to build a massive campus housing new LSU and VA hospitals.

Although no one disputes the desperate need for the new hospitals, how they’ve come about has been a major controversy. The two possibilities were were to renovate their existing hospital – “Big Charity” – a massive 1 million square foot building that sustained only minor damage in Katrina. But LSU fought mightily against this idea, preferring instead a second possibility-paying hundreds of thousands of extra dollars for the privilege buying and bulldozing 27 square blocks full of historic houses to get a shiny new facility. Amazingly, the new site is literally across the street from the existing building, which they’re abandoning in the middle of the Central Business District.

To be fair, this is an area of the city with issues but the neighborhood association is strong and has been working successfully to fight blight and bring people back… only for those people to now see their homes and businesses taken through eminent domain and plowed under.

One of those buildings is the Deutsches Haus, founded in 1928 to consolidate several different German clubs in the city. They host the annual Oktoberfest and celebrate other German holidays, always with lots of food, beer, music, and good cheer. They have photos of what the Haus looked like post-hurricane, and the staggering amount of work that had to be done. You’d never know it now, everything is back and better than before, but the clock’s ticking; this weekend’s Volksfest was the last major event before they have to vacate the Haus.

Unfortunately, it was a rainy miserable sendoff and there weren’t nearly as many people as we’d expected. Sad to see the courtyard so empty:

On the other hand, instead of being overrun by casual visitors the Haus was filled with members and the people who love it most. There were many in traditional costume, and groups of friends met, clustered and danced all around the building.

To find out more about Deutches Haus visit their website here.
To see other buildings in Mid-City that are going to be lost (demolitions begun last week) go here.
To find out more about the fight to retrofit Charity, visit SaveCharityHospital

After thinking about the Gulf so much I decided to I needed a little communing with the the Aquarium of the Americas…

Moving quickly past the smiling sting rays…

and the Lionfish being stalked…

beyond the curious penguins plotting their escape… Read More…