Noteworthy in Nola

Or, possibly this isn’t an actual, general-purpose drag queen, but just drag for Mardi Gras day.

This came from a big lot of slides from 1964 and thereabouts that did include some Carnival photos, so, even back then, anything goes on Mardi Gras day.

I’ve been going through a whole ton of older photos I’ve gotten over time and finally getting them digitized and uploaded. This is one of my favorites, so far:

The 500 Club (home of Lilly Christine, the cat girl!), at 500 Bourbon St, is now occupied by the Bourbon Street Blues Company, Al Hirt’s is now (yet another) cheezy Daquari shop.

Opened in 1907, the old Dixie Brewery in Mid-City is an amazing hunk of industrial ruin. After flooding in Katrina, Dixie relocated their corporate offices, and have allowed other companies to brew smaller batches of Dixie Beer under license.

The Brewery sits inside of the planned LSU/VA Hospital complex footprint and although LSU has admitted that the building has significant architectural and historical value, the building’s future is far from certain. LSU has said that they would like to rehab the building and maintain the building, but reading between the lines it’s easy to tell that the future of the building is going to depend on just how much of a PIA it is to LSU.

In the meantime, families in the hundreds of houses in the proposed hospital’s footprint are scrambling. The hospital- despite what LSU/VA wants people to think- is not a done deal, yet these residents who’ve poured their time, money and souls into rebuilding their neighborhoods are receiving what amounts to eviction letters. Ironically, LSU doesn’t actually have the money to build a new hospital- but they do have enough cash to buy up these properties and knock them down, leaving yet more empty land in the very center of the city (duh- this neighborhood is called Mid-City) to get overgrown with weeds and sit fallow.

Meanwhile, literally across the street from where they want to build brand shiny new buildings, sits Charity Hospital- LSU’s existing hospital, 1 million (!) square feet of shuttered bedspace that’s been deemed structurally sound and an excellent candidate for renovation. It would cost far less (in time, money, and architectural loss) to rehab Charity, but nope, they’re not interested. Sorry, got off on a tangent there. This was supposed to be strictly about Dixie, but now that Dixie’s future is tied with this proposed project, I just couldn’t help myself. More pictures of Dixie here. Pictures of Charity Hospital here. Videos of the Mid-City site here.

This little guy was sunning himself just beside the path in Jean Lafitte Park, so close that we could have reached down and touched him, had we wanted to lose a finger or two.

After dreaming about them last night, I have gators on the brain.

Perseverance Fire Co. No. 13

Cypress Grove was opened in 1838 specifically for the volunteer firemen and their families. Many surviving family members had their dead disinterred and moved here, once it was in operation.

Located at the very end of Canal, this is one of the smaller cemeteries, but still really interesting.

The above is a society tomb originally opened for one of the fire companies, built in 1840. It’s located close to the entrance and is so white it absolutely gleams.

Sorry for all the cemetery pix lately, I’m working on a story about them, so I’ve been spending a lot of time in and around them doing research.

“And all your money won’t another minute buy…”

Strange placement for a Lottery billboard, no?

Well, in the end, we decided to stay home and not evacuate.

I waited for the 4pm weather update, hoping the worst of the traffic would let up. We had reservations in a Birmingham motel- 5 and a half hours to get to in the best of times, and I wasn’t too excited about doubling or tripling the travel time- with 2 dogs, 2 birds and 1 teen in the car, no less. So we waited a bit, hoping that either people would get where they were headed and off the road, or something about Gustav would change that would make leaving optional.

And that’s just what happened- since Gustav is weaker than expected, and since he’s aiming at other areas of the state, we decided to hunker down and go with the flow.

That flow arrived a little sooner than expected. A little after 6, Charlie called, yelling to bring the camera ASAP. The first big band of the hurricane was here-

The rest of the photos came back this week and have been added to the Myrtles gallery.