new orleans.
when i was a teenager, i read all of anne rice's books about vampires and witches, and thus had developed a very tangible and rich mental picture of it. crumbling, kudzu, wrought iron, victorian, creole, voodoo, you know. i also worked at kcrw during hurricane katrina, and spent all day transfixed on the wreckage and the horror stories. the aftermath, that unbelievable mishandling by everyone involved.
so with these two very intense mental images, we checked into our hotel in the french quarter. i had forgotten all about the french quarter somehow. bourbon street, with all its excesses and tourists drinking beers at 10am.
a horrible fact about new orleans is that 3 years after hurricane katrina there are so many neighborhoods still in complete ruin. we drove through the lower 9th ward, names so familiar after months of hearing them on the radio, where 3 out of 5 houses are still empty, destroyed, spraypaint on the doors from being searched 3 years earlier.
how do you reconcile this? this is the usa, where a major metropolitan american city is still gutted in so much of the city. it wrecks me. i just do not understand. i was trying to find a comparison, like is after the 89 earthquake what if 50% of san francisco was still destroyed?
new orleans. i am fairly certain that i've been impacted by this visit more than anywhere else. i want to cry and i want to be part of the spirit that is not letting this city slip away. these amazing business people who are defying the government's inefficiency and have rebuilt themselves and the restaurants that are back, and the high school brass band playing on canal street because that is what they do. new orleans is so mysterious, even bourbon street. it is just like i romanticized as a teenager, and it is just like what npr told me. and it is more. it is young families and hipster diners, and the birthplace of the cocktail, and crawfish, and cemeteries filled with ghosts and slaves and rich old french families. and it is the worst natural disaster to ever happen on american soil and the worst handling of such a thing.
when i was a teenager, i read all of anne rice's books about vampires and witches, and thus had developed a very tangible and rich mental picture of it. crumbling, kudzu, wrought iron, victorian, creole, voodoo, you know. i also worked at kcrw during hurricane katrina, and spent all day transfixed on the wreckage and the horror stories. the aftermath, that unbelievable mishandling by everyone involved.
so with these two very intense mental images, we checked into our hotel in the french quarter. i had forgotten all about the french quarter somehow. bourbon street, with all its excesses and tourists drinking beers at 10am.
a horrible fact about new orleans is that 3 years after hurricane katrina there are so many neighborhoods still in complete ruin. we drove through the lower 9th ward, names so familiar after months of hearing them on the radio, where 3 out of 5 houses are still empty, destroyed, spraypaint on the doors from being searched 3 years earlier.
how do you reconcile this? this is the usa, where a major metropolitan american city is still gutted in so much of the city. it wrecks me. i just do not understand. i was trying to find a comparison, like is after the 89 earthquake what if 50% of san francisco was still destroyed?
new orleans. i am fairly certain that i've been impacted by this visit more than anywhere else. i want to cry and i want to be part of the spirit that is not letting this city slip away. these amazing business people who are defying the government's inefficiency and have rebuilt themselves and the restaurants that are back, and the high school brass band playing on canal street because that is what they do. new orleans is so mysterious, even bourbon street. it is just like i romanticized as a teenager, and it is just like what npr told me. and it is more. it is young families and hipster diners, and the birthplace of the cocktail, and crawfish, and cemeteries filled with ghosts and slaves and rich old french families. and it is the worst natural disaster to ever happen on american soil and the worst handling of such a thing.
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