Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

26 October 2005

Twiropa will not reopen, according to New Orleans CityBusiness. The concert hall, located in an old rope factory along the river, sustained too much damage to be habitable.

This news made me sad. I’m not sure why. Twiropa is a relatively new venture; it’s not Tipitina’s. Concert venues come and go on a regular basis. I only got around to seeing a few shows there all last year.

Maybe it’s upsetting because the building wasn’t too far from my Lower Garden District apartment. Maybe because it shows that big structures that avoided flood waters still didn’t survive Katrina. Maybe because it reminds me that iconic locales alone won’t bring back the city. Bourbon Street might have booze again. Beignets are frying at Cafe du Monde. But New Orleans is about a lot more than a few famous places.

In other news, Brett Anderson reports in the Times Picayune that hell froze over. How does he know? Galatoire’s has set up shop in Baton Rouge.

Posted by Todd at 3:18 am | Comments (2)

24 October 2005

Nicole Gelinas, writing in City Journal, says that New Orleans’ problem is not poverty but murder. While 25% of New Orleanians live on $15,000 or less, 19% of New Yorkers make do on the same meager income in a much more expensive city. Relatively few New Orleans families depend on welfare and, despite what the national media says, the city has a strong black middle class.

In 2002 and 2003, New Orleans did have the highest per capita murder rate in the United States: 59 people killed per 100,000 residents. In a city the size of New York, that would be the equivalent of 5,000 murders a year.

Posted by Todd at 2:32 pm | Comments (1)

20 October 2005

Normally I don’t approve of government outsourcing to the private sector. It’s hard to argue, however, with Texas’ decision to let Glamour Shots handle the state’s booking photos. I mean, really, has Tom Delay ever looked more radiant?

Posted by Todd at 5:20 am | Comments (1)

19 October 2005

Google failure and see what you get.

Posted by Todd at 3:28 pm | No Comments

Lingering trash has always been part of the New Orleans landscape. It used to be faded Mardi Gras beads handing from trees and power lines. Now, abandoned fridges full of rotting food have become the decorative touch that ties the city together.

Over at Katrinafridges, they have put together a gallery of dead ice boxes. Could someone please explain all the “Voodoo 5 Today Here Now” graffiti?

Posted by Todd at 1:23 pm | No Comments

18 October 2005

The New York Times reports that New Orleans Art Museum laid off 70 of its 86 employees.

Posted by Todd at 9:06 am | No Comments

I was born and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since I graduated from high school in the early 1990s, I’ve lived in six different cities. Dallas now makes seven.

I’m assuming my regular readers know why we moved. If not, I’ll give you a hint: it begins with a “K.” How long will we be in Dallas? I’m not answering that one, because these days I try not to plan more than a week in advance.

I’ve been in Dallas for two weeks. Slowly, I’m learning my way around the city, but it’s so enormous that it will take a while to get to know it. We live in Uptown, which is nothing like Uptown in New Orleans. It’s a land of wealth and BMWs. There also seems to be some nice gourmet grocery stores in the area. There are benefits to living among demanding rich people.

Yesterday, in a search for a car wash, I drove over to Highland Park. This is an even ritzier little town tucked away inside Dallas. All the cops drive large SUVs and have nothing better to do than pull people over for not wearing their seat-belts. I did find the car wash. Oddly, I was the only customer who was not a thin, blond woman. Not sure what to make of that.

Posted by Todd at 9:03 am | Comments (4)

The New Orleans Gambit Weekly is temporarily located on the commercial strip of Veterans Memorial Boulevard.

They promise to resume publication on November 1st.

Posted by Todd at 3:03 am | No Comments

7 October 2005

Any move that begins with bluffing your way through a National Guard roadblock is bound to be difficult. It took me six days to get out of New Orleans. After I arrived in Dallas, I’ve spent most of the week on hold shutting down utilities in New Orleans and starting them up in Texas. Here is a recount of what I remember:

Monday: We developed yellow light envy on the drive from Oklahoma to Louisiana. The closer we got to New Orleans, the more trucks we saw with flashing yellow lights. They seemed to be driving in all directions. Some towards New Orlenas. Some away. We figured that any car with a yellow light would clear the roadblocks without a problem.

I was hopeful that the mayor would let us in Tuesday, so I rented a U-Haul truck for that morning. After much debate, we decided to drive my parents’ motor home. With a full supply of water and a built-in generator, we could survive in New Orleans for a few days no matter the conditions.

It felt good to arrive in Baton Rouge around 10:00 p.m. We stopped at the Wal-Mart parking lot and set up camp. I saw a coffee shop in the corner of the strip mall with the lights on, so I headed over there with the hopes that I could find a W-Fi connection.

I didn’t find an internet connection, but I did find a brightly lit beignet shop. It felt like New Orleans in exile. An extended Vietnamese family sat around one table. The outdoor tables were packed. Even the Mexican Aztec Rescue Crew, dressed in orange jump suits, wouldn’t have been that out of place in New Orleans before Katrina.

It was becoming clear that the mayor wouldn’t let us in tomorrow. I talked to my friend Brett and Pableaux, who had been going in and out of the city with press passes for days, and they said there was no hope for sneaking in.

Tuesday: Over pancakes at IHOP, we all realized that New Orleans wouldn’t let us in for a few more days. I canceled the U-Haul and moved the reservation to Friday morning.

Baton Rouge may be a great town. I don’t really know, since we spent most of the day hanging around the Wal-Mart parking lot. I developed a symbiotic relationship with Wal-Mart. They let us park there, use their bathrooms and play the demonstration Playstation. In turn, we bought lawn chairs and candy and coffee. Most of the day we kept the RV’s generator off, which meant no air conditioning. One way we beat the heat was a slow, two-hour lunch at the mediocre Chinese buffet in the same strip mall.

We discovered the United Radio Broadcasters of New Orleans, which provides 24-hour news about the suffering city. After the news about New Orleans slowing to a trickle over the last week, it was good to be bombarded again with information. I kept listening to that station for days, until on the way out it finally faded away near the Texas border.

Nagin continued to tease with his murky statements. He was promising a major announcement the next day that would make people happy. We just weren’t inclined to wait.

Brett had offered to take me in on his press pass Wednesday. The only problem was that he wasn’t planning to come out for a few days. Our Civic was sitting at the apartment, but if it didn’t start I would be stuck in New Orleans. Being stuck in a war zone with Brett and the other Times-Picayune reporters might have been fun, but I wanted to get on with moving.

Late in the afternoon, Pableaux called with an idea. A friend of his had printed a small-business pass off the mayor’s website. It got him through the roadblocks without a problem.

With no internet access, I searched for a Kinko’s. I assumed that one would be close to the university, so I headed off to LSU. After a bit of searching, I found the link on Nagin’s site. Fill out some information, hit a button, and a page ready for printing pops up on the city’s letter head granting permission to enter New Orleans. I listed my occupation as “Freelance Journalist.”

Wednesday: We woke up at 4:00 a.m. By 5:30 a.m. we hit the outskirts of New Orleans. In the dark, we didn’t see any real damage. We took Jefferson Highway into New Orleans. Close to the city border, we found the National Guard check point. A mound of dirt had been piled up to make sure only one lane of traffic could pass. A portable light lit up the area as the guardsmen check IDs.

My father was driving and the soldier wanted to see his ID. “State your business,” the guardman asked. I leaned over and said that I needed to retrieve business files. I flashed the letter and he waved us through without looking at my ID. We were in.

We almost missed the turn on Carrollton. It was pitch black and everything looked different. Trees were missing. That might have been why it all looked different. We were spooked driving down the street. Debris was everywhere. Trash piled on curbs. Only one or two other cars were on the streets. An occasional police car drove by us.

As we turned onto St. Charles, the sun was coming up. The city didn’t look so bad. Well, Uptown didn’t look so bad. Lots of limbs down, particularly in the neutral ground.

The light was coming up as we reach my apartment on St. Mary and Prytania. Lots of debris, but not looking too bad. The parking lot was paved with shingles and brush. Amazingly, the Civic that had been sitting in the parking lot for a month started immediately. One side of it had been beaten pretty hard, probably from flying tree limbs in the storm, but it ran.

The courtyard looked bad. Full of more shingles. The water in the pool was almost black. We must have arrived before the landlord, because the pool pump was still on and all the A/C units were running.

My apartment, unfortunately, was the only place without electricity. Otherwise, we seem to have escaped damage. A thick swarm of maggots and files covered the refrigerator, but no other signs of damage.

A contractor soon showed up. He managed to get our electricity turned on and shut off the power to the other units. We spent the rest of the day breaking down furniture and packing.

We were well supplied with candy bars, beef jerky and beer, but we’d been eating lots of that for the past few days. I was dying for a real meal. On a hunch, I suggested that we check out Avenue Pub before the 6:00 p.m. curfew. My hunch was right. They had cold beer. They had burgers and fries. They claimed to have never shut down. Damn, I’ll miss that place.

Thursday: The mayor pushed the roadblocks to the waterline today. Officially residents weren’t allowed in until Friday, but we expected large crowds. We also realized that we would now be able to get a U-Haul in without trouble. Ever since the mayor announced the reopening, however, getting through to U-Haul was like calling FEMA. Nothing but a busy signal. I did manage to find a Baton Rouge hardware store who could rent me a 6′ x 12′ trailer. We wanted a 17′ truck, but hopefully between the RV and the little trailer we could get most of our things out of New Orleans.

I began to realize how much damage the storm had actually done. Even though our section of Uptown didn’t flood, as residents in our building trickled back I learned that half the units had significant mold. Some were covered in mold from floor to ceiling. I have a feeling that many people in dry parts of town will come home to a house full of multi-colored mold.

Friday: We kept breaking down the apartment. Our hope was to leave by noon, but that was impossible. The city was still mainly populated by the military and construction workers. The flood of residents never appeared.

We finally left around 4:30. The traffic was thick and never moved faster than 10 m.p.h. I guess it was all the people leaving town before the 6 p.m. curfew. It took us nearly three hours to get past Baton Rouge, a trip that typically takes an hour.

We kept driving until midnight. All three of us were driving. My dad drove the RV with the U-Haul trailer behind it. My mom drove the little Saturn that we towed down. And I drove the Civic. We finally gave up around midnight, stopped in a grocery store, and slept another night in the motorhome.

Saturday: We finally made it to Dallas around noon. There were more problems, of course. The apartment complex forgot to reserve the freight elevator for us, so we had only one hour to unload everything. Our movers were late. The first U-Haul store we went to refused to accept our trailer. By this point, we were used to it.

As I unpacked the next day, I discovered some mold growing on a cabinet. I guess we got there just in time.

Now we’re in Dallas. We don’t know how long we’ll stay. We don’t know if we can return to New Orleans. At the moment, we are trying to worry about nothing more than the next few weeks. At least we have some direction now.

Posted by Todd at 5:11 pm | Comments (3)

5 October 2005

Housekeeping note: All the comments are still listed as anonymous. I figured out how to fix it, but I haven’t had time to update the blog software. I’ve also deleted a few comments accidently while trying to clear out spam. Nothing personal.

Posted by Todd at 10:27 pm | No Comments