Leaving New Orleans
Once it gets under your skin, New Orleans is a difficult place to leave. It is the perfect mix of small-town and cosmopolitan lifestyle. With world-class restaurants, culture and a tight-knit community, the experience of New Orleans is something to be both savored and splurged. The puke-fest that is upper Bourbon is easy to avoid. A smidgen over two months after my arrival, the triumvirate Gods, Circumstance, Serendipity and Synchronicity made clear it was now time for me to leave. For weeks I had been saying "This is my last week," every week something happened that caused me to renew the weekly lease where I was staying.... not that I minded at all.
But the day came where my room was expiring and there were no further obligations, events or potential favors to be done that I could use as an excuse to stay another week. As if in confirmation of the fact, every place I drove to in the French Quarter on my last day had a parking spot open right in front of my destination. Three times during the day I found a legal parking spot in front of my hotel. This is a strange and rare coincidence indeed!
I reveled in my last day and night, spending a few hours photographing the show my friends at The Front Page bar stage on Mondays at 10pm (located at Burgundy and St Peters) and followed that by hitting a few of the after-hours haunts we would visit after closing up at Evelyn's Place where I had been helping out and bartending. The following morning I went to the Cafe Rose Nicaud on Frenchmen Street and grabbed a final latte for the road. Minutes later I was on interstate 10 heading east toward Slidell. My intention was to drive East along the Gulf Coast to see the areas where Hurricane Katrina made landfall. I crossed over the sound and then turned South off 10 toward Gulfport.
When I was in New Orleans I did a fair amount of driving about and looking at the hurricane damage. The extent of the damage I saw was disturbing. It is at this point I ask your permission to digress.
Digression:
I have a friend in New Orleans who proposes replacing all references to 'Katrina,' 'The Storm,' 'The Hurricane'... whatever... to "8-29." The reason being an event of such magnitude should not be humanized with a name nor diminished by a generic reference. It didn't just effect New Orleans and the flooded areas, it destroyed Gulfport and Biloxi as well. The Hurricane of 8-29 caused damage and devastation over an area of 90,000 square miles. 8-29 displaced over 275,000 people. There are refugees of 8-29/Katrina scattered across our country, many of them never returning to the place they grew up in and called home. There were nearly 2,000 deaths--over 700 people are still missing. 8-29 caused damage amounting to over 81 billions of dollars. The economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi alone is estimated to be over $150 billions. Hmmm 81 plus 159... all in billions... That's a lot of Ducats!
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The drive between Long Beach, Gulfport and Biloxi was strange. Miles of beautiful, manicured, white sand beaches fronted by tilted and empty sign posts. No buildings. Occasionally, there is a sign still advertising for its lost tenant. There is a sign for a Kmart store at the edge of a vast, empty lot. The grid of streets along the beach is still there, laid out like a giant board game, defining where once stood row after row of houses, restaurants and shops.
A few Casinos, being of more recent construction, withstood the forces better and some are actively under repair. However, others stand empty awaiting the corporate decisions when or whether to rebuild. Some of the floating, barge casinos were washed 200 yards inland.
Long Beach, Gulfport and Biloxi are to be commended for the promptness of their clean up. The winds of the hurricane of 8-29 did not lift all of the debris up into the air and deposit it nicely in some out of the way spot. The houses that are no longer there left behind an appropriate amount of rubbish. The cities moved quickly to clear out the rubble and prepare the way for a quick rebuilding. Perhaps they were aided by the type of damage the houses sustained--wind and wave damaged with no hope of recovery. The only option was to bulldoze, whereas the damage in New Orleans was largely from flooding. One to ten-plus feet of water leaves the house still standing, you have the option of gutting and rebuilding the inside or selling it to someone who might be willing to do so. So many houses, so many individuals, so many decisions. The New Orleans recovery is also crippled by open-ended Federal contracts to private companies for whom the Simon & Garfunkle song "Slow Down, You're Going Too Fast" seems specifically written. Many of the contractors and recovery companies are sincerely doing good work for a good cause and fair price. Others are modern day carpetbaggers seeking high profits for little effort. I overheard contractors talking about spending the entire day "gator hunting" instead of doing the work they were paid to do.
Driving through Biloxi I was struck by the feel of wilderness. Blocks of houses had been replaced with a Summer's worth of unchecked growth on emptied lots. Shoulder height weeds and vines fill the open spaces, giving it a feeling more of unkempt parkland than a place that was once families and neighborhoods. Not quite a year ago these were bustling neighborhoods. It is this awareness that gives one the sense of abandonment. Otherwise you might think this a pleasant spot; quiet and peaceful; a nice place for a picnic with friends, never realizing the magnitude of the loss.
My drive took me further, beyond the ravages of 8-29. I ended the day's drive in a town called Pascagoula, Mississippi. I asked a local girl where there might be a good local restaurant. She replied: "There's a Ruby Tuesday's."
I had just come from spending two months in the French Quarter of New Orleans which is chock full of wonderful restaurants, cafes and snug little places to eat, not one of them a chain. It was clear, I was no longer in New Orleans. Though I drove around and looked, I later found myself at Ruby Tuesday's eating a predictably mediocre meal that is predictably and identically mediocre in thousands of other restaurants of the same name, decor and employee flash around the country. I understand the security that is to be found in a soulless franchise for the would-be restaurateur, but good, golly, Mister/Madam restaurateur, have some spine. Don't be a mere investor. Take a chance. Invest in your own ingenuity and imagination. Create something new that has never been before. By doing so you will be strengthening your own community and helping to give it an identity that is unique. And, dammit, locals who consistently eat at franchises rather than local bistros are as bad as tourists... perhaps worse.Rremember folks the way you spend your money says everything... we are buying the world we live in, choose wisely. Oh yeah... and remember to tip!