THURSDAY Dec 4, 2008
Our cab driver gives us a sobering post-Katrina education between the airport and our hotel. He had evacuated in time, although that wasn’t true for all of his neighbors, many of whom were “too poor to leave, too poor to come back,” but the flood waters followed him and he had to retrace his steps back across Louisiana to Maryland, where he found shelter. Three years later, the Scrooges he sarcastically called “Good Hands,” – Allstate Insurance – finally agreed to pay out. Did the wind or the water get there first, they kept asking, because they only insure for wind. The check arrived, but then they dropped him as a client. To rebuild uninsured was not his idea of a good investment.
He points out the destruction along the way, talking about the conditions in the Superdome, the way people on the bridges were met with AK57s instead of food and water. I ask him about the present violent crime everyone back home had been warning me about and he laughs. “It’s black-on-black crime. We all live on tourism. We’re all watching your back – the police, the drivers, the restaurant workers, everyone. You can’t live in fear.”
The first room we receive at our French Quarter hotel has no windows. To view an alternative, we follow the clerk beyond the courtyard to the converted military hospital which, he explains, is most probably haunted, according to guests who were woken by ghosts. Apparently this is not unusual in New Orleans. Our dissatisfaction has more to do with the boxy feeling of the room than threats from the Beyond. Before we can take our business elsewhere, he finds us a place on the courtyard, its wrought iron furniture and palm plants surrounding the fountain that for four nights is to give me subliminal urination messages.
I have been feeling less than perky and the bed beckons. Turns out that I am sick. I sleep. My companion B gets me up for a stroll down Bourbon Street, the heart of New Orleans tourism. There’s an unanticipated cold snap and as I have only brought light jackets, I am forced to borrow B’s XL fleece, ensuring an unsatisfactory stream of unfashionable photographs. As we walk, my cell phone rings. It is my chosen-niece Oona telling me that my beloved great-niece Sadie, now 18 adorable months, has looked at the author photo of me on the back of my book and said, for the first time, Katz! My mood is energized – like the others on Bourbon Street. Alcohol flows in the streets, literally, as people buy booze at sidewalk kiosks and walk past the variety of sex shows drinking. Every storefront is either a music club, a restaurant or a souvenir shop. Some tourists are boisterous. Despite my daze, I do recognize that it is not my kind of place.
I have gathered copious restaurant recommendations, but we are winging it this first night, and nothing appeals to me until B spots the neon announcement of “Felix’s,” one recommended by my college roommate Abby. We watch two beefy guys behind the counter prepare oysters on the half-shell as young women flirt openly with them. As neither B nor I are big shellfish eaters, I have my first Po-Boy – a New Orleans sub specialty, and B eats delicious rice, beans and sausage.
FRIDAY Dec 5, 2008
I come out of my overnight coma and once I have my first cup of tea, I can’t think of anything I can stand to eat except maybe a bagel. We head for the nearby Community Coffee House – which reminds me of my Tamar in Tel Aviv or my Blue Legume in London or my Diesel Café in Boston. We check out the French Market, but it is early and all the stalls aren’t yet set up. We stop by the famous Central Grocery so B can have his first muffuletta, a giant flat-bread sandwich stuffed with Italian cold cuts and slathered with a special olive salad. We need our strength as we are booked onto a Post-Katrina Tour (thanks Jenny) that uses a van instead of a bus, so that we can see the devastated neighborhoods.
Tours by Isabelle’s drivers/guides have all been personally affected by Katrina. Joseph (“I’ve lived through 55 Mardi Gras and 13 hurricanes”) picks us up, along with seven other tourists in various hotels, and I have the misfortune of being perched on the edge of the 2nd row bench, one buttock on and one dangling due to the parsimoniousness of a mother/daughter tag team taking up 4/5 of the space. While it’s hell on my back, it keeps me awake more than the plague I’ve contracted would otherwise tend to allow.
We begin the tour in the 7 x 14 blocks of the French Quarter. Clearly the French had a hell of a sense of timing. They founded the port city of New Orleans (NO) in 1718, but the French King gave it as a prezzie to his cousin the Spanish King in 1762, just in time for a huge fire that required the Spanish to rebuild almost the whole town (to wit: wrought iron). Once they did, the French took it back in 1803 and then sold it to the States (the Louisiana Purchase), where it became a state in 1812.
We drive through NO while Joseph testifies. The port is the number one industry and tourism is number two. But since Katrina, everything has shrunk, not the least the number of visitors, reduced by 40%. The population had been 500,000; now it’s 300,000. There were 121 retail shops along the Mississippi Riverway; now there are 78. Eleven hospitals have been reduced to seven and 105 public schools are down to 68. While 9,500 NO trees were lost after standing so long in salt water, the amazing evergreen Live Oaks did fine.
The population of elders was also reduced because ¾ of the 1,577 dead were over 65, according to Joseph. Many were found in their attics, where they failed to punch through their roofs, like so many stranded people did, to escape the water and signal for assistance. The seniors were the ones without the transportation or the means to evacuate when the city instructed its people to do so, but provided no help. The city buses and the school buses sat around, while the poor, those without wheels, the isolated, the confused and mainly the old were abandoned.
New Orleans is shaped like a bowl. At the edge is water – the giant Lake Pontchartrain plus the Mississippi River. The closer to the edge (downtown and the French Quarter), the less damage, as the water that poured over the edge continued down, through those sections, through Gentilly and into the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward. The further we drive away from the center of the city, the more devastation we see and the higher the visible water lines on all the buildings climb.
We drive through the area east of downtown New Orleans, where the eye of the hurricane passed. Where there had been over 50,000 people, there is now only a ghost town. Strip malls are creaky and dead. The Six Flags amusement park is an eerie rusting skeleton of roller coaster track that would cost more to dismantle than it’s worth in scrap. Naturally, Joseph points out, the Home Depot was the first business to reopen.
The Ninth Ward was hit the hardest. The houses were old, many dating back to WWI, and constructed of wood. Those that had been in the family for a long time had no mortgage, so they weren’t required to have insurance. Many are marked by a big red X signifying “demolition.” Others have TFW for Toxic Flood Waters. Eight hundred people died in the Ninth Ward, but several hundred are still missing.
We can see right through the houses, with their markings indicating whether bodies had been found inside or not. Some are collapsed, some are just a hulk and all are blighted. There is nothing. It was a lively, long-settled tight-knit community. Now there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, zero to buy and no one to buy it.
We see two initiatives to reclaim the Ninth Ward. Brad Pitt’s “Make It Right” intends to build 150 solar-powered “green” houses, and we see the two or three that are finished. They are odd structures and while I have the uncomfortable feeling that Pitt is using the New Orleans tragedy to play with his dream of producing the greenest neighborhood on earth, at least he is building something for somebody. Our taxi driver back to the airport will tell us, “I’ll take one! That solar power stuff is cool.”
But then Joseph takes us to see the work of Habitat for Humanity. Wow. They are building rows of cuddly three-bedroom houses, high off the ground, block by block. 
The houses are the essence of houseness. They are the construction equivalent of comfort food. You want to pinch their charming cheeks. There are a couple of versions of the Habitat house, and each one is painted a wonderful color: lime green, powder blue, canary yellow, lavender. There’s no way to look at this garden of homes in the midst of this desolation without smiling.
In 2005, New Orleans natives and musicians Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis joined Habitat for its best-known initiative: the Musician’s Village in the Upper Ninth Ward. All 72 single-family houses have been completed or nearly completed, with special accessible units for elders and with the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music at its core. It provides a model for the other neighborhoods and all of it is being done with volunteer labor, together with the future home owners.
On another evening, we are to meet a group of these volunteers, about 20 Minnesota folks led by their pastor, who are giving a week to Habitat. I asked one guy how they manage to complete anything with amateurs dropping in and out for a week here or there and he answered with a laugh, “Slowly, very slowly.”
Contrast this with the initiative that Donald Trump is bringing to this city built on swamps. He is going to construct a downtown skyscraper that is 76 stories high, to tower over the present highest at 51 floors. Apparently one-third of the expense goes underground, poured into the foundation. I can’t comprehend why Trump is trying to defy nature with a completely counterintuitive structure in a water-logged city. I much prefer Habitat’s contributions.
What is very stark is that there are only two groups actually building housing in the devastated areas, Habitat and Pitt. The government is nowhere to be seen: not local, state or national. All these years later, and absolutely nothing official is being done for these Americans, too many of whom remain in the toxic FEMA trailers we see scattered around. It is sickening. Hundreds of billions for Wall Street moguls and nothing for housing. Big cash compensation settlements to the survivors of 9/11 and, as we say in Yiddish, bupkes (zilch) for the survivors of Katrina. Even worse, one guy pointed out shaking his head, “Many other countries offered help, but the U.S. government refused.” He’s probably talking about Cuba, Venezuela and several places in the Middle East, if I recollect correctly from the day.
After a snooze, we dine at Adolfo’s on Frenchman Street at the recommendation of my friend Katie, a New Orleans food journalist (among other things). There’s a big Italian community in NO and this, Katie reports, is the best local version of Italian food. The loud acoustics, though, results in my feeling like I’ve been catapulted into the middle of the excruciatingly uncomfortable first date of the middle-aged people at the table behind us. I hope they at least got some.
Frenchman Street is a welcome alternative to Bourbon Street, with its late-night gay bookstore and cool music clubs. We cross the street to listen to R&B legend Carol Fran at the Snug Harbor Jazz Club. By then I can barely drag my butt back to the room.
SATURDAY, Dec 6, 2008
It would have been my late father’s 91st birthday today, so I’m glad we have something wonderful to do – following another suggestion from Katie. But again I have slept so long in my flu stupor that it’s time to look for brunch. Walking down Royal, the most beautiful of French Quarter streets, we discover Café Amelie, receded down a lush path. The many outside tables are too cold to consider, but inside is toasty. I need some comfort food to stimulate my deflated appetite and so I order a BLT, with apple-cured bacon. I don’t usually like this kind of nouveau cuisine restaurant with menu descriptions that run to excessive adjectives and arcane seasonings, but I adore this one. It’s populated by gorgeous young New Orleans people who are constantly interrupting their meals to take important cell calls in the garden. Their clothes are European and they all seem to know each other.
At Katie’s direction, we set off to check out the Backstreet Cultural Museum – a little known treasure in Treme, the oldest Black neighborhood in the country, historically the home of free people of color. In the early 19th Century, slaves gathered in the main square for Sunday dancing.
We find the Museum without any problem, but it is closed. We knock, but disappointed, we walk away. In a couple of blocks, a guy on a bicycle catches up with us to invite us back to the museum, where the director Mr. Francis is ready to show us the collection of “Mardi Gras Indian” costumes. Building on a history of Native American tribes allying with African-American slaves and free Blacks, the Black people of Treme create astounding hand-sewn costumes. The wild, bright costumes, some weighing over 100 pounds, are constructed anew each year from beads, ostrich feathers, buttons, sequins and mind-blowing embroidery.
Treme and the surrounding neighborhoods contain a range of “Indian Clubs” who have their own brass bands and spectacular outfits. The local government has made their celebrations increasingly difficult by imposing charges for a police presence at parades that have gone from zero to $7,000 in just a few years. Mr. Francis’s whole family is involved in the museum and this historian cum curator shows us their collection of Jazz Funeral memorabilia and teaches us about some of the more vibrant characters of the Indian and Second Line (those who march beside and behind the parades) life.
It turns out that the annual parade is tomorrow and he gives us a leaflet outlining the route and the clubs that will be participating. We promise to come and Mr. Francis walks us out. Before we leave Treme, he points out the old church around the corner and suggests we go view the grave of the Unknown Slave, a moving monument with a huge frozen chain, shackle and iron ball.
I’ve held up okay, but it is time to return to the hotel to nap before dinner, which we have at the French Market Restaurant. Our wonderful Cajun waitress explains the difference between rural Cajun and urban Creole societies.
We can put off the classic NO treat no longer and cross over to the famous Café du Monde for their renowned cafe' au lait and beignets, almost obscenely piled with powdered sugar. There’s nothing more accessible to the tongue than sweet fried dough.
SUNDAY Dec 7, 2008
I wake up feeling almost like a human being and B is glad that “Rip Van Winkle” has perked up. We meet up with Jenny, the daughter of a dear friend of mine, at my Community Coffee House. Jenny is spending a year doing research in New Orleans, loving every minute, but wishing she had brought her winter coat. Little do any of us anticipate that two days after B and I return to Boston, New Orleans is going to have a freaky 2” of snow.
We head to Treme via the Louis Armstrong Park, built in an area of Treme that was pulled down in a misconceived urban renewal assault. Do you know why he is called Satchmo? It’s short for “satchel mouth”, because as a young street musician he used to store his coins in his cheeks where the other boys couldn’t get at them.
In the distance, we pick up the music, the color and the crowds. Groups of musicians and dancers represent their clubs in splendid fashion – from turquoise suits to appliquéd parasols. The plus-sized Queen of the Festival, clothed in rhinestones and silver brocade, rides in a plastic bubble carriage waving her divine hand. Volunteers march on either side of the parade, stretching a blue security rope, keeping the Second Line dancers at a slight but safe distance.
The atmosphere is brilliant, as everyone dances the route, weaving up one block and down the next. I can’t help but join the dancing alongside people of every age, at least a half dozen folks dancing in their wheelchairs, expertly negotiating the wretched broken sidewalks. When my feet give out, we stop at Big Mama’s mobile BBQ flatbed truck for a $5 lunch of ribs, which we eat sitting on the curb. We get a chance to look around. The architectural style puts the shuttered back of the houses facing the streets and the fronts, invisible to us, inside on the courtyards. Treme was not disastrously affected by Katrina, although there was some damage. We see one renovation with a sign saying it is a project sponsored by Qatar.
We limp back towards the hotel, cutting down Royal Street. There is an open-house for a condo and we slip in to check out if we want to lay down $375,000 for a small one-bedroom. The antique furniture – massive all out of proportion with the small rooms – would probably cost as much as the apartment. How quickly we have passed from the poverty of Treme to the ostentation of this fancy-pants place just a couple of blocks away.
We make it to the Mississippi River boardwalk in time for the sunset. At 2,350 miles, it is the third longest river in the world (after the Amazon and the Nile). Katrina destroyed 1,200 boats, many of them on the river. After a huge flood in 1927, the Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with creating a levee system for flood control. In June, 2006, the Corps finally admitted publicly that they had screwed up the job, leading to many needless deaths.
There are a couple of varieties of interesting metal benches along the river, but when I point them out to B, he notes that they are designed to be sleep-proof. In a city with so many displaced, homeless folks, resources are being expended on designing and installing benches that prevent people from stretching out. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
We cross over from the Riverwalk to beautiful Jackson Square, where a statue of Andrew Jackson celebrates the 1815 Battle of New Orleans to repel the invading British. There is a long beautiful Italian-designed building along one side of the Square, which marks one border of the French Quarter.
It is startling that in such doubly-difficult times for New Orleans, we did not see a single empty storefront in the French Quarter. There are plenty of properties for rent and sale, but no boarded buildings or empty shops. Despite high taxes, tourists are keeping people in business.
New Orleans residents are pros at tourism. We did not meet a single local person, no matter what part of town, who wasn’t gracious, kind and attentive. Period. It was an odd experience. B and I would exit a store, disoriented, trying to decide whether to go left or right, and someone would approach us with an offer of help. It was uncanny.
After a rest we head for dinner at Angeli on Decatur Street, passing a club with a sign Rubyfruit Jungle. I stop. It must be a lesbian spot. I peek in and there are about a half dozen patrons, mostly women, hanging around. Later we are to read in the Gulf area GLBT newspaper that it is a three-story lesbian club that opened the night before we pass it. I hope the crowd swelled later in the evening.
MONDAY Dec 8, 2008
This is it. We are flying out in a few hours. We pack and set out for the Old Coffee Pot for a full breakfast. Miss Trude, our waitress, is full of winning energy and I’m thrilled to finally get my lips around a southern biscuit. On the way back, we pass the Southern Cotton Company clothing store I’ve been eyeing our whole trip. There is a jacket I need to buy – a shiny, dressy thing. But it is expensive and, knowing I will regret it forever, I pass it up. I do regret it, big-time.
It’s not like we’ve been throwing money around. In fact we have managed to stick to highly recommended restaurants and never really spend more than $30 per meal for the two of us. Actually, almost every single meal, no matter what time of day, has cost just that.
I’ve done no shopping at all (no strength), although we hit the market twice. However, many things for sale have a picture of Obama. He hovers over New Orleans, where people are remarkably hopeful. They consider Bush a criminal and can’t understand why he hasn’t been prosecuted for his crimes. But Obama is like a travelling mate here – he is everywhere. Souvenir shops hawk more Obama items than New Orleans fare: T-shirts, towels, plates, mugs and even car seat covers, allowing whole families to pay their respects by sitting on Obama’s face.
How quickly I have become invested in New Orleans, in its struggle, its history, its beauty and its food. Just four nights and I know that I’m going to be paying a lot more attention. The city has this affect on people, apparently. When I was gathering suggestions, without exception every person who had ever been to New Orleans – most of them before Katrina – just adored the place. I can only thank them for their recommendations and hope they’ll keep that love warm. New Orleans needs us now more than ever.
Thanks to B for the wonderful photographs.
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