Our Visit to New Orleans (Part 2) - November 2013

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Reflections on Our Visit toe New Orleans - Part 2

On the Saturday morning, after waiting for over an hour for the bus, we asked for a lift into town from the owner of the RV Park. We had a lovely breakfast of light and fluffy pancakes and eggs Benedict at Stanley’s on Jackson Square. (The restaurant was packed and we had to wait about 15 minutes for a table. Most of the restaurants and bars in New Orleans seem to be thriving again.) Jackson Square earns it name for one of three bronze statues of Andrew Jackson located in the centre of the square. It is also the location of an open-air artist colony, where artists display their work on the outside of the iron fence.

We had arranged a guided tour of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina in the afternoon as it seemed to best and safest way to visit these areas. We boarded the small Greyline tour bus in the French Quarter. The tour guide was an elderly lady who was not very well prepared in that she would talk about specific ‘sites’ after we had already driven past them. That also might be because the driver was going much too fast, seemingly more interested in getting to the conclusion of the tour rather than going slow enough for us to get the most from the journey itself.

We drove through the 9^th Ward where the worst of the damage occurred. This area was nearly totally devastated when the levees broke and vast stretches remain completely vacant with a few houses scattered throughout. Along some streets, new homes are being constructed, but for the most part what has remained since the flooding are homes with “death marks”, or Katrina Crosses as many in the city refer to them, scrawled on them by first responders. These are the markings that include a date, a time, an identification of the search unit, and sometimes other information about hazards encountered and whether anyone was found, alive or not, was recorded in the bottom quadrant. Many of these houses have been abandoned and are gradually decaying from lack of maintenance over the course of seven years. Those that have been destroyed or demolished, about 4000, have left hardly a mark on the lots, which are now overgrown with weeds and brush. In some cases, a foundation is visible, a reminder that this land was once occupied by a developed neighbourhood.

There is, however, rebuilding proceeding. The most interesting rebuilding project we drove through was the Musicians’ Village. Conceived by New Orleans natives Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis, Musicians’ Village provides a home for both the artists who have defined the city’s culture and the sounds of jazz that have shaped the musical vernacular of the world. The main idea behind Musicians’ Village was the establishment of a community for the city’s several generations of musicians and other families, many of whom had lived in inadequate housing prior to the catastrophe and remained displaced in its aftermath.

The Musicians’ Village was constructed in the Upper Ninth Ward, where an eight-acre parcel of land was initially selected for the construction of 72 single-family homes built by volunteers, donors, sponsors and low-income families. All 72 homes have since been completed and it has the genuine feel of a community re-established. It also features the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, named in honor of the New Orleans native and legendary jazz pianist, educator and patriarch of the Marsalis clan. Focusing on the ethnically and culturally diverse musical heritage of the city, the Center includes a 170-seat performance space. We are sorry that we did not have an opportunity to hear a performance there.

The strangest-looking and most high-profile rebuilding project we drove through was the ‘Make It Right’a charity home-building foundation initiated by Brad Pitt. They pledged to build 150 ‘green’ homes, safe, energy-efficient and affordable - about 90 of these have been built so far – to be sold to the former residents of the area. The potential homeowners could choose from 21 innovative designs from major internationally renowned architects including Frank Gehry. The houses were being built to sustain natural disasters. A recent census indicates that the population of the Lower Ninth Ward is growing and even though visually it still appears stark and desolate, people are returning in small numbers.

Construction on the cutting-edge designs has run into more than its share of complications, and Make It Right is struggling to finance the rest of the 150 homes it promised and has decided to open up to buyers who didn’t live in the neighbourhood before Katrina. While Brad Pitt’s intentions and efforts are to be applauded and respected, and the houses themselves are certainly beautifully-designed and intriguing to look at, they are inappropriate and out of character for New Orleans; it feels more like a yuppie enclave or an adjunct to the experimental eco-housing projects in northern Europe.

Later that evening we found some real jazz at Snug Harbor, the only ‘proper’ jazz club in New Orleans, where the room is for listening only. A quintet led by pianist Jeff Gardner featuring local saxophonist Tony Dragadi. It was a great relief to hear a very enjoyable live set of straight-ahead jazz, complete with solos and improvisation and no grand-standing!

We walked back through the continuing party of the French Quarter, along Bourbon Street and then up Canal Street to the dodgy area where we got the local bus back to the RV park.

The next day, Sunday, was to be our last in New Orleans, and while Joan was in favour of just heading out of town, I convinced her that I needed another day in the city as I hadn’t been to the Jazz Museum or the Louis Armstrong Park or the Louisiana Music Factory where I was intending on spending this month’s cd buying budget!

Sunday started out wonderful and ended up terrible. We drove Rudy V into the city. We could have – and should have – parked in a parking lot, but because of the football game that afternoon the parking lot prices were doubled for the day, and with the RV taking up two spaces it was doubled again – so we decided to park on Canal Street, which is the main north-south throughway from the Mississippi River to the Botanic Garden.

We walked first to the park that is named after and honours Louis Armstrong, on Rampart Street in the Treme district, the birthplace of many New Orleans’ jazz musicians. Louis Armstrong, the grandson of slaves, was born into a very poor family and spent his youth in poverty. His father abandoned his family when Louis was an infant, and he lived with his grandmother and uncle during part of his childhood. He only saw his father in parades! His entire life story is a fantastic American rags-to-riches story. There are numerous jazz-themed sculptures throughout the park, and I took quite a few photographs there. Within the park is the historic Congo Square, formerly known as Place de Negres, where slaves gathered on a Sunday, their day off, to sing, beat drums and sell home-made goods and celebrate life and the joy of living.

From there we walked more of the streets of the French Quarter and took many photographs of the houses with their wrought iron balconies and hanging ivy and the traditional New Orleans shotgun house. A shotgun house is a long, narrow, rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than 12 feet wide, but stretching back into the lot, with rooms arranged one behind another off a long corridor and with door at each end of the house. The houses often had a ‘camelback’ second floor from about the midpoint of the house. It was the most popular style of house in New Orleans, and other parts of the southern United States from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 through the 1920s. The New Orleans housing taxation system contributed to the design in that it minimized the frontage when taxes were based on lot frontage. They are called ‘shotgun’ houses because of the idea that if you opened the front and rear door to the house, the pellets fired from a shotgun would fly cleanly from one end to the other.

We were planning on eating another Muffalata sandwich at the Central Grocery but when we got there we were disappointed to find that it was closed on the Sunday. We wandered around inspecting restaurant menus and came upon another restaurant offering their own version of the famous sandwich. While it wasn’t quite as good as that of the Central Grocery, it was certainly tasty and equally large so that we could only eat half of it and took the other half away with us.

From there I went to the National Jazz Museum and Joan wandered off to do some shopping. The National Jazz Museum is located in an old U.S. Mint building and consisted primarily of photographs and posters based around Preservation Hall. Preservation Hall is the musical venue in the French Quarter that was established in 1961 to preserve and protect and honour the history of New Orleans jazz; it is a place where time stands still and the jazz played there is as it was played in 1931!

After purchasing a couple of New Orleans jazz t-shirts at the French Market I made my way to the Louisiana Music Factory on Decatur Street (across the street from the House of Blues) where I spent the next ninety minutes browsing through the stacks of New Orleans jazz recordings. This shop claims to have the widest selection of Louisiana and New Orleans Music on compact disc and vinyl records in the world, and I believe it! As I was on a tight budget (coupled with the fact that every cd I buy I will have to carry on my back for four months through South America) I purchased only a few ‘must haves’ from local musicians Jonathan Batiste and Ellis Marsalis. The three staff members were not at all helpful, a combination of having to deal with too many visitors and the very important (American) football match happening in the nearby Super Dome that they were relegated to watching on a small computer while huddled behind the cash desk.

I met up with Joan and we wandered back to Rudy V. It had been broken in to during the day. We had both felt a little uneasy about parking where we did but thought that it was the main street (a bit like the top of O’Connell Street near Parnell Street) and it would be okay. Walking back to Rudy V in the early evening, from a distance I noticed that two the wheels from the bicycles locked to the rack at the back had been stolen. The thieves had popped open the rear window and climbed in, ruffled through our clothes and collected up what they wanted in my large backpack.

The items stolen included all the cds I had purchased in Maine, Canada and NYC, my walking shoes, Joan’s diabetes tester, 5 pairs of prescription glasses and extra contact lenses, house and car keys and cheque books that we had stored in the backpack. Taken also were other small items that we only noticed days later (including my Italian cell phone that I hadn’t used since Italy). It can all be replaced. We carry everywhere with us our passports and computers and Joan’s few pieces of jewelry so those were not lost. It is more the hassle and inconvenience and cost of replacing them that upsets most (and perhaps our stupidity regarding our choice of parking space). The damage to the van was minimal; one of the robbers cut himself while trying unsuccessfully to pull the television off the wall and left samples of his blood on a towel.

We rang 911 as soon as we realized we had been robbed (about 7:30pm) and the cops arrived shortly before midnight, after our 3^rd of 4^th phone call to 911 when we expressed a more determined sense of urgency. During our wait we were spoken to by a number of passers-by, all of whom told us it was not a good place to park. The next day, returning to the area and driving around, we found a very run-down residential area a couple blocks behind Canal Street. If we had known that we would like to think we would have parked elsewhere.

We got to meet three of New Orleans police officers who were indifferent to our problems and lacked any compassion or empathy. We could nearly here them thinking:’ you shouldn’t have parked here’. While waiting for them to arrive, I looked around the area and found a couple of the stolen items discarded by the thieves. I left them where they were and when I escorted one of reluctant police officers to collect them, he walked with his hand on his holstered gun the whole time! And his colleague followed about 50 yards behind us.

They asked us to wait for the crime scene unit to collect the blood samples and fingerprint the television and other areas but we were not staying there any longer and they led us back to the 1^st precinct station where we parked and waited. At about 2am I went into the precinct office to enquire about when the technician would arrive and found out that the incident officer had not put in the request. About 4am a woman crime scene technician arrived and took some photographs and fingerprints and collected the blood evidence. We slept fitfully the rest of the night and the next morning headed east out of Louisiana as quickly as Rudy V would trundle!

We have heard nothing from them since! (I have been writing and reading and re-writing the above sporadically since the incident of the robbery. I have found it a way to come to terms with it and get it out of my system. Joan was initially reluctant to post it but now we have agreed to share this experience and put the incident finally and completely behind us.)

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