RRC Archives

so AA's can't learn and pull themselves and contribute to their family... oh wait I think we know the answer Bush was hating them all along

what particular part of below sea level would constitute a flood plain in NO anyways jeez

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/us/na ... ref=slogin

...The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. ...

..."They did not build nothing on 9/11 until they were sure that the damn dust was not human dust; so how you go on and build things in our city?"

the lurkist wrote:...N.O. was built in the wrong place. ...

There is a basic fallacy in this statement: where New Orleans was originally built it's all still good.

With proper investment and planning the rest of the city (or most of it) could be reoccupied safely. But New Orleans and the Gulf South have always been ignored by Washington because they're (mostly) poor and black. Why spend money there when you can use it to buy advanced weapons systems and wage never-ending wars on drugs and terrorism?

Can you imagine if at the WTC FEMA had stopped looking for bodies because "the right paper work wasn't filed?" We can't ignore those white financial workers that have been ground to dust but some poor restaurant worker's mama dead in her living room in the south? Fuck 'em.

Do you know if the campground is still there? We're going in two weeks for JazzFest and I really hope it's where it's always been.

I'm not sure where the campground was though I'd be surprised if it's open. There aren't very many people to staff businesses. We were going to go eat at my favorite sushi restaurant in the world, Hana, and they closed at 9pm!!! If you like sushi, go there (it's in the Carrollton area at 8116 Hampson St, just a couple of doors from Carrollton Ave a block from St. Charles). If I knew anyone with a yard I'd hook you up with them but I don't, unfortunately, unless you wanted to camp way out by the airport next to a friend's FEMA trailer. Trust me on this one: you don't.

The fairgrounds looked really good, much to my amazement, especially considering the fact that the surrounding neighborhoods were empty, with houses tilted and ugly water marks on all the walls. The Dixie Brewery is an ugly shell, the Falstaff Brewery looks dangerous (what a shame as it was being converted to condos when I left), and even the imposing city jail appears to be empty. I don't know why I didn't shoot pictures of any of these or the cars dumped under the overpasses... shutter fatigue? Maybe just the hopelessness of showing the scope of it.

A quick Yahoo search only showed a KOA way out in Jefferson Co. close to New Orleans. Getting hotel rooms is going to be really tough considering most of the hotels are woefully understaffed and operating at minimal levels. Maybe check with the bulletin board for Offbeat magazine http://www.offbeat.com/forums/index.php

I'm really glad you all are going to visit. The city needs all the support it can get. Every shop we visited thanked us for our business.

Thanks for the correction, E. Yes, NO was originally built by the French on solid ground. I guess my point is that the geographic area where the traditionally black neighborhoods are was a flood plain and was relegated to become black neighborhoods b/c no one of any means (whites) would live there.
Is that correct? (And I am not trying to be arguementative, only trying to clarify what I understood to be the historical facts that allowed so many blacks to ultimately become displaced by Katrina- obviously along with the mismanagement of the evacuation and recovery effort).

Alan, we're staying at a hotel in the French Quarter. How did that look?

Oops, I meant to say fairgrounds. Thanks, Alan!

The French Quarter was unscathed though there are a lot of closed businesses still. From there all the way up through the garden district along the river to the levee is fine. There are a lot of abandoned houses still because the HVAC systems got submerged and ruined but it really appears to be heading to some state of normalcy.

Actually, lurkist, the "reclaimed" areas of the city were straight up swamps before they were drained. This wasn't a sudden process, however. It occurred over more than a couple of centuries, an area at a time. As the water was pumped out, what was a surface above sea level began to subside. Canals were dug and the water level was lowered more, resulting in further contraction of the earth until some parts of the city were sitting over 17 feet below sea level. The Lakeview area (lots of my pics are from there) was drained after WWII and was made up of largely upscale, white neighborhoods (though if you were to compare these neighborhoods to, say, Louisville suburbs they would be staggeringly black) and very expensive houses. The thing people just don't realize about N.O. is that every level of society was profoundly affected by the water. It filled 80% of the city, sparing only the small areas of high ground. New Orleans was perhaps one of the most financially integrated cities in the country by virtue of the fact there was nowhere to grow but inwards so people were accustomed to living next door to or down the street from others of completely opposite incomes. There were blocks of freshly renovated 19th century homes surrounded by strikingly poor neighborhoods as well as strinkingly poor blocks surrounded by upper middle class neighboors. Almost everybody's house was fucked up by this. If the flood waters didn't get you, a small amount of roof damage and the two solid months you were kept out of the city was often enough to cause massive damage. Regardless, most of the city is still uninhabitable. Will they chop the city up with a series of smaller levies, adding green space and raising the ground level? Will they simply bulldoze everything eventually and start over? Will people be allowed to attempt to rebuild their homes and lives? Will the Mardi Gras Indians dance and sing on the shore of Bayou St. John again? I must say, after seeing the state of the levees myself I don't have high hopes. New Orleans is liable to become a quaint little tourist town that nobody can afford to live in.