New Orleans

Sunday morning, we got up about 7 or so, & the four of us went to Cafe du Monde for breakfast. They serve huge, monstrous beignets, with about a cup of powdered sugar on them. We all knocked off the majority of it onto our plates. Even at the Cafe, there was evidence of lack of staffing. A help wanted sign on the door, and the outside area, which was normally open much earlier, still had the chairs up on the tables, which gave Master enough pause to ask if the place was even open. We'd taken a cab there (Master wanted to get there in a hurry), but walked the few block back to the hotel. He pointed out the park across the street, which i've forgotten the name of. We took a peek into the House of Voodoo, and The Dungeon on the way back to the hotel. Master'd wanted to go to the Dungeon the previous night, but it didn't happen. There was a sign on one shop door that Master took a picture of...('Come Hell or High Water picture')

After catching a couple more hours of sleep, we checked out of the hotel. Master wanted to show us UNO to see the campus. We took a couple wrong turns, as it'd been so long since he'd been there. Even though it was raining heavily, you could tell it was a nice campus. Though the buildings didn't seem damaged, there were still cars in some of the parking lots, left since the storm, many of them with windows or trunks open.

When we were done at the University, we drove around the city for a while, looking at the different neighborhoods. It's been nine months and the whole city is still affected by Katrina. Everywhere, there were downed trees, still leaning into the houses or buildings they'd fallen into. Grass and weeds growing wild in the yards, often over-growing the sidewalks & driveways. Whole blocks of houses gutted, even a church and a couple strip malls gutted. Apartment buildings, as well. In many areas the water-line was still clearly visible on the buildings, leaving marks about nine feet up where it'd peaked. In one tree there were large pieces of roofing still hanging from the branches. Most of the street signs had been blown off, so we didn't even know what streets we were on. Any number of windows and doors broken. Whole neighborhoods with o signs of life, no pets, no cars, just empty.

On so many houses, the signs spray-painted onto them by the National Guard were still there, marking the day they'd gotten to the house, but we couldn't tell what the initials with them meant. MO seemed to mean dead, but there was SP, M, O. Shayla has no idea what they'd meant. Occasionally more details would be given; 'dead dog' painted on one garage, 'attic' on another home. EV seemed to be Evacuated. There were an awful lot of FEMA trailers, all plain white. They seemed lonely, parked in the lawns of houses that were still badly damaged. Many places still didn't have electricity.

Master said that the neighborhoods that we'd gone through hadn't been poor, but well-off. In some places we could see that people had really been working to get things back in order. A man mowing a lawn, piles of debris from the storm by curbs, waiting to be picked up, many houses with no more trace of the water-lines on them. One block, all the houses had been put back into reasonable order, with the exception of one. It hadn't been touched. And a piece of plywood had been set up against a tree in the yard. "This is the only house on the block that isn't cleaned up", and then something about the owner needing to get busy. And underneath it, another piece of wood with 'owner dead' painted upon it. The house itself had 'tear me down, rat-hole' painted upon the side.

We went through one of the major parks in the city. Same as so many other areas, it was over-grown. Brown grass and weeds growing tall and moving onto the pavement. Few signs. Master said that normally that park was kept immaculate. In it was a 'relief camp', full of trailers and tents, people whose homes had been damaged.

Even the areas under the freeway overpasses were full of cars, all of them had been covered by the water. They all had a thick, grayish film over them from the debris and sediments they had soaked in.

Going back to the downtown area we went through one of the older neighborhoods, one that was on higher ground. One of the richer neighborhoods, the houses were huge, many of them three stories. Most of them had little to no sign of damage, just as though nothing happened. On many of the trees along the road were Mardi Gras beads, some having been there for so long that moss and branches had grown around them.

Something that really struck shayla was the sense of age the whole city had. It's a beautiful city, even the parts that aren't all that pretty. We can deny it all we want, but people are always going to be a part of nature, subject to the same order and effects as anything else. It's really given shayla a new respect for nature and its forces.

shayla

Bourbon Street

Master has been planning on going to New Orleans with some of his family for the past couple weeks. But it turned out that only his daughter and a couple of her friends could go with us. We left early Saturday morning, and picked her up on the way there. Master went to UNO and lived there in New Orleans for 3 years, but this was the first chance that miranda or shayla had a chance to go. The drive there was half the fun, a chance to see different places & people, observe the changes in scene. Shayla's always been one to enjoy road trips. It never matters where she's going, she just likes to go. There's a large swamp on the way to New Orleans that we pass through. Miles of freeway on a bridge the whole way, straight, no exits for about 10 miles. It's lovely to just go through it, observe the cypress stumps and channels in the area.

Master picked a hotel right on Bourbon Street, so save on the headache of driving & parking. We got there about 11, had time to shower and change before heading out. Master'd warned us about the 'aroma' that Bourbon street had, but it still took a little to adjust to it. It was just part of the package. Years of partying baked into the cement with the heat.

It was very good to see all these places that Master'd talked about. We passed by the House of Blues, the House of Blues. Though even in the evening, it was closed. We went to one of the few bars that still had a live band. We sat and listened for a couple hours. Master actually knew the drummer from years ago at another bar. So he was able to get up & sit in for a song. Shayla was very proud to see him up on that stage & singing. While he was singing there two men came up & tried to pick miranda and shayla up. The one that asked shayla wanted to know if she was with someone. He wasn't quite certain how to react when shayla pointed Master out to him. Shayla'd been sitting in Master's stool, keeping it for him as he sang. The looks on the two men's faces when shayla moved to let Master take his stool back were priceless.

Miranda'd wanted to stop into one of the voodoo shops while we were there, so that was our next stop. The store was packed with all sorts of ingredients, charms, jewelry, books, cards, countless thingamajigs. An altar to Marie Laveaux was directly opposite the room to the counter, loaded down with offerings (including numerous quarters) and a sign strongly warning browsers to keep their hands off. Shayla wasn't able to stay in there for long, simply too crowded and chaotic.

We walked back to the hotel to nap and wash up before going back out, and passed through a group of men on the sidewalk. Not just past them, through them. There were about a dozen, and all of them were either saying something or whistling. One man hollered to Master as we walked away, 'what do i have to do to get invited to that party?' If only he knew.

Something very striking to shayla was the amount of places that were closed. Not just from the early hour, but closed. Signs in the door put there by the city, saying the place was approved for reopening, only no sign of it happening. And one sign after another saying 'for rent', or 'help wanted'. The friend that Master'd come across said that people that had been working 7 days a week were now only working 3. And only 4 places had live bands, where there used to be a great deal more.

We left Moesha with Master's daughter when we left the hotel at about 9. By then things had really picked up on the street. They'd blocked vehicle traffic off and everyone was on foot. Master said that it was about half as busy as what it normally is on a Saturday night. Miranda got her chance to flash the world when we stopped to talk to one pair of the mounted police that were there. Master and her had both wanted a photo of her topless there on the street. Neither one of the police had any problem when miranda asked. So we now have a photo of her standing between the two horses, scolding the one that had nuzzled her hand and spilled her drink onto her dress. One of them commented that miranda's breasts were marvelous. High praise coming from someone that works in such an element.

We did a lot of window-shopping throughout the day. An infinite number of mardi-gras beads in every one. Feather boas, ridiculous hats, t-shirts. Tons & tons of t-shirts, with any number of sayings on them. Many of them about Katrina, 'FEMA evacuation plan: Run, bitch, run', and 'I asked FEMA for help, and i got a trailer, plasma TV, and a Cadillac' are the two that stick out in shayla's mind.

It was close to 1:00 when we walked back to the hotel. When we were almost there we got another call from one of the balconies (we'd been getting hooted at, beads tossed to us, all night long). This particular gentleman wanted us to flash him, but Master vetoed the idea, saying his beads weren't big enough. A double-entendre there, shayla suspects. The hotel lobby and halls were still busy when we went inside, and we could still hear people talking in the hallway after we'd settled down to get some sleep.

shayla