Last week, I went to New Orleans at the invitation of another blogger. She, Tessa of My Left Nutmeg, was going to be there for a conference that she and her husband, Mike Brown - no not that one, were running and it seemed to make sense to do some guerrilla vlogging in the Big Easy. I went down there because I don't think the media is willing or able to tell the story of NOLA - today. Boy was I ever right.
In fact the media was not willing or able to tell the story of Katrina or NOLA back then. Even back then when we were glued to our tubes and all the internets drinking in the scenes of devastation, abandonment, chaos and government failure. Even then when Anderson Cooper was doing his righteous reportage of the Katrina story - they got much of it wrong.
I got a lot of tape, nearly four hours and I hope you enjoy these vlogs as much as I enjoy bringing them to you.
So to paraphrase Bill Moyers: let's nail NOLA to their door.
My overall impressions of the city was very positive. I stayed at a hotel in the French Quarter named Hotel St. Marie. I highly recommend it; it wasn't too expensive. It was centrally located just off Bourbon St. and immaculate. It even had a beautiful inner courtyard with a pool and chaise lounges for a nice afternoon snooze or reading session. The thing that most people wanted me to know is that the French Quarter, the Central Business District and the Marigny (mar-ah-knee) are all back open for business and ready and able to service your every need as a customer.
Located in the hotel are a couple of restaurants operated by the Moise crew. Hillery's on Toulouse and Bistro Moise are run by Chef Ed and Hillery Moise (pronounced Mow-eas like east without the 't') who both gave me interviews so you'll meet them in the first vlog. The Moises are ably backed by a wonderful staff that I talked extensively with during my trip. The food is delicious and I recommend it - it's so nice to have a really high quality meal waiting for you a few steps from the hotel lobby in the morning. I only regret I was unable to really pig out at the place. Fabulous? The meal on order for the day after I left was duck jambalaya. Tessa told me that Chef Ed once served her a bowl of soup that made her cry. I believe it. I had a breakfast, eggs bene of course, with the kind of sauce you don't get from a powder.
Life right now is very hard for all these small business owners and the staff they used to employ. It's a Catch-22. Although the Quarter and Marigny were never flooded and the diehards are back open, the future is uncertain and even precarious. Rents and prices in the city have gone through the roof so it's hard to get any long term staff back into these establishments. Many people who left after Katrina now have job commitments in their new cities. They may want to get back to the city they love, but it's just not feasible.
The owners are facing pressure to raise their prices and that discourages business. They, both employers and staff, need the money coming back in from the tourist trade to make their former lives as New Orleanians a reality again. The French Quarter and the Marigny are unique in the sense that small businesses are located here. No Gaps and Starbucks, yet. It's Paulette's and Cafe du Monde, Mom and Pop all the way.
One lady, Kathryn Danner, I talked to summed it up perfectly, paraphrase, "I got a call from a long time tourist and friend just last month. She asked if it was okay to come back, 'are there still snakes and alligators in the streets?' No ma'am I replied, it's okay to come back."
As far as the rebuild, that's an even slower process. Most of the stuff I heard and saw is just a disgrace. Many people living in the Quarter, Marigny or the other parishes (suburbs) escaped the water, so while the hurricane damage may have been severe in large part their neighborhoods are back to normal today. Many other areas of the city are just completely gone. "High water" areas including the Ninth Ward and Lakeside are still today scenes of abject destruction and ruin. Most of the city outside of those two areas may well have sustained heavy damage from flooding, we saw a lot of that in Bywater, but it's doable to bring those neighborhoods back. It's a very slow and painful process for a variety of reasons, some of which we'll explore in these vlogs, but these neighborhoods can come back. Tessa and I took a ride with Eddie Mimms around the Ninth Ward and then through Lakeside on the way to the airport for my flight last Tuesday. The signs of life are there flickering ever so faintly and a debris pile believe it or not is one of them. A debris pile, by in large, means the house is being gutting for renovation. That's a good thing.
Today in NOLA the story of the rebuild is that it's a grassroots effort. The government, FEMA, and the insurance companies are just doing their level best to .... well I don't know what they're trying to do exactly, but go ahead and insert expletive here.
An often repeated phrase that I heard regarding the conduct of insurance companies in this rebuild and recovery effort was, "a special circle in hell" is waiting for all y'all. Many people said that those that didn't own and got wiped out lost less than those that did own and got wiped out. The former can walk away with nothing in worst case scenario world. A homeowner is still responsible for their mortgage or has too much invested, financially, in the property to take a complete loss and start again in a new city. I was also shocked, I mean shocked, to learn that Orleans Parish did not offer a tax amnesty to small business owners in the months after Katrina. They still had to pay their county, city and state tax in the last eighteen months. Shocking.
That's the bad news, some of it anyway. Here's the good news, you can make a difference and many of the Katrina survivors previously scattered to the wind are back in the city and they aren't going anywhere. They're sticking with the city they cherish. They're reclaiming their lives and neighborhoods as proud New Orleanians and will not be bowed nor broken by the water. They wanted me to tell you that they're alive.
They are alive.
It's not the politics. It's not the water. It's not the death and devastation. It's not the humiliation that Katrina brought to all of our homes through the scenes of government failure and abandonment. They are not pathetic, doomed, racist, lawless or any such nonsense.
They are alive and struggling to bring themselves back from the absolute worst thing that any one of us can face in our own lives. They got wiped out.
But they are alive and I've got the tape to prove it.
I think the diaries will go something like this.
Chef Ed and Hillery Moise.
They're the owners and operators of Hillery's on Toulouse and Bistro Moise both located in the Hotel St. Marie. They evacuated the Saturday before the storm in a neighbor's car and stayed in another friend's house while outside the city. They were gone for less than two weeks because they were considered essential to return in order to feed the recovery and assessment workers that came into the city shortly after the storm. They both grew up in NOLA and had been living in Houston until eight and a half years ago.
The day Katrina hit, August 29th 2005, was their seventh anniversary back in New Orleans. Hillery and Ed informed me of many, many things. Wait 'til you see and hear them for yourselves. I also heard though the grapevine that Hillery was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on three separate occasions, but I'll not say anymore about that subject until I post the final diary in the series.
John Barquet and Tessa Marquis.
These two go hand in hand and will share a diary. I posted a teaser diary on Tessa, at myleftnutmeg where Tessa blogs, containing a five minute clip of our interview. John is a good and dear friend of hers from her conferences in NOLA these last years. John also gave me an interview. He evacuated the Sunday before Katrina and went just about everywhere in the country before meta-settling in Atlanta.
When I met John last week he had only just gotten back into the family home and he's just now beginning his long journey back. John had a very interesting take on how the city should be rebuilt and my discussion with him really informed me a lot about the culture of New Orleanians. His perspective also fits with a great joke about "the better the wall the better the neighbor," thing that we Yankees - no not that kind - must plead guilty to for the most part.
Katie Adams and Kathryn Danner.
They go together like rice and beans. Katie is a bartender at the Hotel and I got an amazing perspective on the history of the city and her experiences during Katrina. She lives in the Marigny and didn't evacuate until after the storm. Since that area of the city was never flooded and her job was considered essential to the rebuild and recovery she's been back for almost as long as the Moises, October 1st. Katie is a lover of history and works across from the Olivier House Hotel, also on Toulouse. She grabbed a minute to walk us across the street and show us some of the beautiful architecture that her stomping ground, the Quarter, is famous for.
She also introduced me to Kathryn Danner, the owner of Olivier House Hotel, and a very gracious and genteel sort of southern lady. Kathryn is the owner of the snakes and alligators quote above. I get a few minutes on tape with her about her thoughts from the perspective of a small business owner. This diary in the series will attempt to bring the history of our ancestors right into the present day as survivors find themselves having to start all over in a new place or in a much less privileged situation just like many of our ancestors did when they immigrated to this country.
Kojak Jonathan Davis, Esquire.
What can I say about Kojak? I liked his perspective as a small business owner and a Chicagoan with deep roots in the Marigny. Kojak gave us a lot of time and even provided me with a Friday Cat blogging clip though he probably didn't know what that is exactly. Consequently, he gets his own diary. Kojak didn't leave the city until nine days later. He was in the Marigny the whole time since it never got flooded, but once he realized the cavalry wasn't coming he went to Phoenix and then Wilmington, NC. He's been back since January 2006 and it's a real struggle.
Kojak made one of the most eloquent and most important statements about what happened down there to people in the aftermath of the storm. He never had to go to the Superdome or the convention center because he escaped the water, but he said, "We were all waiting for an absolution that never came." It was so poetic and that must have been one of the toughest things about Katrina. No one really came. No one came.
Cecil Kaigler of the Praline Connection and Bernadette Klotts of Paulette's.
Both are small business owners and veritable McGuyvers in the Marigny. Put either one of them on a desert island come back in a year and you've got yourself a thriving business and vibrant community - guaranteed. Tessa and I just walked in, said hey and rolled tape.
The Praline Connection is the Soul Food restaurant in New Orleans and they don't just do food - it's a whole scene and a brand and something really special. When asked about what needs to happen going forward Cecil just shook his head and replied, "There's so much that has happened with this storm. So much has happened, it's hard to separate things out." I agree.
Bernadette seems to be adjusting McGuyverishly to her new environs and didn't get hardly any damage to her neighborhood. She runs a clothing store and whatnot boutique with some of the most beautiful old restored chandeliers I've ever seen anywhere. She's been back the whole time too. Bernadette told me about a song The Long Black Line which I'll feature in Eddie's diary. Bernadette is also looking forward to the summer in her new digs because she has central air for the first time ever in her thirty-five years in business in NO. I make a huge rookie mistake in my interview with Bernadette when we discuss the heat in the south. Hint: it gets real hot in New Orleans.
Harvey and Cecil.
Tessa and I met these two first, they are homeless since Katrina and we met them as they sat on a park bench in Jackson Square last Monday afternoon.
Harvey was a lot more talkative but Cecil started to strike up a conversation with us after I shot the tape on Harvey. Harvey has been back seven months now and he finds it very hard to maintain a job without a car and a roof over his head. Imagine that. He was living with his girlfriend before the storm but they got split up and she's not come back to the city yet.
I'm going to use their interviews and their diary to try to examine the predicament of housing and also add some information on crime. I'm going to add the crime element here because Cecil, a retiree, had an axe to grind with the police. It seems to fit that theme and hopefully I'll learn something.
Eddie Mims.
Last but certainly not least Eddie. John Barquet at the hotel hooked us up with Eddie for a tour of the city outside the French Quarter and Marigny. Eddie is as old school as they come and it was my privilege to be his passenger that Tuesday and see things through his eyes. We filmed throughout the Lower Ninth and Lakeside in our tour with Eddie before he dropped me at the airport for my flight home Tuesday afternoon. I think Eddie missed his calling as a civil engineer, it might just be that everyone in New Orleans is now an expert on levees, but Eddie pointed out every lock, shipyard, levee and other structure of note to us while we rode with him.
Eddie lives in New Orleans East and he had some flooding but not extensive damage like a lot of "the high water areas" he showed us. He was evacuated across the 17th Street Canal to Metarie by Coast Guard Cutter, that's a boat folks. He wasn't wiped out like many others, but his struggle is no less compelling. Although Eddie seems like a very dignified and upstanding citizen that doesn't fool around too much or complain - this must have been the hardest thing for him to face outside of the loss of his wife four years ago. Wait til you meet Eddie - cuz you're gonna luv Eddie.
One other thing I'd like to point out about these stories and the media coverage that I saw in general. The minorities that I met down there don't want to portrayed as stupid and wretched like they were at the Superdome and the whites in the city that I met don't want to be portrayed as heartless and racist. Race and class are complicated issues, but what we saw portrayed in the media was one of the biggest lies that came out of the Katrina story. You'll see what I mean once I get these written and posted.
Although Katrina may be a cautionary tale for our time, the focus in these vlogs is going to be the stories of the people I met in the city. They need to be told without bias or an agenda. I'll attempt to do that as best I can since everybody has an agenda and a point of view myself included, but I hope these vlogs do more than inform you about the people I met. I hope they also inspire you to travel down there and get your own take on the city. They want to tell you what's going on. They want to show you what is so special about their beloved city. They want you to know why they came back. They want you to know why they love New Orleans so dearly.
They want you to know that they are alive.
But they need our help to reclaim their lives, dignity, culture and the heritage that is so precious to them. Be part of their solution because it's our solution.
These vlogs are dedicated to the four thousand people that lost their lives to Katrina and to all those that lost something to the storm and the water throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
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