The Chris Moeller Archives

NOLA Travelogue- Part 2 (of 2) "Make Levees, Not War"

More rain met us at our hotel in New Orleans on Saturday, although with a kind of tropical flavor. I can tolerate rain when it's falling on swaying palm trees and accompanied by that fresh scent of green growing things-- a scent that hasn't typically arrived yet in Iowa by April.

After shedding our bags, we headed off for Vieux Carre ("Old Square" in French), the French Quarter. It was everything I remembered from our trips there as a kid. It's 78 square blocks of music clubs, strip joints, sex shops, restaurants, galleries, hotels, elaborately patioed and balconied private residences, and maybe a thousand t-shirt and souvenir stores, accented by the French Market on the river, and St. Louis Cathedral. With this link, you'll see a somewhat famous aerial photo of the city (facing east) taken immediately following Hurricane Katrina and the resulting breach of 53 of the city's levees. To the immediate left of the downtown skyscrapers in the picture, the area where there are virtually no high-rise buildings, is the Quarter, and our hotel was located not far over the interstate bridge found in the top right corner of the shot, crossing the Mississippi River snaking easterly to the Gulf.

What makes New Orleans perhaps the greatest American city is its utter distinctiveness. In the French Quarter, the centerpiece of the city's $4 billion dollar-a-year tourism industry, the area is mostly and refreshingly free of the corporate blandness that has damaged so much of the rest of the country. There was no "French Quarter McDonalds," as I could find, a "Fazoli's at Jackson Square" or some such-- save for a sprinkling of chain-operated hotels, a Hard Rock Cafe here, a House of Blues there, and handful of sex clubs that fall under the umbrella of Larry Flynt's publishing empire. We spent Saturday night at Maison Bourbon, a Dixieland and traditional jazz club at the corner of Bourbon and St. Peters Streets. Trumpeter Dwayne Burns and his band played, followed by headlining trumpeter Jamil Sharif.

The Quarter is bordered to the west by Louis Armstrong Park, which contains within a statue of the 20th Century musical pioneer and icon, and Congo Square, an open space where African slaves were allowed to perform their music during the 18th Century French Colonial era, and where European Americans were first introduced to African indigenous music and dancing, and which evolved into 95-98 percent (my estimate) of the music you hear in the United States today. According to a tour guide who kept following mysteriously close through the streets of the city, Armstrong Park is still closed by order of Mayor Ray Nagin as part of the post-Katrina renovation effort. The statue of Satchmo and Congo Square are both still very visible though through the iron gates of the park. And back across the street, still on the edge of the Quarter, is the spiritual temple of Voodoo Priestess Miriam Chamani.

Attending the Jazz and Heritage Festival on Sunday afforded a chance to see the less celebrated parts of the city, and we alternately witnessed homes at truly every stage of abandonment or repair. Many of the homes in the city still have the spray-painted 'x's that were left by rescue workers on the doors or walls, and Aaron and I were both soberingly aware, thanks to Spike Lee's Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke," that the number painted below the 'x' indicated the number of bodies found in the dwelling following the storm. As of 2007, the death toll of Katrina was calculated at over 4,000, and officials estimate that even three years later, New Orleans is still at only 60 percent of its pre-Katrina population.

We exited the city late on Monday by its northeastern shore, driving across the five-mile-long I-10 Twin Span Bridge connecting New Orleans to Slidell, Louisiana-- a bridge that collapsed during Katrina and which will be replaced by a more storm-resistent passage by the year 2011. Aaron slept off his three-day hangover in the backseat, resting his sunburned flesh upon a cushioned pile of newly-procured Bourbon Street bead necklaces, as we followed the Great River north to St. Louis and back to Iowa.

posted by CM @ 10:53 AM