I saw a street car crawl down Canal Street today. It was the first operational street car I’ve seen in the streets of New Orleans since I’ve been here. I also saw a garbage truck collecting trash in the French Quarter late last night. These are the signs of progress in post-K NOLA. Only a Bourbon Street tourist, or someone (like me) who has been away for nine months, could appreciate the little bit of progress that has been made in New Orleans’ recovery from the storms and floods of 2005.
The Lake Shore neighborhood, for example, has seen relatively little change since Katrina. Before the storm, this was a prosperous middle class neighborhood of lakefront property. Then the lake flooded. These are people with money and insurance, so even if the FEMA money hasn’t arrived, they have the means to rebuild. Entire blocks in Lake Shore are renovated and back to normal. But these are generally on the high ground. Most blocks look like they did when the waters receded. Some houses were torn down, some gutted and some remain abandoned. Packs of wild dogs – formerly beloved pets – still roam the streets and menace passersby. The streets have no names. The storm blew away traffic and street signs, which have yet to be replaced. It is all too easy to turn the wrong way down a one-way street. Take it from me, don’t try this at night.
In Broadmoor, a teacher who is still living in a trailer on her front lawn for another week or two gave me a tour of her work-in-progress house. Her house was partially gutted. The drywall was stripped off only about a foot above the high-water mark – basically half-way to the ceiling. Her day labor repair men (the joke in New Orleans is that FEMA stands for “Find Every Mexican Available”) did a fantastic job of seamlessly matching the new drywall to the old. With a fresh paintjob, you can hardly tell what happened. In some rooms, the wood floor didn’t even buckle, so it was sanded down and varnished and looks good as new. A marble-top kitchen counter here, and a light switch plate there and she’ll be ready to move back in to her home. One or two other trailers dot the street, which is otherwise back to normal, save for the house directly across the street, which is decrepit, abandoned and still bears the dated neon orange “X” put there by the relief workers who searched for survivors or bodies.
Across town, in Metarie, I caught a brief set by the Brooklyn band Matt and Kim at a house party. This house, too, was practically gutted, except the walls remained stripped to the high water mark, exposing the building’s wood frame and allowing the punk rock sounds to waft through the neighborhood. Someone called in a noise complaint to the cops and the National Guard responded! It’s some real Wild West shit out here. At least Matt and Kim got to play “Yea Yeah” before they shut down the party.
There has long been a sign in restaurants and bars here that said “Be Nice Or Leave.” This time around, there seems to be a recognition that it’s time to “Rebuild Or Leave.” Gone are the heady days when the local mantra was “Rebuild It Better.” This is a city that desperately needs to be elevated a good ten to fifteen feet, to create proper sewers and storm drainage, the smooth out the roads and provide a little breathing room for global warming’s ocean elevation changes; a city that desperately needs taller, stronger levees. And this is a city that seems resigned to the fact that it ain’t gonna get those things so it better get on with the task of rebuilding.
The impetus to rebuild is obvious to anyone who has spent enough time in this city to fall in love (basically, a week). This is the most unique city in America. That is, this city is the least like the rest of America than any other great city in the U.S.A. Something about the weird confluence of French, Spanish, Mexican and Southern influences. Delicious foods, beautiful architecture and exhilerating music.
It almost feels like the haphazard rebuilding process (aided and abetted by the Bush administration and the banks and insurance companies) was designed to preserve the prickliness of this city. Expand these narrow streets, raze these balconies and porches, replace these restaurants with corporate chains and mute this raw racial discourse and you’ll make this great city a lot more like everywhere else. No thanks. It takes a special kind of lunatic to live in this city. Be nice, or leave.