a tale of two cities

I just got back from New Orleans. I went as a tourist, plain and simple. I have one word to say after spending four nights and three days at a beautiful hotel in the French Quarter. GO!

The best thing you can do for New Orleans right now is go as a tourist. It is as safe- if not safer- as any another tropical tourist destination I've been to where you combine (a) white tourists with money and varying degrees of class consciousness with (b) the poor people who live there, and (c) heat and humidity. I was not asked for money once, which is not what I would say about Havana.

It brought home to me that two parts of a city can exist side-by-side, and the reality of the people who live there couldn’t be more disparate. That split existed in New Orleans before Katrina, but the gap is even wider and more apparent now. Aside from being shown on international television during "the storm", as they call it, almost two years later families are living in small FEMA trailers a few blocks outside of the French Quarter.

One whole section of the "projects" is shut down to protect the safety of the former residents, while identical projects on the other side of the freeway are occupied. The story, unconfirmed by me at this point, is that they want to put a golf course on the site of the public housing units that the tenants are fighting to save.

One story I read today said there they found burn marks, traces from bombs, on concrete sections of the levy that divers brought up.

This all couldn’t possibly be about a land grab to gentrify New Orleans? I had heard theories of this at the time, but even I couldn't go there. But seeing who has rebuilt and who hasn't makes it all so black and white, as they say. Why rebuild your house when it could happen again? The levees are not being improved, just patched.

On my way to the "swamp tour", I saw miles and miles of abandoned suburban, garden-style apartment complexes whose shells were basically intact. I saw blocks and blocks of wood-frame houses in an African-American neighborhood relatively close to the French Quarter that were boarded up, and what few houses were occupied had FEMA trailers parked in the front yard.

I am inspired to return as a vounteer, possibly with a project to rebuild green. But I say just go. Go shopping on Royal Street in the French Quarter and see those beautiful old trees and mansions in the Garden District and eat the best grits and fried oysters and oyster po' boys and crab meat cheesecake and the "you-name-it-it's good". And go hear jazz and support the musicians. They need us. For better or worse, tourism is their major industry. Who knows, you might even see a ghost. (hmmmmmm..i swear i tried to get that link to work about 12 times....that link just might be haunted)