Our Neighbors

As beautiful and interesting as New Orleans architecture is, the most interesting thing are the people.  I want to start taking photographs of people that I think are interesting, I just don't want to come off offensive.  

 Anyway, two of these 'interesting people' are our regular street drunks, a man and a woman, who will go through our trash, bum cigarettes continuously, and are possibly living together with any number of other people at what we suppose is some sort of communal dopehouse next door.  The male of the two, let's call him Felix, told us last night that he was given the house because he stayed there for Katrina.  The door on one side of the house is boarded up, tattered sheets are guarding light from the windows that don't still have plywood over them, smoke stains trace the edges from a fire, and loose siding hangs from the front of the house like a cleft palate. I'm willing to bet this house hasn't been inspected since after the storm.  

Most of our neighbors are totally awesome.  There are about six older gentlemen that play spades all day and are so chill.  We have a couple with a baby catty corner to us, and a deliciously quaint abandoned house with ivy coming out the chimney across the street that I fear this one homeless woman is living in.  Not that anyone will ever notice that there are people living in a probably infested, crumblingly unsafe uninspected house that isn't in there name in any way, shape, or form.  Not in this neighborhood at least.  This street seems to keep its head down and stay out of trouble.   

One thing I have learned in this short time is that New Orleans is proud, too proud to ask for any more help from anyone after seven years.  Resigned to their own fight for survival without the nation's eyes on them anymore to notice.