I haven't posted in a couple months...and I have been contemplating over the root of my complete lack of ambition towards writing things about settling in to New Orleans.
And I still couldn't tell you.
Isaac came and went, we spent a good week without power but nothing too horrible happened to the house. The best part was the communities reaction to this event. This is something you roll with down here, but it helps when there is a neighbor to help you collect branches, bring in trash cans, make sure you have water, and the ever present food trucks that majestically appear in your hood so you don't have to travel twenty minutes to wait in line at McDonalds or awful Rally's for another hour or so just to be disappointed and ridden with guilt and gas for the rest of the day. The food trucks and Verti Mart kept my tummy full, and the Spotted Cat came through with a generator, a band, and cold beer.
We got disaster food stamps, went to the arena, saw the army corp, registered to vote in Louisiana-it was an experience, but after losing our entire fridge and freezer and a week of work, it was worth it.
Getting through a hurricane on these coasts is like making it through your intitiation to become an official resident. Now, a couple months later, you can share stories with others. Conversations have something in them like, "I ate there during Isaac" or "We met them during Isaac". That means you've been here, you aren't a tourist, you aren't one of those tourists that stays on extended stay, which means you stay for a couple months contemplating moving here. You live here.
There have been more incredible parades, more festivals, more anything in the world you can do outside once the weather went from hot wet wool blanket to the cool breeze of paradise.
I have settled in to my job on Frenchmen Street, and we feel like we have friends, the ability to navigate the town without the GPS, the exact location of our favorite chicken fingers (Today's Cajun Seafood on St. Claude, believe me), po'boys (we stick to Frady's), pizza (Sugar Park), daiquiries (behind Gene's), bar (ever revolving), and so on. We live in an incredible and unique paradise. It is now our home.
The part that is hard to write about New Orleans are the social issues. The school system here is to shit. The roads in neighborhoods off the Quarter or Garden districts are shit. The mental health hospital for all of New Orleans shut down and moved and there have already been three deaths attributed to released patients. There are gun shots, drive-bys, the constant threat of getting jumped. The constant game in your head...look them in the eye when you walk by, say whats up, look straightforward, angry, assured, on a mission. Watch out for groups of teenagers. Keep open businesses on your walk so you have somewhere to run if something happens. These are all things that you have to consider every time you go somewhere. We live in the Seventh Ward, this shit gets serious.
If you write this out like this it looks like you would have to be a little insane to live here, and maybe that is true, we are definenlty a lot weirder than Austin thinks they are, but the pros so greatly outweigh the cons that sometimes you don't even notice them until there is a shooting a block away.
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