The Teddy Bear Problem

After the flood, there were hundreds and hundreds of teddy bears and dolls strewn all over New Orleans, forever damp-looking and traumatically abandoned, left behind to die. This is the feeling that I got everytime I saw one, and I am not the only one. There is something exceptionally freakish about seeing these beloved animals dirty and alone in the gutters of our torn city. My friend and fellow bleeding heart, Miranda had one on the passengers side of her car one day and when I asked her about it, she said (polite depiction) that it had been face down in a gutter, as if the cast off of a violent sex crime....

The idea of the violation is dead-on. I don't know why, but it is. I have since seen dump trucks with tens of these poor creatures shoved into every safe nook and cranny on the vehicle, as if the trash is not appropriate for these creatures that definitely had the life of personality breathed into them by some loving child.

One illustration of a soft spot on the underbelly of New Orleans.



Mid city trash pile



By the way, happy belated Valentine's day.

Whose Gettin' Papa Joe's?

One night in October/early November I found this food cart* under the I-10 overpass



Over by The Circle Bar



I was really excited to see it, thinking that surely there would be more cropping up to meet the needs of all the migrant workers coming to town. I had visions of taco stands! But alas, this cart disappeared, and after hearing something about the city not allowing random food carts, my dreams were dashed...

But I was driving down my street the other day and look what I found:



Whose gettin' BBQ?

If you know anything about new food carts around town, share the info, please.
*click on the picture to see the cool mannequin

Full Moon in Central City

Pieter's Really Cool Band

Pieter* has a really cool band called GRIM. They like to cover Eric Satie and to slow his music waaaaaay down, if you can believe it. They hail from Leuven, Belgium. The website is in Flemmish-Dutch, but has an option to translate to English. If you can listen to these guys, check them out. I mean, if you like that postrock classical mix.

* I did not take this picture, it's from the Soundsbrown website
www.soundsbrown.com

Waterline Series, P3

Windows of NOLA, P2

Jenne + Pieter = Amos

My lovely friends Jenne and Pieter had a baby named Amos! Congratulations guys!

Jenne

Pieter

Amos in

Amos out

Trash Pile II

Mid City Missals

Found this pile of missals. It was huge, spanning half a block outside of a print shop. It's definitely the biggest pile of missals I've ever seen.

Waterline Series, P2

Pink Car alert*
BW Cooper Housing Project on Earhart, before it was cleaned up. Still unoccupied, as far as I can tell. Could be wrong. It sure looks empty.

*This picture is dedicated to Kittee, who loves pink and hasn't been feeling too well.

Waterline Series, P1

Can't Shake the Faith
Canal Street, Mid-City, just after Halloween 2005

Limos

This is behind the famous, looted Walmart

Beside The Green Project

Faceless Houses

As I promised Slimbolala long ago, I will finally post my series of faceless houses. He is my fellow Central City photo enthusiast and has snapped a few of these curious dollhouse displays himself. This entry has a bunch of pictures. Enjoy.





Apparently during the storm, the wind pried off some (or all) of a facade of a few houses. The houses pictured below remain uncovered and open to this day. In one such house, located on Prytania and Erato (in my neck of the woods), someone goes in and changes the decorations for holidays:



I wonder what they'll do for Mardi Gras.

And now for the ultimate dollhouse effect:

Update

I made the pictures of the Lady Reading and her pile bigger, so you can actually see her in the pile.

Klassik Tonsorial Parlor

Central City, off Simon Bolivar

Missing Art in St. Roch

If you had passed through the St. Roch neighborhood before the storm, this house would have had a man sitting in front of it, surrounded by his collection, piled high above the foundation line of the house. The look of the collection was reflected in the backdrop that he created for it on his home. Many would have called it trash, but it was his art. Now, all that remains is Cookie Monster and a wonderfully and meticulously painted house. I would like to think that he evacuated with his pile...

Nice Day For a Good Read

One day after I came back into the city, I took a drive through Mid City. I worked there at a school for awhile and was checking the area out, surveying the damage to the school, etc. No one had really tried to move back into the neighborhood yet, so it was shocking to see anyone around. One couple was living in a single floor shotgun that had been flooded really badly, and they had obviously not ripped out the moldy stuff. They were sitting on the porch, sipping beer. When asked how they were doing, they said that the town that they evacuated to didn't want them around so they came back to what they had.

After that exchange, I found this lady. She was reading quietly in her yard. She remains as a symbol for me of all the attempts to get back to normal living dispite the huge, glaring reminders that this city is a frickin' mess and will be for awhile.

More of The Graffitis

Slimbolala is credited with the identification of the disease, I merely found a later example over in an area referred to as Gert Town. My favorite of his examples: The Case of The Potty-Mouthed Car.

Article in The Nation about the Men of Labor Second Line

See Billy Sothern's article called A Second-Line Revival, about the Men of Labor second line that appears in The Nation this week. He also wrote another great article called Left To Die, about the current state of the New Orleans/Louisiana prison system, which appeared in The Nation on December 14, 2005. That's him, writing.

Trash Pile I

The first of my trash pile installments. I stumbled upon two separate piles of mannequin heads in Mid-City one day. It was bizarre to see the huge piles, full of these faces. Strangely drawn to them? See a few more here.

I will add more pictures of heads to the set another day.

Oh, Dahlin'....

Been feeling a little like this?

This is my neighbor. This is what he did to help his mama on his first day back in New Orleans.

Just shoveled up a massive trash pile into many, many, many bags. There's another pile around the corner, twice as big. YES!