Comments on Hello from NOLA

thanks Amy. i have nothing but good memories of Cafe Brazil and Frenchman street in general, except for the time my car got broken into parked outside the PJ's there. i still can't find a replacement copy of the Moodyman CD i had in there and it sells on Ebay now for major dollars.

glad you're having fun there. go to Parasol's off Magazine for a classic New Orleans experience and eat a Po-Boy for me. they have the infamous vegetarian po-boy there...French Fries on French Bread!

Let the good times roll

if Rebirth is playing at the Maple Leaf, you should head up there and catch that show. the street car should take you to Carrolton Ave and the Maple Leaf is a short walk from there. Magazine street near Jefferson is nice too. get yer hippie food at the Whole Foods up by the bus barn. take it to the "Fly" (Mississipi River banks in Audobon Park) and watch the barges pass.

NOLA is dead. NOLA is the dirty version of Colonial Williamsburg. The middle and upper classes have decamped for Baton Rouge or beyond, and the poor that could escape are discovering that life in Houston isn't that bad, what with textbooks for their children printed after 1981, fewer cops who'll shoot them, and jobs in the formal economy.

Sixty thousand will remain, entirely dependent on the Carnival season, which they'll subtly and slowly extend, spacing out the parades until they're as regular as the Main Street Electrical Parade was at Disneyland. No more "show your tits" though. That will offend the grotesquely obese Midwestern tourists that the residents will be dependent on.

i was thinking NOLA was going to be something more similar to Detroit. a depressed city with lots of crime and very little to do. i'm sure it's going to recover in full gambling/casino mode though. there were a few casinos before, but i'm predicting a huge influx of new gambling spots.

Detroit hasn't been the victim of a major natural disaster and will decline, but only in a slow bleed kind of way. NOLA had half its population swept away virtually overnight.