Well, it was a long day full of sunshine, music, food, and quite a bit of beer. But the Freret Street Festival is over an done with. Man, was it hot. And which Metrobloggers and readers actually found me. Well, Craig and TBK came up for a while. We hung out in the Trailer of Solitude for a bit since I wasn’t quite ready for the day even though it was noon.

I wandered around with Scout most of the afternoon and she loved the kiddie pools Zeus’ Place set up for cooling off. In fact, Maitri, who has fallen off the Metroblog masthead of late, didn’t even recognize me and the only reason she saw me was that she was taking pictures of Scout. Ah, good times….there should be some pictures up here in the next few hours and days if anyone is interested. The site is still getting off the ground so be patient with us.

It’s interesting to be on Freret Street all day, with the music and food and all the people milling about. It was sort of a contrast to what I’ve come to see Freret Street as in my mind. There are few businesses open but a couple more open every month or two. There’s still no little market and still not one restaurant open. Some of the most promising property on Freret (between Valence and Napoleon) is owned by the Barackas’. They’ve been, uh, slow would be the nice way to say it, in getting their property to a state where anything can be done. From what I understand, their father was key in building up the Freret corridor during the 1920’s. You would think protecting their father’s legacy would mean something to them even if the buildings and money don’t. Apparently not. I obviously wasn’t around in the 1920’s and hadn’t heard of the brothers until I started asking around about the shit mess that it turns out they’re responsible for. So to me, them and they’re ol’ man are equated with squaller and irresponsibility. The thing about it is if they don’t need those buildings and don’t care about them that’s fine. And if they don’t need to make any more money for the rest of their life that’s fine too - actually an enviable situation. But they don’t live a block from there. They don’t have to see it every day. They don’t have to watch the other good people trying to get new businesses off the ground and get old one’s back up and running. They don’t see the effort going into the neighborhood because they’ve long since moved on. And I’m quite sure they didn’t even go to the festival - probably too pedestrian for them. So if they aren’t going to do anything with those buildings then they should sell them to someone who will. Because right now they’re an embarrassment to themselves and their father as far as I can tell.

So I kept thinking about all that while I was running around. It does look like one of the restaurants is being rehabbed - apparently the Barackas Brothers hired some guy and his kid to fix up the 16 (that’s right 16) properties they’ve left sitting for the last 21 months. Shouldn’t take the dynamic duo more than about 40 years to get the properties repaired enough that you won’t have to wear a mask to go in.

To be fair though, they aren’t the only one’s slow on the recovery process. Mrs. Dunbar hasn’t more than cleaned up her old place, but she’s a more sympathetic character. She had one modest place where she sold soul food to the masses. If she manages to come back to Freret Street at all it will be amazing since now she’s got her a a setup over on Pine Street near the University. I was actually hopeful that the 1.1 billion 17 neighborhoods of focus Blakely was tauting would be the key to get Mrs. Dunbar Back in her old place since the Freret Corridor is one of the 17. But as I got drunker and drunker wandering around the festival I started thinking more about how that plan is likely going to fail. It’s going to be financially raped to make up for part of the shortfall for Road Home. This makes no sense to me, not just because it effects me, but because you’re taking financing away from the embryo of a project to dump the money into a project that is a complete and utter failure. The Road Home Program can be characterized as a foddering old man. So now another project is going to fail; starved to death before it even hops out of the nest, for the sake of what’s been called a joke. But I suspect it would have been the Barackas’, and not the Mrs. Dunbars that would have benefited in the end anyway.

Still there are promising signs that the neighborhood will come back despite the Barackas’. Jennies Coffee and Ice Cream is about to open so you can expect me to gain about 30 pounds this summer. The Freret Business Association has been hard at work getting things done and getting their site up and running. I think most of their efforts are going into the September 8th opening of the Freret Market which holds more promise than anything else I’ve seen going on in the area assuming we can get some vendors in there. So watch for it next year and try to make it out. You won’t be disappointed if you do.

Related posts:

1. Freret Street Festival
2. Computer Literacy at Freret Community Center
3. Where’s Jack-do
4. Freret Street Festival!! June 3rd!!
5. oh, you funny