photo: Patrick Jackson

We have two meetings today, and I am skeptical. One is in da Parish and the other is up at UNO. We board the Algiers Local at 8:30 a.m. Twenty minutes to the Ferry and across to downtown. Then it’s a short walk to Rampart St. to catch the St. Claude bus. On the way, we pass by Canal Place. Shitty music (not even good music, ya’ll, this is the birthplace of Jazz) is blasting from the outdoor speakers. Brands like Chanel and Saks have window displays that show me exactly what I can’t afford to buy. I have to remind myself that I have opted out of consumerism else I might give up my Quest and start selling crack on the street so that I can buy me a Hummer.

The bus is coming, so we sprint to the stop in the heat and humidity. I stink already, and my dress is sticking to my butt crack. What bus is it? Nobody knows because there is a political ad on the display that normally tells you which bus it is. Information is passed down the line that it’s the Jackson bus. We wait around the corner in the shade.

A fluffy girl in pink crocs is relaying a story into her cell. She was waiting for the Street Car when a group of white boys approached her and asked if she had change for a twenty. They were participating in some kind of race that involved them taking public transport. They had T-Shirts and all. She didn’t have change for a twenty. Who does? The boys asked her how much she had. Eight singles. They took the eight singles and gave her the $20 bill. Now I’m glad that the fluffy girl in the pink crocs made $12, but I’m kinda indignant that public transportation is a game for these people.

Finally, the St. Claude bus comes and we ride all the way up to the Auto Zone on St. Claude and Aycock where my sister’s man picks us up to take us to our appointment. It’s 11:05. We left ma maaama’s on the West Bank 2.5 hours ago.

After our appointment, my sister’s man drops us off: “Stand by these two benches. That’s where the bus stops.” I guess the budget for signposting went to pay for those crime cameras. Don’t bother going onto the RTA Website for the maps. They are abysmal and do not indicate where the buses actually stop. Don’t bother running around with your baby on your hip and carrying your shopping trying to find a pay phone to call the RTA to find out where the stops are. Their “ride line” is an answering machine promising to call you back, but they never do.

Our next meeting is at UNO. We get the St. Claude bus and have a chat with the bus driver while she’s waiting to take off. She tells us that there is a free white bus that goes further into Chalmette. I chuckle at the irony of her description. Finding out about this bus will be another project.

At Elysian Fields we transfer to the bus going to UNO, and the bus driver tells us that the stop is in front of the beauty parlor. We look around for it, but it’s not sign posted. I ask a neighborhood lady where the bus goes from. “Right there in front of the beauty parlor. Stand right there, baby.” So we wait there in front of the beauty parlor while she calls her friend on the cell and tells her the story about the two alabaster people in funny shoes trying to get the bus from her block.

We have already spent 3.5 hours on public transport, and we have only done one of our meetings. I think every politician and RTA employee (and their families) should have to take public transportation for a month. Just to see what it’s like. I know that New Orleans is no London, but this city does aspire to be a world class city. In London, all classes of people rely on public transport: students, working class, unemployed, professionals. But, unless you live and work on a street car line, it’s just a grind here.

To wit: a few weeks ago, we waited 30 minutes for the Carrollton bus with a lovely lady who explained to us how she had a four hour a day commute on public transport from Metarie to her job at Walgreens uptown. Now I ask you: is that freedom? PJ says he can sum up American Freedom in one word: CAR.

I overheard another lady talking about how her boss got pissed off at her because she had to leave work ON TIME so that she could catch the bus to pick up her baby. “If I miss the bus,” she said “I won’t get home ’til after eight, and I don’t want to be out after dark with my baby.” I bet her boss had a car.

People should be rewarded for taking public transportation with great public transportation facilities. They are doing their bit for the environment and traffic and society. Like a lot of other things in New Orleans, public transport seems like it is DESIGNED to keep the poor in their place. How can you possibly have any job choice (read FREEDOM) if you have to spend four hours on the bus? How can you have good quality of life if you have to spend four hours on the bus. Wake up America: all this freedom that Bush and McCain and Palin are talking about you losing if you don’t elect them back into office? Ain’t dere no more. You are not free.

P.S. If you are tempted to sing that old chestnut “because of Katrina,” don’t. It’s just an excuse. Public transportation sucked before Katrina. At least now there are some new buses in the system thanks to donations from other cities that felt sorry for our asses.

Why not go for a Hummer Bike instead?

OK, I might be a serious doofus when it comes to certain things, but the noticable ubiquity of Hummer SUVs in this city just doesn’t make sense:

Hummers get really bad gas mileage which means you buy more gas…
the money for which goes to the oil companies…
who dredged through our wetlands…
that used to protect us from the hurricanes
but not any more because…
DEY AIN’T DERE NO MORE!

Also, if I can get political: this bullshit during the Vice Presidential debate about how we have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by doing “safe” drilling in our National Wild Life preserves just really gets my knickers in a twist. I don’t really trust the government or the oil companies to safely drill. Do you?

If you feel like nothing you do can make the government do the right thing, you are probably right. The government is going to do what it wants to do: to wit, the $700 billion bailout, which is going to cost every man, woman and child $2,300 each (click here for source). If there is something that I’ve learned about America from my 16 years of living abroad is that it is NOT a democracy. America is a capitalist state. Money talks. So stop using your money to support naughty companies like Hummer. Or, just buy the bike.

More good news for New Orleans: cosmetics powerhouse Kiehl’s has apparently formed a partnership with Brad Pitt called JPF Eco Systems (which is not the most memorable or descriptive of names, but Brad isn’t in the habit of calling me up at 3:00 in the morning and running these sorts of things by me). The way the partnership seems to work is that Kiehl’s identifies a product–say, a new one that needs promoting–and then dedicates 100% of that item’s profits to a charity of Pitt’s choice.

The first product in the batter’s box is Kiehl’s “Aloe Vera” Biodegradable Liquid Body Cleanser, and proceeds will benefit–you guessed it–Pitt’s Make It Right foundation, which, as we should all know by now, supports sustainable housing initiatives in New Orleans.

I’m still not sure why the partnership needs a name itself–unless “JPF” stands for “Jolie-Pitt Foundation”, and Angelina wanted her name in there somewhere, goddammit. Frankly, I think it confuses things. Also confusing: the use of scare quotes around “Aloe Vera”. Is there aloe in that bottle or not? Or did Kiehl’s just use quotation marks when they really meant to underline? Was there no English major in the room when they sent the labels to press? And on a related note: why haven’t I seen any mention if this in the local media–apart from the fact that I don’t read?

Of course, I’d be happy to drop all those contentions if only Brad and/or Angelina would come to my house to show me how to use the stuff.

Cafe Reconcile

After, Frank drove us around through Mid City, City Park, Bayou St. John, Lakeview, Lake Vista, Gentilly and the Marigny. It was like doing a state of the union on New Orleans neighborhoods. I did this the last time I came here in December of 2006. Things still look pretty fucked up, so the afternoon had a bittersweet tinge to it.

Go here for a comprehensive article about Central City.

I wanna know just how many 20-somethings in this city right now are spending megabucks (for them) at Whole Foods or other grocery outlets on the taxpayer dime.

We all know about the double food stamps for too many. And I know from experience what it’s like to have to hit the road with only a finite number of dollars and find those dollars quickly gone due to circumstances beyond control. And then to finally come back to town and discover your job no longer exists and to try to cobble together what you can to pay some bills and reassemble things as much as you can. You gotta be resourceful, venture into new personal territory and learn a lot of new rules in a big damn hurry. And if the state/federal folks can help, it’s appreciated. Thousands of folks are doing that very thing right now in Louisiana and especially in Texas. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you do what you gotta do. And you gotta claim it on your tax return too.

….but in the past couple of weeks, I’ve talked to at least a dozen 20-somethings who lost virtually nothing in the Gustav/Ike thing and are racking up bigtime on the dole. The food stamp giveaway that’s been going on rivals the $2K handouts post-Katrina — if not in dollars then certainly in the bogus claims being made to food stamp offices around the entire region. I talked to one kid today who readily admitted losing only like $100 in frozen pizza and other schlock when he bailed for a week of partying — but he qualified for, oh, $600 in food stamps when he came back to town. I’ve talked to way too many others who never left or lost income — but they qualify for at least the basic $160 or whatever even if they’d lost nothing. They’ve been standing in line and, for the most part, telling a good version of the truth. And they get food stamps just because they can. And that seems to be their reason for doing it. Just because they can.

It’s a “screw them before they screw you” mentality and it’s wrong.

…said the dinosaur.

In case you have been living under a rock and missed this, the recent Op-Ed by Comstat veteran, Brian Denzer, in the Times-Picayune blasted the continued, irritated concern of citizens regarding the release of crime statistics from the NOPD as a real tool for addressing violent crime in the city simply by transparency. The theory is that if the NOPD would release timely information, citizens can then provide more eyes and ears on the ground and use it to create new tools in their own neighborhoods and assist NOPD in stemming crime by identifying trends earlier with on-the-ground observation.

Many people are wondering what has happened to the Crime Camera contract the Mayor has been promising. In the meantime, potential witnesses who happen to see the wrong thing, at the wrong time are still being killed in our streets, like Helen Hill. Crime cameras could help alleviate this senseless loss of life and help the NOPD get some solid anonymous evidence to keep violent criminals in jail.

Access to current information has been a long-standing issue among residents who have returned since Katrina. The citizens of New Orleans were called upon to be part of the larger planning process since Katrina and have all been very engaged in making things better with this opportunity to voice their fundamental concerns. Every planning session I attended noted Crime as the number one issue for rebuilding New Orleans with a better qualtiy of life in the city. Citizens were smart enough to know that this issue was closely linked to better jobs, economic developement and improved schools as part of the long-term issue as well. We demanded all of this. Citizens were loud and clear in late 2005. They are still screaming about the issue of crime cameras today. The Nagin adminstration remains cavalier about this and all citizen concerns and despite the continued pile of victims, it seems we have gone nowhere.

However, thanks to the initiative of Thom Kahler’s website which only covers the 8th district, he pushed the T-P to help get faster access to crime reports on behalf of citizens. Thom’s bold and free-speech approach to crime coverage makes us all wish we lived in the 25’s.

Without the Crime Camera project, which remains incomplete, we are all getting more disenfranchised about the administration since this was a huge concern city-wide in the two-years of planning hell we went through. It all seems to have gone out to lunch with the Mayor and his wife in Dallas. Where has that contract money gone?

A few diligent citizens have used the Times Picayune’s statistics to create excellent online tools using this information. Thanks to Thom, and Rob and Brian Denzer and people like Baty Landis and Ken Foster who have pushed the issue for a few years now. Here is where we are today with online tools citywide. If you know of anything in your neighborhood, please let us know.

Current Online Crime Tools:
Citizen Crime Watch
Rob Schafer and Ben Gauslin have created this very useful tool. Using Google Maps, it provides a visual view that’s very familiar and (hopefully) easier to understand than page after page of text. Linking incidents to news and police reports provides much-needed context to the pins on the map. And since every incident is stored in a database that data can be examined to generate statistics over time to help understand crime rates, what areas are dangerous, what crimes are committed when, etc.

New Orleans Murder BlogAll things crime. All things New Orleans. This blog doesn’t condone murder, or death.

New Orleans Crimeline by Thom Kahler.

We believe if citizens have information about threats to their safety they will hopefully be able to take precautions against becoming victims.

Sites with archived information:
Citizen CrimeWatch

This site is not currently mapping crimes in New Orleans but gives some good background information on crime mapping initiatives in other cities. One great example is Washington, D.C.

In 2004, the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) was asked to develop a program called Citywide Data Warehouse (CityDW), formerly known as DCStat, to support the District’s Hot Spot crime reduction initiative. To do so, CityDW designed a data warehouse to store agency data and created various presentation tools in an attempt to increase transparency by publishing more information across agencies and to the public.

Today CityDW ’s mission is to provide a centralized access point for enterprise-wide data with a focus on providing real-time operational data from multiple agencies and sources that enables decision support and government transparency. To that extent, CityDW works with the Office of the City Administrator, the CapStat program, and district agencies supplying both data and business intelligence tools. Residents and businesses now have access to information through our Summary Reports and Data Catalog and Data Feeds.

Crime Reports.com Thankfully, we have Citizen Crime Watch, a similar program, created by volunteers who have devoted their time to constructing a similar site for New Orleans. The issue we could press as citizens is to get access to map the “calls for service” as they come in. Running a routine on the computer could extend this current application to map these calls-for- service as they happen, automatically. If only the City would permit access to that information.

City of New Orleans, NOPD:
The NOPD website doesn’t map crimes in a timely manner, they wait til reports are cleared through a larger bureaucracy, which gives them the opportunity to manipulate the numbers to their advantage, not ours.
NOPD Crime Stat Maps

Advocacy Groups Related to Crime:
Silence is Violence

New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission

Court Watch New Orleans

Police Assoc. of New Orleans

Safe Streets NOLA

Times Picayune Forum, for when you just want to bitch about the problem:
Times-Picayune Crime Forum

Styrofoam Sofa from urbanreview.com

I’ve decided that I’m not going to bitch about how things work better in London than here. This is New Orleans. Things are different…not necessarily worse. Also, I am still in the first stage of culture shock where everything is awesome. That may change, and I may start to bitch. I just don’t know.

Everything comes with a side of Lagniappe:

Like…

People talk about their feelings here. To complete strangers. This is something that is both beautiful and heart wrenching at the same time. Bittersweet. There’s a feeling that we are all in this together.

People touch each other here. Having breakfast at the Ruby Slipper Cafe this morning, the waitress touched me 17 times. They have a really amazing shrimp omelet, by the way. The coffee is fair trade from the Coffee Roasters of New Orleans. And, they offered me wax paper and tin foil instead of a styrofoam box to wrap up my leftovers in.

Which brings me to 3.) When you go out to breakfast/lunch/dinner, there is enough food to last you for two meals after. This to me is like getting three meals for the price of one. Speaking of which, does anyone remember three for one Wednesdays at…was it Que Serat? That big restaurant/bar on St. Charles near the Golden Spaceship…

A note on styrofoam: unless you are saving up to make a sofa (see above), stop flipping using it. It’s bad for the environment, and there are cheap and more sustainable alternatives. If you want to be really silly green as a consumer, you can bring your own containers from home when you go out to eat. You know you are going to get a doggie bag, so don’t tut tut at this idea.

Houstonians:

You probably can’t read this right now, you’ve probably got other things on your mind, but on behalf of everyone in the 504, I want to apologize for the insensitive, assholish comments of our Numbskull-in-Chief–you know, when he encouraged you to seek shelter from Hurricane Ike at a hotel in New Orleans and to ask for the “Mayor Ray Nagin special rate”.

Based on Hizzoner’s previous nonsensical outbursts, I’d hoped that none of you would take him seriously, but sadly, I’ve been proven wrong. Unlike the rest of us, who have learned to ignore the schmuck, you took him at his word–hell, you don’t live with him, you’re in a pinch, so I can totally understand.

Of course, it’s just as frustrating (to us, anyway) that his damn press secretary–She of Who Rarely Speaks, Ceeon Quiett–can’t even be bothered to make a public apology on chrome-dome’s behalf. No, poor Steve Perry, whose office at the CVB has essentially been running PR for the city since Katrina, has had to cover his ass. That is not an easy thing to do, because Nagin is SUCH A BIG ASS.

But this isn’t about us, it’s about you. Again, I’m sorry that you misunderstood him. I’m also sorry that the hotels themselves didn’t step up to the plate and offer cut rates to evacuees on their own. We pride ourselves on being a thoroughly hospitable city, and if there’s anyone we should feel hospitable toward, it’s y’all.

If you need anything from us–aside from a hotel room, obviously, please let us know.

Sincerely,
Richard

…another earworm from Johnny Nash….

Anyway, thanks to our friend Rae for taking me to the Saints game yesterday. Focusing on football was a badly needed break from focusing on food supplies and service and all the other things that have absorbed attention for the past week. Frankly, I’d have gone if it was McNeese vs. Louisiana/Monroe — anything to take a break and just be diverted for awhile.

Looks like this Ike thing is gonna blow into Texas. Sucks to be them, I know, but, for now, it’s certainly a relief here. I don’t want to wish ill on anyone, but things here need to get recentered on the day-to-day. It won’t be long before the weather moderates a bit and people start coming out of their summer funk and into a more sociable fall attitude. It will help us all to look forward to things like Halloween and the holidays — if even in the mode of store decorations. New Orleans shines best in the fall and spring — and the winters are pretty damn neat too.

A couple of notes — yesterday at the Superdome the scoreboard’s “KissCam” focused on the usual collection of teens, middle-agers and elderly. But one shot showed a couple of hot women kissing each other. They held it too. The crowd went wild. We also got a chance to boo Hurricane Ike’s progress.

Gustav knocked over our big hibiscus out front. It’s still alive, however, and efforts to re-establish its domain are already underway. It was also good to see the school kids out and waiting for their buses early this morning. And, God bless the RTA, the streetcars are already running again on St. Charles.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the national chains are having a hard time coming back after the minor bump that Gustav created in our daily back-and-forth. The Wal-Mart on Tchoup is open, but with limited hours. La Madeleine at the St. Charles turn hasn’t yet re-opened. There are many other examples, while the local/regional folks seem to be pretty much back to business as usual here in Orleans Parish. Please remember this when you’re shopping. You might pay a few cents more per item, but at least you know they’re there — and will be the next time as long as you continue to support them.

“…High black water’s like the devil’s daughter
She’s hard and she’s cold, and she’s mean
But we’ve finally taught her that it takes a lot of water
To wash away New Orleans…”
–Leon Everette

That said, continued prayers tonight for folks in Terrebonne, Ascension and other parishes much more tartly affected. There’s some serious hard times for a lot of people down in Da Swamp this evening, and anything that can be done is appreciated.

I am tired. That’s all I have to say. I pre-packed on Friday, packed up the last of my stuff before leaving town very early Saturday and got my niece (who attends school at Tulane) and the cats and we all headed out for our evacuation destination. A couple people I know stayed behind waiting for the mandatory call to leave.

On Sunday my neighbor called, he was on the road and needed a room and he had his two labs in tow, which I was happy to hear. He had to move his fleet of limos to safety before he could get out since he is a chauffeur for the rich and glamourous in New Orleans. Luckily, we had rooms at the pet-friendly Drury Lodge. So I saved him one and we got them unloaded.

We met a lot of nice people in our hotel and I must thank Mike Zickmund from WWLtv and his charming wife, Lisa. Their son drove by our properties while we were stuck far away. Their son works for Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office so we were so happy to hear that things were fine and we knew in advance that we were one of the first people with power.

Cassie and I got back Thursday afternoon and worked on cleaning up a whole lot of tree branches and raking our yard and in front of Nick and Josh’s house too. At first they were like, “let the landlord do it.” But I put my foot down because their landlord is in his 60’s and I made them get on the job of cleaning up their yard.

It’s been a lot of work with a whole lot of lethargy in between. Just like Richard said, it’s a roller coaster and the sitting around waiting to come back and eating and watching television is a part of it I did my best to avoid. I found a park and ran most days did some schoolwork but was still deadly bored by 5pm everyday.

I am not in the mood to do this all over again next week but Cassie and I laughed when I dropped her off at Tulane today . . . see you Thursday. I know we’d both just rather stay if Ike makes a visit near here but I mostly worry about not having A/C for my little cat Ted, he’s kinda fragile. However, if we have to do it, I can say, we have the drill down. We didn’t get stuck in traffic and we had a nice place to stay and no real damage. It was nice to have our neighbor with us too.

Whew. Today I am enjoying a day to myself and anxious to get back in the groove. I can’t believe that small event sucked a whole week of productivity out of us! I have been wanting to post but I have had kinda slow internet and loading photos just didn’t sound like any fun. Nick and Josh went to Atlanta for their evacucation. They spent the first days of Katrina in the Superdome but now they have a car but I know money is an issue for them but I was just happy they were able to leave and we were all really happy to see each other again once we got back! They were a big help in cleaning up.