Well, I didn’t know either. I lived in Virginia Beach for awhile before coming back to New Orleans pre-Katrina. Didn’t really know or pay attention to what was going on in Richmond frankly. Who would? Well the morning show at the radio station has been focusing lately on cities the same size or close to the same size as New Orleans, not to see if we can be like them but to see how they are overcoming some of the problems that we are facing here.

Doug Wilder was the Governor of Virginia at one time. He is currently the Mayor of Richmond. Morning show host Shane Warner had Mayor Wilder as a guest Thursday morning. You can listen to the interview here: http://wistradio.com/shows/swarner.php

It should be required listening to everyone who loves New Orleans, especially Ray Nagin. We don’t need 400,000 people here to be a great city and also to be the cultural influence that this city has shared with the planet Earth for the last 200 years.

Anyone recognize this guy? His name’s Bill Chott. He was in The Ringer with Johnny Knoxville but his most recognizable work is on Saturday Night Live’s Ambiguously Gay Duo. I mention it because he’s performing this weekend at the New Orleans Improv Festival along with a whole gaggle of other groups and entertainers from around the country as well as locally. The festival starts tomorrow evening and runs every evening through Sunday (Nov 12) tickets on sale at the door so get there early.

I stopped by last week and spoke with Yvonne Landry, the owner and met some of the troupe as well. They’re really an, uh, “interesting” group of people. If you’ve never seen half a dozen comic types trying to rebuild a flooded comedy club from the ground up, you’re missing out. I stopped by again last night, and to my surprise, the place was actually in the final stages of being ready to go. It’s a great space with a new stage, new tables and chairs, etc. And who knows, a certain metroblogger may well be working the door or, God Forbid, bar tending for the festival. There will be beer and wine available so you can get your stagger on.

Also, it was interesting that classes will be starting soon. Improv is so popular in other cities but doesn’t seem to have caught on here as well. I wasn’t very familiar with the Freret Street area before the storm - it’s sort of a fluke of the city that you tend to stay in whatever part of town you live in. But apparently, Yvonne and her mooks have been there for a number of years which is impressive given how bad the area was before the storm. Thankfully, the crime rate hasn’t rebounded as well in that area as others. The neighborhood is still trying to define itself - especially the Freret Street Corridor. This festival and the impact of The Comedy Connection as an early returning business should help. I’m hopeful that this is one of the first in a long line of businesses opening on Freret Street in the coming months. So come on out and support The Comedy Connection for their Second Annual New Orleans Improv Festival. It promises to be loads of fun, plus, afterward, we’ll all go out and get nice and drunk. What a deal!

Uptown is getting mail regularly and they are going to start processing bulk rate mail this week so people like Craig are getting magazines again. At work we have been trying to send our members mailings but we get a lot returned to us as undeliverable. We have to cull the database based on this information.

I like trying to decipher the various different secret codes the post office is using to describe the undeliverability of mail. Fowarding expired, vacant, etc. Some neighborhoods are beginning to get cluster boxes installed. They are about one per block, it helps save the post office on manpower but this seems like one daunting task on top of another until they are all installed. The people I have talked to aren’t happy with the idea of cluster boxes but it’s much better than having to go to the warehouse and wait in line.

Many residents have to go to this postal facility to get mail. Today, I took my neighbor, Ella, over there to show her how it goes. You get there and put your name and address on a piece of paper and wait for them to go back into the warehouse and hunt down your address and then maybe you’ll actually get something. I have sent mail to an address to see if it gets there to test it out and try to get it consistently but so far this week I have gotten nothing. Ella got an important piece of mail from the government that she was waiting for, so that was worth the trouble. Ella’s an older woman on disability. She’s still waiting on electricity but she’s moved all her stuff back from Arkansas and she’s feeling pretty beat down right now. The postal facility is close to the Fairgrounds, we saw people carrying their festival gear in their festive wear as we were leaving. We felt the need to go home an soak in the bathtub.

I met with Stacy Head yesterday because some readers began responding to a previous post with requests to hear from her, particularly regarding the issue of development v. preservation. See comments.

So I told Stacy right away, that someone accused her of being a ’sell out’ to developers. Apparently, there is an issue that has been brought up on Valence St.. A&A Restored Living wants to tear down Trinity Methodist Church and put up condos. This is not cool. Well, Stacy didn’t show up at a meeting and people automatically thought she was not with them, but against them. Stacy has invested her own money to hunt down deliquent owners in her neighborhood and purchase blighted homes to renovate them AND she rents to section 8 too, which is important. There is no doubt that we need affordable housing, also a more pressing issue since Katrina. She has a very wise response to those people posted on the last discussion. Please read it. Shane Landry Post
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Shane Landry is 33yrs old, a Cajun and an attorney and he’s running against Renee Gill Pratt and genuinely respects his fellow candidate, Quentin B. Shane is married and has one child. He has a sophisticated grasp of how government works and especially our unique opportunity here in New Orleans, right now. “We cannot look at our politics in New Orleans as a spectator sport, it’s our fault if this city fails right now.” Shane wants to see an end to the system of corporate welfare, secrecy and cultural peonage and would work hard to build an economy built on universal prosperity. “The people on the city council right now are not leaders.” He said he can’t sit by and watch our city government squander another opportunity. He’ll work to get more money from our oil production, “. . . it’s colonialism, we support the rest of the country with our resources and get nothing in return.” You can read more about Shane’s platform on his website: http://www.shanelandry.com/home.asp
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