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.

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Front of Aunt Leni's

PJ and I decide to write on ma maaama’s side of the river. We take the bus up to Aunt Leni’s Cafe for coffee and free reading materials. We are fortunate enough to get one of the new buses, so I am able to keep my breakfast down due to the fab suspension system. The bus driver says to me: “You got on the right bus this time.” He recognizes me from a few days ago when I got on the right bus but going the wrong way resulting in an hour and a half ride around the West Bank. I like the fact that he recognizes me.

We drink coffee and read The Gambit and the promotional materials on Algiers. Then we get down to writing. After, as I am fishing for change to pay the bill, the cashier tells me that I can pay her the 85 cents later. One of her regulars says “She ain’t from here. Look at her shoes. Where you got them shoes, girl?”

OK, so I got the shoes in London. But, I AM from here even though I haven’t lived here since 1989. I am a Louisiana girl. I spent the first 23 years of my life here. That should count for something despite the fact that I have funny shoes.

I’ve been here for five weeks. I still feel like a foreigner, and I wonder when this feeling will go away.

P.S. I have since traded in the funny shoes for flip flops.

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New Orleans City Business reports of a new initiative to attract and keep young talent in the city. 504Ward’s mission is “To keep you: the twenty and thirty-somethings living in New Orleans and working to improve it.” Over to you, young’uns. I’m going back to my rocking chair to slowly get drunk.

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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.

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CBD (1960)

Fitzgerald’s at West End

K&B at Canal

K&B, Woolworth, and HG Hill Supermarket Gentilly Blvd
 

Mckenzie’s Interior 1941 - Looked exactly the same in 1991

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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.

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FILE UNDER “HOLY FREAKIN’ CRAP”
CC TO “GO ON WITH YOUR BADASS SELF”

Not only has the esteemed and learned Clancy DuBos stepped down as editor of Gambit Weekly, but he’s been replaced by smartypants, savvypants, hotpants, and vaguelyclosepersonalfriend Kevin Allman. If you’re not from New Orleans, that may not mean much, but trust me: Kevin is a great choice for the job and should work really well with the rest of the Gambit staff.

The downside? Kevin will probably be so busy with smoking cigars and crushing the little people and laughing over New Yorker cartoons and whatever else people do in editorial meetings that he’ll have less time to blog. Which is sad because although they have some really good writers over there, Kevin’s voice is distinctive and very funny.

All of which begs a shameless hussy of a question: Hey, Kevin, y’all need a hand over yonder?

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CSPAN Roll Call of Votes

I don’t feel like this is a partisan issue, I feel like most people on the ground just want help first for a change. Most comments on the report on the Times Picayune website are from people who feel like they are already under a great burden and seem to want to share to pain. Plus, the last time we opted for a blank check, we were lied to.

I am posting this to share the link where you could see how your favorite House Representative voted which way today.

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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.

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State Rep. John LaBruzzo says the government should consider cash incentives for poor people to undergo reproductive sterilization, because society is careening toward a day when persons on public assistance outnumber taxpayers and the economy collapses. A look at Louisiana welfare numbers suggests his fear is unfounded….

Figures from the state Department of Social Services show recipients of the main form of welfare, the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program, have plunged from a monthly average of 280,177 people in fiscal 1990-91 to 13,504 people in 2006-07. The monthly grant to a qualifying mother with two children is now $240.

Total annual spending over the 16-year period dropped from $187.2 million to $16.5 million, less than legislators earmarked for pet projects.

The main reason for the decline, said Social Services spokeswoman Cheryl Michelet, is the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton. It put a five-year lifetime cap on benefits…. [emphasis totally 100% mine]

full story at NOLA.com

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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.

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Krewe of O.A.K. Midsummer Mardi Gras

We went by Henry’s last night for drinks and the Krewe of O.A.K. Midsummer Mardi Gras Parade. I’m a bit of a stickler for arriving on time, but I think that is going to have to change in the Big Easy. Apart from the early bird Pussyfooters, of which Henry’s lady friend is a member, there were only two other civilians in the house. Chatting with them, we learned that one had just bought a building near the Falstaff restoration project (tell me how to get on the list for that). He’s making mixed incoming apartments too. Originally from California, he was attracted to the project because he wanted to get involved in restoring the community. It’s cheap, too. You can get grants for making buildings green. I never met anyone who owns a building before.

As more of the Pussyfooters dance troupe arrived, I realized that I hadn’t been to a party with this many women in years if ever. The apartment was pregnant with estrogen and pink and feathers. I must say that I withdrew and became quite shy.

Midsummer Mardi Gras had been postponed because of Gustav, so the Krewe were not going to let a little sprinkle of rain stop them. Walking down to the Maple Leaf Bar (the starting point), pink clad ladies were already dancing to the music inside their heads and bobbing umbrellas real New Orleans style.

The street was packed and blocked off by police. Nearly nude Scandinavians were playing beach volleyball. A man in an electronic wheelchair was narrating through a megaphone. Then the band started to play and led everyone behind the police car to parade through the dark streets of uptown. ”Not just anyone can march in a Mardi Gras parade,” I turned and said to Patrick. “The don’t let you do this during Mardi Gras time.”

Stopping to smoke by the side of the street, we met a middle-aged black lady throwing beads and trinkits into the parade…like a reversed Mardi Gras. She said she had been living uptown for 28 years and that this parade had been going for 20 of those years: “I wait for it every year,” she said as she as she threw a frisbee at a man dressed in Choctaw gear and carrying a huge hurricane swirl made of cardboard. “My hurricane’s turned into a category one, honey” he said referring to wilting, rain-drenched thing.

It was all a bit overwhelming, and we had to leave early. Walking through the wet dark streets back to my momma’s car, we tried to make sense of it all. But, that’s just it. You can’t make no sense no how. And, I have to stop feeling like a foreigner in my own hometown.

Photo from Krewe of O.A.K. Website

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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

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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.

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