New Orleans-Tomorrow
Published in Crit
Spring, 2007
I love the smell of a New Orleans dawn—the aroma of sweet magnolias in the mild humidity. In flowered air, a million people wake up to café au lait and begin the metropolitan ritual of life. There is hope. There is progress. And there is always more than enough good news in the airwaves telling us that we are waking up to a good today with forecasts of a better tomorrow.
Each day as the sun sets and the ritual ends, Ms. Gray would be on her porch watching the cars and kids on her street. This was her nightly tradition—engaging a street life that is built, and thrives, porch-by-porch. In this landscape, the bustle of the metropolis yielded to the scale of a single house and a single woman, with a ubiquitous glass of sweet tea. Ms. Gray exemplified a street life experienced beyond those traveling on its two-way avenue. The neighborhood joie de vivre was broken only as another car drives through, causing an unwanted time-out for the game on the street. The car passes and game play resumes.
“Back then, it was about escaping the heat. Now it is about the people. Today, I could very well be inside with my a/c on but this is where I want to be,” she told me as she brought me a glass of tea and looked up at the kids in the street. “This football game is as good as any on television.” A car drove by and honked at Ms. Gray. She waved back.
On that evening, we talked about my time in New Orleans. I often found it difficult to talk to people about architecture while being a transplant to the city. “Boy,” she blurted out, “you chose a good city to be studyin’ in.” Happy with my choice of New Orleans, Ms. Gray often made such outbursts on our porch nights together. She sat back, contemplatively.
“It would be so nice to walk to Audubon [Zoo],” she said with great conviction, “and take a boat to the Woldenburg [Park] with your grandkids like if we were in Venice.” I understood that her cryptic comment referred to the river redevelopment plan—her way of responding to my desire to discuss architecture. The plan, ambitious, expensive and inspiring, would add a water taxi system parallel to the river’s edge.
“And a park from Uptown to the Bywater. That’s going to be some fun. Them kids are going to run.” There was genuine excitement in her voice. She told a story, a fictional photo album of her grand kids. In her mind, she created place and joyous memories yet to be created, a personalized New Orleans. A city all her own.
On the other side of town was John Tucker who was literally making a personalized New Orleans in the Marigny and Bywater districts.
“I’m a professional painter. I make dreams into reality. You see those houses,” he said with pride as he pointed across the street. “I painted all of those. My favorite is the purple one. The owner wanted Mardi Gras and I gave him a house that partied all year long.”
His professional certification came from the Benjamin Moore website. The house was indeed purple, yellow and green with a plaque that proudly stated that on that site in 1862, nothing happened. It was brash, ridiculous, perhaps a practical joke. But most interestingly, it fit in.
“Everyone loves their house again. For the past 10 years, people have been fixing things up. As one person fixes their home, the next does theirs. It took a long time but it was worth the wait. Now, this is where everyone wants to be.”
He walked me down the street to a squeaky-fresh looking pink house. After rustling around inside his pink house, he showed me a photo of a weather-worn yellow house. “That was this hole-in-the-wall just a year ago,” tapping on the fresh pink paint, “and there were more like it. The Bywater is going through it now. Everyone’s fixing up. It’ll be great.” It was a nice paint job, but I preferred the yellow over the pink. Nonetheless, he was happy with his paint job and of the people around him.
As I walked back to my car, I looked back at John’s red truck in front of the pink house. It had one of the common tags on it that read “New Orleans: Proud to Call it Home”. Indeed he was.
But that was all a year ago.
On my first drive back, my car stumbled though Mid-City, real estate at the bottom of the ‘bowl’. It was late December and I drove as if I were in Baghdad—cautiously, desperately and fearful. This was an alien city and I did not have a map.
The only person out on the street was a man in front of Angelo Brocato’s, the popular ice cream shop just a short distance from the Interstate. The store had just turned 100 when the storm hit. Michael, the lone man, came from Gentilly to see if there was any hope of the store opening again. The store’s boarded windows seemed to be another disappointment.
“You know, you just have that little bit of hope. Maybe something is normal, something you could rely on,” he said leaning up on the boarded shop front.
“Everything I knew is gone. The city is gone—no churches, no park, no people. All I want is my life back, and my neighbors to have theirs and the whole city to have its life back.” I just stood there at a loss for words.
A week later, I found myself at the wrong end of a heavy bed as I carried it up a flight of stairs. Summer, a long time friend, was moving to her new apartment after her lakeside house sustained post-Katrina damage. While only the first floor of her house was flooded, looters took what was left of the second.
“It’s just one of those things you just rather have not had to do.” I could not agree more as a bead of sweat formed.
Her house, the capsule of long held memories and suburban lifestyle was now a developer’s venture. Summer had held out, hoping for a quick neighborhood revival. But as the months faded, she took the check. The entire street was going to be razed in the coming weeks. The neighborhood—the people—were gone.
“Everyone’s going. Everyone held out for each other but now, we’re all leaving.” She put down her end of the headboard on a step and wiped a tear.
The bed made it up the stairs. She looked at me and thought out loud, “It’s not about tomorrow anymore. No one cares about some grand vision. If the sun rises over the city again, we’re lucky.”
It’s not about tomorrow anymore.
Beyond the destruction, the lives lost and the immediate pain of Katrina, New Orleanians had lost the one thing they could not afford to—hope. The hope of a better city was now the hope for survival. Life in the city became entangled in the present as if the Bourbon Street philosophy had won out. It’s about today, man.
It would take nearly four months for Ms. Gray to return. Things were different. Things were quieter. While the streetlights and sunset were familiar, the FEMA park across the street was a disheartening sight. I told her about this article and asked for her hopes for the city. A tear formed. She looked out onto the street and all she said to me was, “I just want them back.”
There has not been a football game on our street since August 29.