Things are not going swimmingly in New Orleans (but may be again soon.. and not in a good way)

Poppy Brite's Reasons we are not Ok

Wi-Fi Update

Earthlink moves in.

This afternoon I spoke to Donald Berryman, the President of our Municipal Networks, to get a sense of where this stands now and what it'll take for us to maintain and improve the New Orleans municipal network. He explained that in the next couple of days we're applying for a telecommunications franchise license. Hopefully that application will be voted on in the next few weeks, and if approved, we'll start adding our Motorola and Tropos hardware to the existing infrastructure. We're looking to serve two audiences with the enhanced network:

* Residents - We'll provide a 15 square mile zone of free wireless access at 300 kbps (upload and download) for the residents of New Orleans. This network will make it easier for them to do things like communicate with friends and relatives in the outside world, schedule appointments, find grants and government aid programs, and connect with essential city services. Once hardware providers bring Wi-Fi phones to the U.S. market, this could also bring affordable telephone service to tens of thousands of people currently without it.
* Commercial - We'll also provide a premium 1 megabit service throughout the city primarily for the 140,000+ city workers and businesses. That service should cost users around $20 per month.

We have the support of the Mayor's office and are hopeful that our franchise application will be approved quickly. Berryman said that we see the project as a long-term investment in the city. "We were pleased to answer the call. We believe in the revitalization of the city of New Orleans, and we think this project will pay off for the citizens of New Orleans and for EarthLink."

And again... where is the local media coverage of this story?

Powell: It's hard work

N.O. recovery could take 25 years says Bush's adviser

Powell added: "It's been a bottom-up process and it's complex."

He said that much of what's needed for the return of New Orleans' population is "out of our control," including housing, ensuring safety and robust investment by the private sector.

Lovely attitude these folks in Washington have.

Quote of the day

Sign on the counter at Rue de La Course.

Free Wireless Internett!!

No Myspace!!

(That means you, dork!)

Earlier discussion of this issue.

Two steps forward and....

Levee restoration price doubles

WASHINGTON -- The cost of restoring levee protection in the New Orleans area to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels will be about $6 billion, twice as much as the Bush administration and Congress have appropriated to date, Donald Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, told members of the state's congressional delegation Wednesday.

Powell said he wanted to update the delegation on the latest cost estimates, but he did not commit to a financing source or whether the administration would seek the traditional 35 percent local share for the work. He said that "will be part of the deliberations" in coming weeks.

Louisiana delegation members who attended the briefing late Wednesday said they would insist on a 100 percent federal payment of the levee costs, because the failures of the levees and floodwalls during Katrina were caused largely by poor design and construction flaws that independent investigations have blamed on the Army Corps of Engineers.

They're hoping we'll tire of having to keep making this argument over and over. Of course, they're still holding all the chips such as...

Powell also told the officials that the Bush administration believes the release of flood maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, eagerly awaited by residents and businesses deciding whether they can rebuild their properties, requires authorization that the levee restoration work will in fact go forward.

Talk about your long hard slogs.

Here's a novel idea

Change this law:

But the reality is that most people buying homes in the New Orleans area right now will end up with the unattractive option of going with Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which is required by law to charge premiums higher than its private market competitors.

Oh but I keep forgetting this is unfettered free market country. Yeah well.. good luck with that.

By the way, does anyone else think it strange that the New Orleans news outlets simply aren't covering this story? New Orleans' free Wi-Fi in dispute

This is not the answer

You can't go around forcing people to do unnecessary stuff just because you are incompetent.

"We want all 225,000 people to get out of the city," he said. Before Katrina, New Orleans had nearly half a million residents, but many who fled the storm have not returned.

Ebbert spoke at a news conference after state and local officials met with
Federal Emergency Management Agency acting director David Paulison to discuss plans for the next hurricane season, which starts June 1.

Officials plan to have only small shelters available for police and rescue workers and will not open the Superdome, the site of mass misery when stranded Katrina victims crowded into the dank and damaged stadium and waited days for rescue.

Ebbert said evacuations could come early and often this year because the levee system protecting New Orleans was weakened by Katrina and there are thousands of people now living in FEMA-provided travel trailers.

Residents will be ordered out not just for hurricanes, but for tropical storms, too, he said.

Dear government officials, Please stop being a bunch of fascists and go fix my levees.

Must-Read

Matt Taibbi's (best political writer around) piece on Abramoff.

Big Baby

LSU 70, Texas 60, OT

The portly but nimble player known as ``Big Baby'' scored 26 points, including the decisive shot in overtime, to lead LSU to its first Final Four since 1986 with a 70-60 victory over Texas in the Atlanta Regional final Saturday.

When it was over, LSU gave the Georgia Dome a bit of Mardi Gras feel. Davis wrapped a feathery, gold boa around his neck, grabbed a microphone and let out a ``Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah!'' that he hoped could be heard all the way back in his home state, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

``I wanted to give a shout-out to the people of Louisiana,'' Davis said. ``I wanted to give them some motivation ... give them a good feeling about their state.''

Axis of Evil Update

Apparently the silent partner was W's "friend."

Nice.. but other shoe to drop soon

Tigers play like crap.. still manage to beat Duke.
Wake up call is coming, however.

Unscientific Poll of the Day



Afterthought: I'm getting better and better at push polling. Maybe I can go to work for Rove.

Movie Review

"Crash" is a white-supremacist movie

Figures

Bell South is about to shut down the city's free wi-fi project before it even gets started in earnest.

Now telecommunication lobbyists are trying to shut down the network, and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree.

Why do we even tolerate this kind of crap? This is our government not Bell South's... isn't it? Well.. okay maybe not. But I'm pissed anyway.

Update: Much more on this at the Lafayette pro-fiber blog.

Obligatory Inanity of the Morning

Can you believe we are approaching 18 years of this?

"Hunter/Warrior types"

Are earmarked to receive help from Barbara Bush. Um.. I can't.. even.. just go read the links.

Losing Patience

Ok, T-P. I am still waiting to get my Food section back. Today's small collection of chicken salad recipes just ain't cutting it.

Chris Rose is a Douchebag

Only in this city would we put up with this kind of hackery. A smarmy middle-aged gossip columnist who happened to live in New Orleans during Katrina and decided to shift his career strategy from following Lindsay Lohan around the bar scene to shamelessly capitalizing on a tragedy by attempting to pass himself off as a culturally aware uber-wit except with no talent. I still can't decide if Rose is just that creepy uncle who always wants to smoke pot with your friends or if he's more like that one frat boy who feels entitled to his smug assholery due to the fact that he may actually have read a book once. Either way it needs to end. Let's just hope that now that his book is doing well he's through milking it. I give it another six months before we get the "It's the best thing for my family" farewell column. I've tried to keep quiet about my white hot hatred of Chris Rose but this morning when I saw his stupid smirking face looking at me from this column I knew I could hold back no longer. For those of you who don't speak Rose's grating brand of yuppie, follow along as I attempt to translate.

Rose says:

Back in the late '80s and mid-'90s, I was all over the map. My Saturday nights would be spread from the rough-and-tumble biker joints of Fourth Street in Marrero to the Vietnamese billiards halls in the East to the Latin dance clubs in Kenner to evangelical tent revivals in Bridge City to the Cajun roadhouse scene down in Crown Point.

I've always had a fascination with hanging out in places with large crowds of people who are nothing like me. A culture vulture? Yeah, I suppose.

Rose means: Behold my coolness! I once played pool with an Asian person! I demand praise for the staggering breadth of my experience!

Rose says:

I remember Dorothy's Medallion on Orleans Avenue, watching Walter "Wolfman" Washington back up Johnny Adams while he warbled love songs that could change the world.

This, I used to think. I like this.

Rose means: I am a terrific douchebag for writing the phrase "love songs that could change the world". I also am not above the using pretentious constructions like that of the last sentence there in order to bring about a dramatic pause. My column is poetry, dammit!

Rose says:

This was about 12 years ago, right after I met the woman who would become my wife. In fact, much of our early courtship took place on the parade grounds of this city. Kelly and I would bounce along the streets to the blockbuster vibes of the city's brass lions on Sunday afternoons and duck into dark corner bars to check out the score of the Saints game and we'd nod and shuffle in the way that white people who are dressed all wrong do when they're hanging out with a bunch of black folks who are truly tripping the light fantastic.

We danced, we got drunk and we were long, long gone into the unbearable lightness of being in New Orleans. We became part of the scene, made friends, shed our self-consciousness and just blended in.

Rose means: Pay attention to the fact that I have a wife. That is important. Also observe how I am unafraid to go native with the darkies as they "trip the light fantastic". This greatly enhances my coolness quotient and in no sense makes me a yuppie poseur despite the fact that I just wrote about shedding my self-consciousness whatever the fuck that means.

Rose says:

But we never felt personally threatened. Ever. We'd introduce friends to the scene, telling them: You gotta check this out. But mostly, we realized that big chunks of our social circle had no particular interest in joining this ritual of ours.

Then one afternoon, about 10 years ago, Kelly and I broke a run of many, many weeks of consecutive second-lining to do something else on a Sunday afternoon; I don't know what, but it must have been important for us to skip out on our favorite pastime.

Rose Means: We felt a little threatened. Not to mention awkwardly pressured by many of our real friends to stop all this pretentious slumming that we once thought made us so interesting. And then one day, the wife finally talked me into going antiquing or doing something else gay and expensive.

Rose says:

At this point, we felt personally threatened. As weeks and months passed -- or am I embellishing this out of frustration? -- it seems the Monday morning paper would too often carry a story about a shooting or a stabbing on or very near a second-line route the day before.

These clippings litter the files of The Times-Picayune, leaving a bad smell.

We had kids now, Kelly and me. A part of this city's culture that I desperately wanted them to know and understand and embrace was out of our reach. It was not an option. I wasn't going to lead my kids into danger simply because daddy thinks they need to be dialed into the fundamental currents of my city.

With the exception of a few high-profile events -- Ernie K-Doe's funeral, the Mardi Gras Indians on Fat Tuesday or Super Sunday -- the second-line scene was dead to me.

Rose means: For some reason we suddenly noticed that New Orleans had an urban crime problem... we had no idea about this before.. why was it suddenly so important? Oh that's right, I decided it was time to fulfill my duty to mankind and pass my genes forward. And of course, to me, being a father means sheltering my precious offspring from all sorts of "danger" like going outside and seeing parades.

Rose says:

Well, you know how that second-line ended. Gunfire. Blood. Sirens. A thousand people there and no witnesses to the crime, police would later report.

It was a day of profound disgrace for this city and one that probably would have had greater impact and provoked very heated and very uncomfortable public discourse had not our mayor given a famous speech the next day that completely distracted the citizenry from the violence at hand.

We focused on the Chocolate City instead of the Killing Fields.

No matter. My wife and I decided not to go back to the second-line parades again. It's not for us, I thought. There is such a disconnect between my value system and the culture of guns that permeates our streets that I don't even have the words to make sense of it.

My kids don't know what happened at the end of that parade and I'm not going to tell them. We do other things on Sunday afternoons because the odds of their getting capped at the zoo are pretty slim.

Rose Means: Certainly none of my columns dwelled on the cheap "chocolate city" laughs while there were "killing fields" on which to report. Nothing like that would ever happen. Also my wife and I decided suddenly that this culture we had in our youth (a whole 10 years ago) surrendered our self-consciousness to was actually too alien and foriegn to us to associate ourselves with. Oh and I continue to believe in keeping my kids in the dark about reality so that maybe someday they can make naive choices too.

Rose says:

And then there was this weekend. Hundreds of folks in from Texas and Mississippi, trying to regain their footing and traction here, trying to get back into the New Orleans life cycle, and here comes a gang-banger bent on revenge and willing to put his entire community at risk to prove he is a man worthy of respect.

Nobody of reason wants this. Black, white, no one. And in the same news cycle a guy walking in the Frenchmen Street music district takes a bullet in the chest -- after surrendering his wallet to a thug.

Rose means: Today's column has been an opportunity for me to exploit two more recent tragic events in order to ramble stupidly about my middle-aged-white-guy hipness and hope that enough of you accept that as a subsitute for insight or talent to keep paying attention to me before the folks who hand out the journalism awards stop paying attention to New Orleans.

Damn Hippies

Volunteers throw thousands in storm damage evidence to the curb

Monday Morning Mythbusting

Myth 1: The best way to help the library is by donating books. Massive book donations from individuals, while well intentioned signs of support from the community, can do more harm than good. More often than not the library is better served through financial donations. But don't take my word for it. Ask Snopes.

Myth 2: Hospital services in New Orleans are adequate for the reduced population. This myth is being used by the state to deny essential services to a community in dire need. You can help.. but please do not send Charity Hospital book donations.. instead you can participate in a rally to save Charity on March 25.

Myth 3: Louisiana homeowners living in the floodplain were irresponsibly uninsured.
Um... not quite Report: Louisiana more insured than any other state for flooding

Myth 4: The city is safer post-Katrina. A reduced-strength police force, a shady and transient population of contractors and day laborers, a difficult-to-track returning criminal population, a bleak and unstable atmosphere. I'd say New Orleans is likely more dangerous than it was before the storm. You might even say the times are indeed"treacherous".

Mayoral Forum Last Night

Actually, I stayed in and watched the LSU game. Luckily there is first-hand reportage available.

Happy St. Pat's

Your library staff is appropriately decked out in red today.

Scenes from last weekend's Irish Channel parade

Cutting our losses

Saints release Aaron Brooks.

New Orleans loses legendary literacy advocate.

Oh how we'll miss the Mega Zeph

My first love roller-coasterwise

What they're saying

As many of you know the Saints have a new quarterback... one whose shoulder is so badly damaged that he doesn't expect to be able to throw until May at the earliest. Nick Saban's Miami Dolphins were also considering signing Drew Brees but backed off and opted instead to trade for Minnesota's Daunte Culpepper. Today the conventional wisdom in Miami is that the Saints got hosed yet again. Here is the Miami Herald's Greg Cote:

Culpepper rehabbing a knee certainly is less worrisome than Drew Brees trying to get past major shoulder surgery. That concern of Miami's, coupled with Brees' demand for a $10 million guaranteed signing bonus, is why the Dolphins let Brees escape to foolish New Orleans and swung their focus quickly to Culpepper.

Send a thank-you note to the perpetually mismanaged Saints, or maybe eat a plate of crawfish jambalaya in honor of a team that can't run itself any better than its city does.

Oh my god it's worse than I thought!

She's back and she's doing serious damage to good taste.

Help is on the way

WASHINGTON -- The White House has rejected hurricane disaster-recovery loans at a higher rate than any other administration in the last 15 years, according to a congressional study by Democrats.

The report, expected to be released Wednesday, said business and home loan approval rates averaged about 60 percent after Hurricane Andrew devastated much of south Florida in 1992. The trend continued through the rest of President George H.W. Bush's administration and into the Clinton administration, according to Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee.

After Hurricane Wilma surged ashore in south Florida last year, the approval rate for low-interest, taxpayer-guaranteed loans by the Small Business Administration had dropped to barely 15 percent.

I.Q. unfreely

This strikes me as an unusual ruling as well. The New Orleans ballot (much like the obituary page) has a long tradition of featuring eccentric nicknames. I can remember many an election where I have been tempted to cast my vote for "Superman" or "Chevrolet" or even "Big N____".

Passes

Ashley is handing them out here. It's a great post. Go read it. But keep in mind, I just wanted a pretense for linking to this Juvenile video.... although you've probably seen it already.

36

Fun but I swore I thought I heard 34 somewhere.

Wrong Move

Saints sign Drew Brees to six-year deal

Unscientific Poll of the Day:

Well here's another thing I'll never do

Medical school. Doctors are pricks.

Dude, we totally missed Rudolph's birthday

Sorry about that, kid.

Here we see Rudolph and Mr. Rudolph enjoying their Mardi Gras morning while houligans make mischief in the background

Yet another one for the "no one could have anticipated" file

T-P front page.

Findings by an Army Corps of Engineers-sponsored panel that the collapse of the 17th Street Canal floodwall during Hurricane Katrina was the result of an "unforeseeable" combination of events are contradicted by a 1986 research project done by the corps itself, National Science Foundation investigators said Monday.

So long there, Children

This is just disgusting. I really don't need to add anything to Ian's remarks.

Duct Tape

March 13, 2006 — - In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Note: The book to read here, incidentally, is The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M Barry. Yes, that John M Barry.

"I screwed up"

This morning's T-P has a good piece on the from-the-ground-up recovery planning going on through many of New Orleans's neighborhood associations. Be sure and capture the synergy and pick up this week's Gambit as well. The cover story by Broadmoor resident David Winkler-Schmit takes a look at that community's ongoing fight against the ominous green circles. In the article (not yet available online.. will link it as soon as it's up) Winkler-Schmit contacts the planner responsible for the "Parks and Open Space Plan" portion of the BNOB report and asks him to explain the reasoning behind the location of the proposed green spaces. The answer he gets is, to say the least, interesting.

"I screwed up," Beckman says. "I should have labeled the map more clearly. The dashed circles (the big green spaces) indicate general areas where neighborhood groups might want to see a park."

In other words the locations of the BNOB commission's proposed "green spaces" may as well have been determined by blindfolded planners hurling gobs of green mold at a map of the city. Meanwhile whole neighborhoods are (understandably) interpreting this to mean that they are not welcome back in their homes. It's encouraging to see that, in Broadmoor at least, folks aren't buying it. One comes away from both of these articles a bit more optimistic that the future of the city's neighborhoods can be determined by its residents rather than by outside planners and consultants.

Update: Online edition available now.

What's up with this guy?

Did he choke on a pretzel?


For the record, I think it's a mistake for the Saints to sign Drew Brees.. we'll see.. I could be wrong.. usually am.

Thought of the Day

My Space is exceedingly gay.

Just sayin'

Tourist Industry (finally) does some good

Benefit of being a major convention destination:
Professional associations like ALA want to come here. This brings attention to the plight of New Orleans libraries. This, in turn, provides an opportunity to people who write about and sell stuff to libraries to do nice things for New Orleans libraries and thusly impress the ALA folks while they're here.

ALA, Highsmith, Bretford team up for library renovation in New Orleans

The restoration of the Children’s Resource Center branch (913 Napoleon Ave.) will take place during the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans (June 22-28). Highsmith and Bretford, which provide furnishings, equipment and supplies to schools and libraries, will coordinate design with local library staff and provide the furnishings and technical expertise. ALA conference attendees from across the country will provide volunteer labor.

LJ To Restore NOPL's Devastated Alvar Street Branch

The "makeover" of the Alvar Street Branch library will be the first major joint effort to bring a severely damaged library back into service in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck. It will stand as a cultural beacon and economic engine to rebuild and resettle this area of the city. As now planned, the restoration project will be privately funded and supplied. In order to restore service to the neighborhood as soon as possible, the New Orleans Public Library Foundation has begun an intensive campaign to raise funds for necessary building repairs. There will be a grand reopening celebration during the ALA conference in late June.

Quick note on word choice: Observe the following sentence taken from the first press release cited, "The renovation will increase the collection up to 33 percent, increase the young adult area, improve the flow of the building and brighten the interior." Please, people, stop refering to things "flowing" into buildings in New Orleans. We've already had to correct the Mayor for doing this. It gives folks the heebiegeebies. (Is that how one would spell heebiegeebies?)

First thing he wanted

Remember 2004 when we had a chance to get rid of these people? Where was Matthews with his "sources" then?

Why why why was I not informed...

.. that this site has been up for over a year now!

A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette

She's Back!

Tan, rested, and nutty.

Butler out of jail, compares herself to civil rights heroes

The throngs have spoken

Daisy bows to public pressure.

17,744

People actually showed up to support these jokers. Why? They aren't coming back. Buy Saints tickets. They are an essential element of life in New Orleans.. and they are coming back this year. Leave the Hornets bee. (ha!)

Stop the Ride!

Cleo wants to get off

Blogging around for fresh Bushisms

Heh

"You've got a pile of stuff here" in "your country"

Who are these people? What do they look like?

I'm not sure how many folks treated themselves to a viewing of last night's mayoral debate but if you were one of them you may recognize the title of this post as the quote of the night. It comes, of course, from Nagin who, while he acquitted himself quite well, missed an opportunity to knock one out of the park when questioned about his latest public (mis)statement in Houston. Nagin told an audience of evaccuees this week that many of the candidates in the race "don't look like us". This has drawn further criticism of Nagin for race baiting. Nagin should have addressed this in the same way that Rev. Tom Watson did. Watson challenged the field of white candidates to explain why they suddenly feel emboldened enough to run if not through a cynical diagnosis of the racial makeup of the electorate. If Nagin responded to his critics this way, he would be unstoppable. Instead he tried worm his way out of it explaining his most recent comment thusly, "I was at an event where people kept coming up to me and asking, 'Mr. Mayor there are a lot of candidates running against you. Who are these people? What do they look like?'" Um.. sorry, Ray, try again.
Despite this, I really think Nagin came away the winner last night. Any time you put together a room of people where Ray Nagin comes off looking like the most mature and sane of the bunch you have to give hizzoner some credit.

Other observations:

• Peggy Wilson claimed that there are "dozens of other companies dying to come in and compete" with Entergy to restore power to the city. This cannot possibly be true. Unfortunately no one asked Ms Wilson, "Who are these companies? What do they look like?" The follow-up instead focused on the fact that Wilson had somehow managed to include the phrase "welfare queens" in the same breath as her dubious claim.


• Rob Couhig is a nut and a bulldog and he pulls votes away from Forman. Let's hope he sticks around a while.


• Landrieu did well handling Couhig. He also hit on a nice theme when he evoked the image of New Orleans in the mid-sixties (a city that competed with and outshone Houston and Atlanta as a Southern metropolis) as a model for his rebuilding and repopulation goals. Forman's and Wilson's base would just as soon see us on a par with Savannah. We are better than that. Mitch needs to keep making that point.


• James Arey. Wouldn't it have been more fun if they had invited the Hat Lady?


• You have to love a political debate where the moderators are obliged to announce that one of the invited participants is unable to be there because she is in jail.

Unscientific poll of the day:
I really really really wanted to make Butler an option here.

Weird

Pete Fountain thinks he "might have been depressed"

NOLA.com election index

Excellent excellent excellent I'm so glad it's once again spectator sports season in LA.

Oh and speaking of which... is it too early to look ahead to this horse race?

Blanco vs Jindal vs Breaux

Unscientific Poll of the Day

Don't know if this will work.. but hey what a fun new toy!

Beer in the bookdrop

For the second time in ten days, passing happy revelers have left us a sample of their delights from the previous evening. Last week's incident was unsurprising what with the library being so near the Carnival festivities. But this (random Tuesday) morning, our newspaper once again bears the distinctive scent of Abita Turbodog. It is doubtful that this will improve Rose's column but we'll give it a chance.

Slow news day

Here's about all I know today:

Blanco's new budget will include teacher pay raise

Butler will not collect $200.00 Still running for Mayor, though.

Nagin to evaccuees: Mayoral opponents "don't look like us" Majority of NO still does, however.

Early prediction: If runoff is Nagin vs Forman, Nagin wins big. If runoff is Nagin vs Landrieu, Landrieu ekes it out.

New Orleans definitely getting back to normal

WWL is reporting that Orleans Parish Clerk of Court Kimberly Williamson Butler who spent part of last year avoiding a subpoena and has spent the past week avoiding an arrest warrant has just announced her intention to run for mayor.

If Ever We Cease

I don't think anyone could have anticipated.... that Carnival 2006 could have been pulled off as well as it was. This is still a town where debris lines the streets for weeks at a time, where the traffic signals function sporadically at best, where the 24 hour diner closes at 4:00.... and this is in the good part of town. But there we were shouting and cheering, dancing and drinking, feeling almost normal for the first time since... well... you know. This Carnival was a homecoming for the displaced, a reuninon for separated families and friends, a massive pep rally for a town sorely in need of one. It may also have been a mirage.. but at least for now let's call it a welcome one.

I was particularly pleased that we were able to show the several first-timers we had in tow this year a full-blown Mardi Gras without having to do too much explaining to them of what was missing. There were some things missing, the St Aug band uniforms, real flambeaux carriers (I saw a lot of white guys out there), shriners... but these are small details. The essence of the thing was there.

Fat Tuesday is always easy to do from my place. Mardi Gras day is made up of so many layers of simultaneous scenes and events that taking it all in can be a challenge. My location allows one to sample a little bit of everything. We caught Zulu on Jackson Avenue (where they belong.. can't believe the city almost didn't let them roll there). Menckles bought a large bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine from a man selling it out of his trunk. Dad got a coconut. (The smug bastard actually made the rider wait for him to finish dancing before he decided he was ready to collect his prize from her.) Next we crossed back through the neighborhood to Second Street where the Wild Magnolias are headquartered. We weren't there very long before the Golden Comanches arrived precipitating a standoff complete with chanting and drumming and lots and lots of photography. Next it was back to St Charles for Rex and the few truck floats that folks could muster this year. Oh and, yes, there were certainly red beans involved. Finally Menckles and I walked down to the Quarter where we drank the day away at r's place. Like I said, a little bit of everything. Oh but you just came to see the pictures anyway.


Waiting for Muses with the infamous purple wig


The equally infamous funnel cake


This is the Piano Lady. She has been a French Quarter fixture for as long as I can remember.. always on one or another corner playing that casio and singing badly. On Sunday, we found her in front of the Walgreens on St Charles. If I have this Youtube thing figured correctly you may even be able to catch the performance below





Mardi Gras Day always has a knack for bringing out the pirates.. and their hearty wine coolers


These days all the kids are getting their own floats. Where's yours?


Menckles: "If you want to be a real cool art fag you'll get a picture of the crowd reflected in one of those tubas."
Jeffrey: "Eh it'll never work."


Golden Comanches arrive at Second Street


Here come the Big Chief


I learned later that this was actually none other than Mr. Clio. I also learned that there was some mysterious assembly of NOLA bloggers along the parade route at some point... could have been right under my nose.


You know, one of these years that guy is going to go as something other than Sammy Knight... just not this year.

Note to T-P

This city can have a full-blown Carnival that looks exactly like a Carnival but we can't have our pre-Katrina Food Section back? Come on, guys, you're ruining my Thursdays.

Not bad

This NYT blurb. I was at the Indian scene described. We had a good day. Details and pictures later. Today I am exhausted.