Clean zoned

Jackson Square: French Quarter Fest 2008
 
I used to really look forward to French Quarter Fest. This was true even by the time of my (relative) adulthood when it had already mutated from "Dutch Morial's idea to draw local people back.." to the Quarter into a major tourist-facing annual event that can draw over 700,000 attendees during a single weekend.   I always liked being downtown, anyway. This can be an uncomfortably small town sometimes and the mix of locals and tourists in the Quarter lent it a more open feel. It made for interesting people watching.  Through the late 90s and early 00s, even as record numbers of tourists poured into the city, there was still somewhat of a sense that it was, in fact, our city.

That's a bit different now.  As the number of annual visitors continues to grow, policymakers introduce new planning, traffic, and policing initiatives designed to isolate the Quarter as an exclusive and culturally sanitized tourism and entertainment zone.




As a consequence, events like FQF begin to feel more and more like Jazzfest which, as we all know, is NOLA Disney at its height. Restricted access, overpriced food and drink, no cultural signifier goes uncommodified, etc.

Another thing both festivals have in common now is they are each subject to "Clean Zone" ordinances that restrict non-permitted street vendors and other kinds of solicitation on nearby streets.  Which is how stuff like this can happen.

Charges were dropped Thursday (May 3) against longtime environmental activist Luke Fontana, who was arrested at French Quarter Fest on April 13, according to a clerk at the New Orleans' Municipal and Traffic Court. Fontana had been charged with not having the proper permit or business license.

The 78-year-old president of Save Our Wetlands Inc. said he had set up a table on the French Quarter riverfront during the popular spring music festival to solicit new members for the organization, which opposes the planned Bayou Bridge crude oil pipeline that would cut across the Atchafalaya Basin. Fontana said he was offering lapel buttons, logo-marked umbrellas and T-shirts as membership bonuses. He said that nothing was for sale.

Now you may be thinking an anti-pipeline protest doesn't mix too well at French Quarter Fest Presented By Chevron. But everything kind of worked out there.

A cargo vessel crashed into a pier near the Nashville Wharf along the Mississippi River late Thursday morning (April 12), causing fuel to leak into the river and flow past the French Quarter Festival.

Around 10:30 a.m., the Coast Guard received a report that a Singapore flagged general cargo ship named PAC Antares had hit the pier and was leaking high sulphur fuel oil into the river near mile marker 100.

Anyway, we decided not to buy the Jazzfest tickets this year so we probably aren't going out that way this weekend.  Not unless I can come up with something to sell between now and Sunday.

Also box cutters

In addition to the several falsehoods  listed here that propagated after previous incidents of terror, I can add that the 9/11 hijackers did not, in fact, use box cutters as so many people continue to believe.

Myths like these often contribute to the development of unnecessary and onerous policies enacted in order that law enforcement agencies and security contractors can pretend they are "keeping us safe." It's why you couldn't take things like razor blades or shampoo on an airplane for a decade. We were only just beginning to wake from that fever dream before the Boston bombing.

Now it will be something else.  Probably you won't be required to remove your shoes before running your next marathon but it could be something as absurd. Maybe there will be a crackdown on pressure cookers. That would come at an especially bad moment for the currently "hip" kitchen appliance.

It's also worth pointing out that none of the falsehoods spread after 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing happened because of evil people using Twitter which, on balance, probably does more to debunk rumors than it does to spread them.

Twitter beckons us to join every compressed news cycle, to confront every rumor or falsehood, and to see everything. This is what makes the service so maddening during the meta-obsessed election season, where the stakes are unclear and the consequences abstract. And it's also what makes is so valuable during fast-moving, decidedly real disasters. Twitter is a fact-processing machine on a grand scale, propagating then destroying rumors at a neck-snapping pace. To dwell on the obnoxiousness of the noise is to miss the result: that we end up with more facts, sooner, with less ambiguity.

 So naturally the thing to do is shut it off.

Police shut down cellphone service in the Boston area on Monday to prevent remote detonations of explosives, according to the Associated Press.

The Boston Police Department did not respond to a request to comment.

At least 2 people were killed and 23 were injured in explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, according to police.

Just a few years ago the President was asking Congress for the authority to kill the internet in the case of an emergency such as civic unrest or... undefined... something like this, maybe.  The Mubarak government in Egypt appears to have implemented just such a strategy prior to its toppling.  Apparently the response to the Boston bombing involved something like a "kill switch." 

New Orleans, as we all know, is home to more than its share of heavily concentrated outdoor gatherings. To my great consternation, I didn't have enough free time to get out to this year's French Quarter Festival.  According to a dubious counting system, my absence didn't prevent the fest from drawing over half a million participants. Maybe it wasn't actually that many but.. it was a lot of people.


FQF 2008. (I don't have a photo of this year's because I wasn't there. Yeah, I'm a little bitter.)

If I had been down there, though, and God forbid something frightening had happened... like maybe a low flying helicopter or something... I and many others would have benefited from a fast and convenient way to get a handle on what was happening so we could make informed decisions about how to react. In fact, it's difficult to imagine a more panic-escalating move authorities could make in such a situation than the simultaneous disabling of everyone's communication device.

But it's precisely the sort of decision made by people who can't imagine Twitter being useful for things other than just trying to make it into this week's Y@ Speak. Maybe if they'd  use less imagination on impractical and unlikely uses for box cutters this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

Fake news you can use

Throughout the recent City Council At-Large campaign, the Uptown Messenger has run a series of paid advertisements for candidate Stacy Head. The ads appear with such persistence that we've come to think of the publication, which specializes in covering "Faubourg Stacy" anyway, as the Stacy Daily.

There's nothing especially wrong with this, of course. Political candidates pay for advertising space in newspapers, on television and radio, and on websites all the time. But the Messenger has developed a peculiar ad delivery mechanism where the paid spots are published as posts the same way their actual news content is.

The ads are clearly labeled, of course, so they aren't quite as underhanded as the TV news practice of passing off sponsor-produced "video news releases" as actual news content. But bleeding them into the regular feed like this is clearly inspired by the "advertorials" and other forms of slightly deceptive advertising that appear frequently in all sorts of print and online publications. The Messenger is at least telling us what they're doing. But that doesn't mean what they're doing is completely honest. On some level, by blurring the lines like this, they're trying to fool us.

And yet today's entry does this so well that it actually crosses back over into the realm of useful informative content. It does this in two ways. First, the advertorial reminds us that early voting for the At-Large runoff is currently underway. Election Day itself is set for April 21.

Secondly, because the advertorial is dressed up as a "recommended French Quarter Fest schedule" provided by the Head campaign, it provides a handy guide for deciding where not to be if you wish to avoid encountering Ms. Head or her minions during the festival. And so we all are better informed both as voters and as individuals looking to enjoy the weekend. And we have this fake news item to thank for it.

A bare bones sketch of French Quarter Fest 2008

The official Last Cool Front Of The Year arrived just in time.

Crowd was huge.

River was huger. I have pics. May post later.

Great day to bike downtown Saturday.

Great day to walk downtown Sunday.

Ran into old friends.

Made some new friends.

Harassed some local shopkeepers.

Danced with SheHateMe to Freddy Omar.

Ovi G and the Froggies is an awesome band name.

Thank God I didn't have to watch Theresa Andersen.

Learned that sunscreen + windswept dust = grimy oily face.

Listened to a trashy drunk girl complain about people who "speak hispanic".

Watched the same girl narrowly avoid a fist-fight outside of the... uh... the place that used to be the Matador.

Molly's on Toulouse, Monaghan's Erin Rose, Molly's at the Market, Johnny White's. Lots of beer, a bloody mary or two, and just enough Irish whiskey.

Duck Po-Boy, Italian Sausage Sandwich, Chaurice Sausage Sandwich, Alligator-on-a-stick, Some kind of chicken and shrimp pasta. Still... nothing outshines the Brisket and Horseradish Sauce from Tujagues.

Awesome awesome awesome weekend. Far and away the best FQF in recent memory. As I was sitting on the ground in front of the Aquarium enjoying my sandwich and my Jockomo IPA, I distinctly remember thinking, "Damn we got it good!"

Rising Tide

The Mississippi River at New Orleans is approaching such a high stage that the Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to open the Bonnet Carre Spillway for the first time in over 10 years.

Varg has some photos up he shot from his West Bank of the unusually high Mississippi. If anything, the swollen river should provide for a fascinating backdrop to this weekend's French Quarter Festival.

Yes!

No more Coors Light at French Quarter Fest

Happy FQF!

This is probably my favorite event of the Spring.

Items from this year's menu to be on the lookout for:

• Shrimp & Garlic Cheese Grits



• Turkey Legs



• Alligator Sauce Picante



• Crawfish Bread



• Jamaican Chicken with Rice &Veggies



• Sweet Potato Pie



• Oreo Cookie Bread Pudding



• Grilled Chicken Livers with Sweet Hot Pepper Jelly Sauce



• Shaved Prime Rib on Pistolette



• BBQ Shrimp Po-Boy



• Blackened Catfish Sandwich



• Cochon de Lait Po-Boy



• Crawfish & Goat Cheese Crepes

And.. of course.. after that, it's time to go back for the second-tier items... you know.. before dinner.