Magic moments

If you can't put a price on magic, why is it something you are able to go to court over?

“For me, it was not simply a question of breach of contract,” Bagneris testified. “It was also a matter of disrespect. We felt disrespected.”

The perks, and the status those perks afforded – such as watching performances from onstage – are nice, too, he said: “You can’t put a price tag on those kinds of magic moments. That’s the irreparable harm.”

Is that what this is about? Magic moments and feeling disrespected?  Or is it something else? 

But in an appeal filed Friday with Louisiana’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, the foundation’s attorneys argue that Sheppard erred in granting the injunction. The foundation requested expedited consideration from the 4th Circuit, given that the 2022 Jazz Fest opens April 29. No hearing date has been set on the appeal.

If Sheppard’s preliminary injunction remains in place, the foundation must provide Mercadel and Bagneris with 70 free Jazz Fest tickets and the opportunity to purchase 100 more at half price. They’d also each receive a free parking spot on the festival grounds; four laminated badges that grant access to viewing areas on the sides of the festival’s three main stages; six “silkie” stick-on passes for access to guest viewing areas near the main stages; four wristbands for access to a private lounge on the festival grounds; and the privilege to buy Jazz Fest posters at a discount.

Bagneris can't use all of those tickets himself to go look at the "magic." More likely what he's worried about here is somebody might lose some money. Anyone with a connection to recipients of these perks and a little bit of entrepreneurial pluck could certainly make something out of a wad of free and discounted tickets. The "irreparable harm" the injunction is meant to prevent likely stems from the threatened interruption of this commerce. 

If the injunction stays in place, Bagneris and Mercadel would apparently be the only recipients of those packages anymore. The perks rules, even for current board members, have been scaled back somewhat. But it's worth considering just how much of this is in circulation given the number of "Past Presidents" and board members receiving perks which, even under the new rules, carry substantial value.

The benefits received by current members of the board are now capped at $9,000 in total value and are reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Each laminate badge is reportedly valued at $1,950, so a board member who accepted all four available laminates could then accept only another 15 or so regular admission tickets, which have a gate price of $90 apiece.

Fifteen free tickets valued at $90 a piece plus the badges is still quite a haul. But 70 tickets with the option to buy 100 more at a discount is a big business worth suing over. Looks like this ruling came in just in time to save that business. 

UPDATE: Whoops maybe not!

On Wednesday, Louisiana’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. It reversed Civil District Judge Nicole Sheppard’s April 13 decision, which had granted Demetric Mercadel and Michael Bagneris the preliminary injunction they sought against the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation Inc.

 

Mercadel and Bagneris, the 4th Circuit judges said, “failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they would suffer irreparable injury if they did not receive injunctive relief." They “have not demonstrated anything more than inconvenience.”

Maybe the state supreme court could still weigh in. But they'd only have a week to do that before Jazzfest opens. If there are any pending deals for vacation packages hinging on this, the suspense is building.

Wonder how that time sensitive irreperable harm manifests

Sounds to me like somebody has turned their Jazzfest perks into a lucrative business of some sort. 

The newly revealed court documents indicate Mercadel is seeking a preliminary injunction against the foundation before the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival opens at the Fair Grounds on April 29.

The issues “are time sensitive, particularly given that the Jazz Festival is set to begin later this month,” Mercadel’s attorneys wrote, arguing that a ruling on her request for an injunction should come before the event takes place. “Should the hearing be continued, there is a risk that the relief requested in the motion would be rendered moot and, as a result, irreparably harm Ms. Mercadel.”

In opposing Mercadel’s request, the board’s attorneys contend that she “incorrectly suggests that she will suffer such irreparable injury if NOJHFF does not provide her with ‘personal tickets to Jazz Fest, parking privileges, and options to buy additional tickets at discounted prices.’”

Mercadel, the board notes in the court documents, “is not prevented from buying tickets or parking passes to Jazz Fest, which are available to the general public.”

Bagneris and Mercadel attended an April 8 closed-door hearing in Sheppard's courtroom about Mercadel's request for a preliminary injunction, as did Francis.

I wonder how many Jazzfest vacation packages Mercadel and Bagneris are trying to sell and to whom?  I wonder if they have any short term rental properties involved.  I wonder why this whole city runs on various modes of "non-profit" exploitation of tourism for the benefit of a very small privileged class.

I wonder why the Jazzfest foundation got away with this graft all the way up until 2019.

However, those former presidents still received 70 free Jazz Fest tickets annually, according to sources familiar with the board’s operation. They could also purchase an additional 100 tickets at half-price.

The at-the-gate price of a Jazz Fest ticket this year is $90, meaning the 70 free tickets alone had a total face value of more than $6,000.

Past board presidents also reportedly received four laminated badges that granted access to reserved viewing areas in the wings of Jazz Fest’s three largest stages.

The board’s bylaws were amended after the 2019 Jazz Fest to eliminate these benefits. In a prepared statement released last week, David Francis, the current president of the Jazz & Heritage Foundation board, said that bylaws were changed in order to "preserve the 501c3 status of the foundation” and keep the foundation "in line with best practices for nonprofits."

 I wonder who finally threatened them.

The Year Of Enforcement

"We have to shake this image of being the Big Easy where you can do anything you want in New Orleans" -- LaToya Cantrell

That isn't all she says in this unhinged rambling video about traffic cameras, bicycle regulations and the "year of enforcement." (By the way, I thought LaToya wanted 2015 to be the Year Of Enforcement.  She really does have a thing for policing people.) LaToya has no tolerance whatsoever for nuance, subtlety or the notion of  discretion in law enforcement.  "We can't pick and choose!" about when and where to drop the hammer, she says. If you are driving even one mile over the speed limit, "That's illegal!" End of discussion. There is only force and it must be applied at maximum to everyone. LaToya pounds the table as she declares, "Cyclists will be ticketed!" 

She sounds an awful lot here like her father-in-law Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell who has been repeatedly criticized for setting excessive bail in defiance of federal court orders meant to shut down what has amounted to a "debtor's prison."  Judge Cantrell is about as empathetic as LaToya.

Cantrell routinely refuses to set bail below $2,500, regardless of the facts of a case or a defendant’s ability to pay, the suit claims. In most cases, the judge forces defendants to seek the services of a commercial bail bondsman, which in Orleans Parish charge a non-refundable 12-percent or 13-percent fee on the total bond amount.

“We don’t go any lower than $2,500 in this court,” Cantrell told one defendant’s attorney. “This court never goes any lower than $2,500,” he said in another case. “I don’t got any lower than $2,500 on my bonds,” he said in yet another. In one instance, he told a lawyer he was going to set bond at $2,500, regardless of what information the lawyer provided.

The bail is the bail.  You can't pick and choose, right?  The law is the law and it has got to be enforced.  If you tried to slow down in the school zone but only made it down to 25 mph  instead of 24 by the time the camera saw you, well it's nice that you tried but also that's too bad. We have to enforce it. If you are playing music in the street for a crowd during a music festival, well that's nice but also "That's illegal!" LaToya's cops are gonna come and shut you down. Here's Kevin Allman on why that's a problem.

Was the street band in violation of some ordinance? Maybe. But doesn't the city have something, anything better to do than to attempt to shut down the next generation of musicians who are trying to make a buck — and making a lot of people happy in the process?

New Orleans' music culture isn't restricted to symphony halls, nightclubs or festivals sponsored by Acura and Shell. It's more organic than that, or it should be. And it's a bad look for a city that pays lip service to "culture bearers" to shut down actual culture bearers outside a multi-million dollar festival where Pitbull and Katy Perry are pulling down huge salaries.

The #CityOfYes official twitter put out some nonsense about how the police acted appropriately by eventually allowing the band to continue playing in somebody's yard because this is how you make "balance" happen or something.   But in reality all that was accomplished was pointless intimidation supposedly on behalf of a neighbor's complaint. Here's Jarvis DeBerry on why that's absurd.

Seriously, the solution that was worked out Friday night is as absurd as the decision of those unnamed residents to complain and is as absurd as the decision from the police to intervene and make the music stop. If the neighbors were bothered by the noise, then how would they be any less bothered by the noise after the band moved from a position in front of the yard to a position in the yard itself? And if they were bothered by something other than the noise, well, then, the police should have just told them to mind their business and that the band was fine.

NOPD shutting down live music in New Orleans, especially during Jazzfest, is always going to draw attention. But this goes beyond the typical NolierThanThou concern olympics over the fate of "culture bearers" whatever they are. The larger issue here is the city's increasingly authoritarian administration and law enforcement regime being brought to bear on its poorer and more vulnerable populations for what often appears to be the mere convenience of officials looking for the easiest and/or most revenue friendly cop-out solution to the problems of municipal governance.  LaToya explicitly says the problem is this "image of being the Big Easy" where people can do what they want to do. So the solution is we have to stop people from doing things.... unless they can afford to pay. Thus the Year of Enforcement also promises to be the Year of Collections. 

Backlog of stuff

Man... I still didn't publish the second half of the Mardi Gras posts I had been working on.  I wrote up a whole bunch of stuff about the Zulu blackface controversy which, I suppose, can sit until next year when I'm pretty sure people will be talking about that again.  I also had some things in there about the drunk driving accident which is still relevant and will probably get dumped into something else I'm trying to finish.  Meanwhile, here are some quick notes from this week before that stuff piles up on me too.



It's city-wide investment property open house season. We used to call that Jazzfest. But things are kind of different now in the "year of enforcement," as the mayor likes to call it. Also the steady stream of people I keep seeing drive slowly through the neighborhood with little notebooks says more about what goes on now. Anyway I heard a rumor that City Council is about to take up the Short Term Rentals thing again soon... as early as next week, perhaps. There are a couple of different bills  before the legislature right now that would impose new taxes on STRs as one instrument in the sprawling and sputtering search for a grand bargain between the city and the tourism industry. If lawmakers successfully tie the fate of STRs to the prospect of infrastructure revenues, it follows that City Council would be even more positively inclined to their proliferation than they already are.  Which means we can look forward to seeing even more long time residents displaced by investment properties. Nobody will live here but at least we'll be able to pay for nobody's drainage.



The "Together For Parks and Recreation" moneywad is putting out on an all-out media blitz this week in favor of hooking Ron Forman up with a dedicated millage for twenty more years.  They've got  mailers, TV ads, all sorts of endorsements from elected persons and editorial writers.  It's pretty disgusting.  What's worse is even the more skeptical notes I've read are reserved in their criticism of this measure which, pretty obviously, should be rejected. But there's too much wealth and political status sitting behind it and nobody really likes to challenge the money power in this city.

Basically there are three kinds of people who will vote for this thing. They are:

1) Cynical allies of the con-profit oligarchy who have a direct financial interest and/or adjacent political interest in helping them win something.

2) Cynical political actors who have an interest in having been "on the mayor's side" of something in case they want to ask her for something else later.

3) Idiots. I like the idiots. At least they're honest.

In any case, since those are pretty much all three categories of voter that exist in New Orleans, I'm pretty sure the millage is going to pass in a landslide. Oh well. On to the next disaster.

Let's see what else? I knew there was something I wanted to mention.

Oh yeah it was CCC last weekend.



I did a slightly more robust Mardi Gras this year than last so my training was a bit behind schedule. During the Lenten season I ran a full 6.2 miles only three times coming in at or about 56 minutes. That's fine, I guess. But also there were a number of outings when I had to stop altogether after 4 or 5 miles. So I wasn't sure what to expect coming in to race day. And this is why I made the stupid mistake of neglecting to lie about my estimated time so I could sign up for the green corrall instead of the red.



It wouldn't have even been that much of a lie. 56 is just a minute over the dividing threshold. But your starting group makes a huge difference in the lived experience of this race.  The reds are ostensibly joggers but the group is loaded up with baby strollers, walking clubs, bunny costumes, and all sorts of obstacles that end up making the first mile as much a lateral run as it is forward. It's fine that all that stuff goes on. But for some reason I always forget it's going to happen and I've only been doing this thing for twenty years or so. Maybe next time I'll know better.

Anyway I managed to finish. In 53:40 at that, so I could have signed up in the green group and that wouldn't have been dishonest in the first place.  Still, the trend is not good.  Last year was 52:13. The year before that was 48:31. But let's not worry about that too much just yet.  See, I won one of these participation trophies.



They also give you one of these at the post-race festvial.  But be careful. If you are trying to drink your water from it, you only get a couple of sips before you are prompted to subscribe.



Not this site, though. The Yellow Blog will always be free... if we can manage to keep it updated.  Until Google decides to shutter it, of course.

The ol' NOLA cultural non-profit industrial complex

It's a tricky thing, that.  Creates all sorts of unsavory relationships. 

New Orleans city employees in seven departments were provided with hundreds of free tickets to Jazz Fest last year, a possible violation of state law that prohibits public employees from receiving gifts, according to a report issued Wednesday by the New Orleans Inspector General's Office.

Keep enough of the important people happy and they'll have your back when it counts.  It works both ways, in fact.

While officials at Entergy New Orleans appear ready to grudgingly pay a large fine related to the use of paid protesters, the utility in recent weeks has attempted to use its charitable largesse to fight back against the penalties likely to be imposed by the New Orleans City Council.

Communications obtained by The Lens show that in response to the proposed $5 million fine — over the use of paid actors who appeared at public meetings to support a proposed power plant — several beneficiaries of Entergy’s charitable giving sent letters supporting the company to council members.

At least two of the authors were directly asked to write the letters by an Entergy employee who oversees the company’s charitable giving.

It's fine, though. The principals involved here are all heads of non-profits, departmental higher-ups, and political appointees so nobody is in any real trouble. 

"Discounted"

Eyes rolled all the way back.

The 2019 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will expand to eight days at the Fair Grounds, kicking off on Thursday, April 25. The extra day was added to the opening weekend to celebrate Jazz Fest's 50th anniversary.

Both weekends of the festival will now run Thursday through Sunday: April 25-28 and May 2-5.

The new day is designated "Locals Thursdays." Anyone with a valid Louisiana ID will be able to purchase two discounted tickets for $50 apiece at the Fair Grounds gate.

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.

Of all the things that Mitch needs to be criticized for..

I'll never understand why people fixate on one of the few things he (sort of.. but not really) did right.

There are more messages flying above New Orleans Jazz Fest. But who's responsible for this year's?

A banner reading "Landrieu Legacy - Bought Cranes Instead of Fixing Drains'' was being pulled behind a small plane Sunday afternoon (April 29). Immediately behind it was a plane pulling a banner for the Hustler Club.

Also he's leaving next week. Also, too, the monuments are down. Why even bother with this anymore?  Also, too, as well, everybody knows you're supposed to hire a skywriter for this stuff.

Leave Jazzfest alone.. this time

How much would you pay to know your overrated pasta is safe?

It's super fun to troll our favorite over-priced magnet for the pretentious "authenticity tourists" currently pouring into the Airbnbs near you.   But I gotta say, this time we're not going about it in the best way.

Even for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, Louisiana food service inspections come cheap.

The state Health Department charges $25 -- in total -- to inspect the dozens of food and drink vendors during the seven-day event. To put that in perspective, there was enough food and drink prepared at the 2016 Jazz Fest to serve the 425,000 people who attended it  -- even with major acts on one Saturday afternoon canceling their performances.

State law sets the $25 maximum. But now Secretary Rebekah Gee wants to raise it.

Rep. Jimmy Harris, D-New Orleans, has filed a bill to let the Health Department charge $37.50 -- per vendor -- at Jazz Fest and other events. Jazz Fest has about 80 food booths, so the agency's compensation could rise to about $3,000, under Harris' House Bill 520. 

Like I said, I'm no fan of doing special favors for Jazzfest. But this is bad. Safety inspections are a service provided by the Health Department which is a public agency operating for the public benefit. It's fine to charge a fee in order to cover some of the costs of providing this service. Such fees should be minimal, though.  And we shouldn't expect them to cover all of the cost. Usage fees like this run contrary to the notion that public agencies should operate for a collective purpose rather than on a pay-to-play basis.

Here is where you really get a sense things are going the wrong direction.

Gee, who works for Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, said bumping up the price of health inspections would help her $12 billion agency operate more like a business -- as Republican legislators have repeatedly suggested.

Um, no. That's not cool at all.  Government agencies, particularly those government agencies charged with vital functions such as ensuring public health and food safety.. should not seek to "operate more like a business."  One gets the impression that Gee is just throwing lawmakers' own rhetoric back in their faces with this. But, then, that's how bad policy becomes standard.

I don't see Pelican 212 in here

The Jazzfest line-up is out. I just gave it a quick look but it doesn't seem to be as full of mega-star attractions at it has in recent years. That's probably a good thing. The crowd has gotten to be a bit much in recent years.

I see they still haven't fixed this problem, though.

Advanced, early-bird, single-day tickets are $65 through February 14. The advanced ticket price will be $70 beginning on February 15.

The gate price ticket will be $80, an increase of $5 from 2016. Children’s tickets (ages 2 - 10) are $5, as they have been for years, and are available at the gate only.

"The most deadly and injurious crowd"

Okay so it's time for a new joke about the four seasons we have in New Orleans.

You know the one that goes, "Carnival, Festival, Hurricane, and Football" or "Shrimp, Crawfish, Crab, and Oyster" or "Caterpillar, Termite, Cockroach, and Mosquito" or... whatever the hell else. There's millions of these.

Anyway, here are the new ones. Feel free to print up some T-shirts or something.

1) Carnival Season
2) Kvetching About Crowd Behavior at Carnival Season
3) Jazzfest Season
4) Kvetching About Crowd Behavior at Jazzfest Season

We're squarely in the middle of the fourth one now.  

Many festgoers complained that they not only could not see but also could not move, which concert safety experts say is often a symptom of a festival that oversells its capacity.

“This can only occur when the promoter oversells an event and public safety officials fail to, or are incapable of, stopping the overcrowding influx of people,” said Paul Wertheimer, founder of Crowd Management Strategies, a Los Angeles-based international crowd safety consulting service.

Wertheimer said festival seating represents “the most deadly and injurious crowd configuration in live entertainment.”

About 460,000 people gathered at the Fair Grounds over the two weekends of Jazz Fest, which concluded Sunday night. That’s up about 6 percent from last year, when an estimated 435,000 attended the festival. This year’s attendance also represents the highest total since Hurricane Katrina. The previous peak was 450,000 people in 2012.

Quite a feat to set a record like that considering the difficult weather through most of the first weekend.  It suggests that the second Saturday crush was every bit as bad as reported by eyewitnesses.


Souvenir photo booth at the Fairgrounds

In a move somewhat reminiscent of the Carnival time battles against the "Krewe of Chad," festival organizers instituted a new minor tweak to the rules this year. But, as was also the case with the Carnvial rules, nobody knew about it. 

In a statement to The Advocate on Sunday, festival producers said they did institute a standing-room-only policy on the track for Acura Stage performances this year, but “as with any new policy, it sometimes takes a couple of years to achieve full compliance.”

Did anybody know that? Doesn’t a change that significant seem like something that would have been news? Would compliance have been easier to get if people would have known the policy before they brought their chairs in? Wouldn’t it have made sense to remind people of this policy through the media after The Who’s set on the first weekend? No outlet, My Spilt Milk included, can get enough Jazz Fest stories while the festival is on, and television, print, and online media would all have run a story with the impact that banning chairs on the track would have. But I first heard of this change when I read the story this morning.  

It's probably not feasible to limit the use of chairs and blankets, in some cases air mattresses, around the Acura stage. But it would be nice if there were fewer. They inhibit movement and make for unfriendly and unsafe conditions when the crowd is heavy.


Acura Stage Hell

When we went to see The Who during the first weekend we were lucky.  The rain had kept the crowd full but manageable. Even so we eventually made our way back to the track. There was more room to move around back there.



Lucky too since we also witnessed a medical emergency.  EMS workers had to carry a person suffering from what looked like a heat stroke out on a stretcher via the track.  This would have been considerably more difficult the following Saturday.

Wertheimer says not controlling the rules regarding individual space in a festival environment is “irresponsible.” “The Jazz Festival organizers have created a situation of mayhem that pits ticket holder against ticket holder and practically guarantees chaos and possible worse if it isn’t contained.” He warns that dense crowding in general admission environments can cause deaths or serious injuries by crushing and prevent emergency responders to locate and reach people who may be suffering from dangerous ailments like heat exhaustion or more.

As it was, Elton John day can't have been must have been tough for the people there for it. Alex Rawls argues that "Jazz Fest isn’t Jazz Fest with those numbers." 

Bouncing from stage to stage of Louisiana music before settling down for Elton John became impractical, nor could people enjoy Louisiana food. The activities that give Jazz Fest personality are prohibitively difficult when the crowds are at that level.

Some have suggested a cap on ticket sales.  I don't think that's the best solution, though. In fact, it's more likely to make the festival even more expensive and inaccessible to locals than it already is.

Which naturally brings us back to the often tiresome but still necessary question of who Jazzfest is even for anymore.   We had some fun with that question on the Parallel Internet last week over this Daily Beast article.  The author, Mark Hertsgard, is pretentious as hell in a way that makes you want to locate and punch him in the face some day. But he's not entirely wrong. 

Yet for all of Jazz Fest’s celebration of the music, food and culture of New Orleans, some locals complain that a central element is missing: the people. The daily ticket price of $70 is just too high in a city where many folks struggle to get by. In recent years, Jazz Fest’s crowds have become increasingly affluent, old, and white as the festival’s promoters, the AEG corporation, book acts such as The Eagles and this year The Who and Chicago that have precious little to do with the music of New Orleans.

That's about as close as the author comes to contributing a thought, unfortunately.  After that, he quickly falls into the lazy habit of conflating race with class.. and also race with a claim to authentic local New Orleans. And he throws in several embarrassing phrases about "the true spirit of New Orleans music" as if that means something besides whatever matches his own personal preconceptions.  Like so many upper-middle-class intellectuals who trek to New Orleans each year to offer similar commentary, he's actually the larger part of the problem he's trying to describe.


A crowd of amateur photographers huddles around the Uncle Lionel memorial second line at Jazzfest 2013

The problem with Jazzfest isn't that it's trying to be something that it isn't... or that it's been stolen or corrupted.  The problem is Jazzfest is actually pretty terrible. And by terrible, I mean it is like smoking or eating a lot of stuffed crust pizza. It's a fun thing we do sometimes that is also very bad for us.

Of course I still go for a day when I can afford to. And when I go, I still have a good time. I'm an old dude but I still like crowds.  I like to people watch. I like music.  But I'm always aware of how disgusting the thing is at the same time.  But I'm not the only person who notices. Hertsgard concludes his piece this way.

The corporate promoters of Jazz Fest may be greedy and exclusionary, but the magic of New Orleans abides for all with the wit to embrace it.

Replace "the wit to embrace it" with "the time and money to afford it" and you're a bit closer to the point but that's good enough.  The essential contradiction of the thing is, on the one hand it's awful; expensive, exploitive, reductive, pretentious, destructive. On the other hand if you go you're probably gonna have a good time.

But if we're being honest, Jazzfest has always been a bad idea. We spend a lot of time arguing about the "Disneyfication" of the city but the annual event at the Fairgrounds has been about as NOLA Disney as a thing can be for as long as I can remember.

If you've never worked in our local hospitality industry, you might not understand the true "spirit of the Jazzfest."  It is not to be found on any stage, or plate, or street corner nearby the Fairgrounds.  Rather, it is to be found in the sweaty reddened faces of the well-to-do middle aged professionals/academics who come down to New Orleans on some kind of authenticity hajj.

Years ago, I used to check these people in to their hotel rooms.  They were by a very wide stretch the most insufferable tourists to deal with every year; entitled, mean, snotty, superior. Jazzfest is their show. More than a concert getaway, it is a validation of their intellectual and cultural righteousness. They are not shy about telling you about how much it means to them, what is says about them that they can afford to appreciate it, and what it says about you if you do not.

Over the years I've grown tired of fighting with people who don't get that you can both enjoy yourself and understand that the thing you're enjoying is troublesome so I try not to waste time explaining that anymore. This isn't about "hating" Jazzfest. It's more complicated than that.  Unease is not hate. If I hated it I wouldn't keep going every year.

In fact, Rawls, one of the city's most prominent music writers, published a three part examination of Jazzfest angst last month.  I'd recommend you read through all of that. It's very good. He reaches some conclusions I don't necessarily agree with. Like this, for example.

Those who want New Orleans and Jazz Fest to once again be their private concern are going to be disappointed. Neither is happening. I often wonder if the desire for the better days is also a manifestation of the baby boomers’ in Jazz Fest’s audience wanting to roll back their own clocks as well, or at least get back to a simpler time when they knew all the bands, were the cool kids, and had smaller crowds to be cool in.

Except whatever "simpler time" we're supposed to be pining for never really existed.  I'm pretty old now but I can't really remember a time when Jazzfest wasn't overly commercialized, overrun by tourists, too expensive.. all the things we're complaining about. In my memory it's always been like that. I've really only recently made a kind of peace with it. But I've never lamented some lost idea of a pure Jazzfest because there never was one. 

But if you're looking though those posts for someone to blame for the dangerously high crowds, Rawls does hit upon this.

Jazz Fest producer Quint Davis has quoted Mayor Mitch Landrieu on a number of occasions as having said after Katrina, “Not having Jazz Fest is not an option.” It’s unlikely Landrieu said that solely out of concern for the well-being of music lovers. New Orleans’ shift toward a tourism-based economy was already well underway, and the mayor knew how devastating it would be for one of the bedrock events of the city’s tourist trade to skip a year. Famously, money made during Jazz Fest helps clubs, restaurants, and businesses get through the summer. It would be interesting to see the degree to which that remains true, but it certainly was in 2006, and the degree to which that idea was believed means that civic leaders don’t see any problem with giving two or more hours over to the Boss or Rod Stewart or Fleetwood Mac. At least then there would be somebody they know out there. 

A few years ago, the city hired the Boston Consulting Group to help it set goals for expanding the number of annual visitors.  Already the city is under threat of being so overrun with tourists that on any given day one might be tempted to wonder if anyone actually lives here anymore.



Nevertheless, the BCG strategy recommends planning for 13.5  million visitors by 2018. In 2008 that number was 7.8 million.  Last year that was up to about 9.5.  So they're on their way.  If you're looking to solve the Jazzfest overcrowding problem by imposing a cap, maybe look at the number of tourists we're trying to pack into town year after year rather than number tickets sold on any given day.

Also,  The Who was awesome.

Same as the old boss

While we were waiting for The Who to begin their set at Jazzfest yesterday, we couldn't help but take notice of this unfortunate flagpole.



The wind didn't catch the flags exactly right when I took this snapshot. But, yes, the second flag is a Confederate "Stars and Bars" battle flag rendered in Mardi Gras colors. Here's a photo of one I found on ebay.

I'm pretty sure the only reason anyone would show up at Jazzfest with something like that is just to be a troll. On the other hand, if you know anything about the Confederate history of the "Old Line" Carnival Krewes who still figure prominently in the city's social and political life (including the Rex organization who is credited with choosing those colors) you might see how the flag is kind of fitting. 

Hustlin'

The New Orleans poor have always lived by the hustle, eking out inadequate wages and suffering chronic underemployment with off-the-books make­shifts in the underground economy. -- Lawrence N.Powell



It's "Clean Zone" season out by the Fair Grounds.

Another Jazz Fest, another stern warning from City Hall for local entrepreneurs looking to cash in by selling parking spots, souvenirs or other goods.

Over the past few years, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration has taken a strict approach during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, enforcing laws that say anyone wanting to operate a parking lot on commercially zoned property must get a permit.

A city-issued reminder this week reiterated that position and also warned that police will be “aggressively” enforcing rules against transient vendors selling goods from cars or trucks within the festival’s “clean zone,” a wedge of territory bounded by Florida Avenue, North Broad Street, Esplanade Avenue and Bayou St. John. Signs have appeared near the Fair Grounds reminding would-be hawkers about the rules.

If you read NOLA.com on a regular basis, you'd get the impression that "Entrepreneur Week" lasts for at least six months out of the year.  It must finally be over.  This city of start-ups sure does enjoy sending mixed signals.

As Mominem notes in a comment to a previous post, New Orleans has a reputation for flexibility regarding "gray market" activity. Informal vendors have sold homemade art, crafts, food, hucklebucks, etc. out of their own homes or carts for decades while facing occasional but often light official restriction.

Long before the laws governing gourmet food trucks became a newsworthy controversy, mobile food vendors like this one were frequently found at or near the city's outdoor festivals, second lines, or Mardi Gras parades.



At Mardi Gras 2006, the pirate seen here acquired her bottle of pink wine from the smugglers pictured just over her shoulder in the background.



From time to time there are efforts to rein some of this stuff in.

Here are some guys being cited for unlicensed beverage sales outside of the Superdome last year in accordance with a stepped up enforcement effort.



I took a bike ride through the "Clean Zone" Sunday afternoon.  There were the usual offerings of "Ice Cold Water One Dollar" available but not much other street vending in evidence.  I did happen upon a "for display purposes only" set up of handicraft handbags.  Also there was a guy with a cart full of goofy political paraphernalia including even a "Cliven Bundy for President" T-Shirt.  It's hard to imagine much of that was selling but you never know.



Anyway, so in keeping with the entrepreneurial spirit that makes our city so great, I'm pitching some ideas for local TV production.  Everyone knows the Louisiana film tax credit is the surest get-rich-quick scheme going around here these days.. if you can stay out of jail, that is. Or until the interstate grifting competition finally catches up with Louisiana which could start happening any day now.

In the meantime we need to get these ideas up and available for immediate financing.

1) Name That Decibel.  Contestants walk the first eight blocks of Bourbon Street and guess the loudness at which they are hearing various house bands perform Don't Stop Believin' along the way.  Hosted by Drew Ward.

2) Amazing Race Uptown Teams have to perform a variety of tasks that require them to traverse the many Uptown construction zones. The degree of difficulty increases as afternoon thunderstorms begin to flood the side street detours.

Points may be awarded for ingenuity. For example last weekend our familiar four year old neighborhood sinkhole was finally filled in.



As you can probably tell, this wasn't accomplished through any official city agency. Instead, in keeping with the NOLA hustlin' tradition of improvisation, a free acting community fellow arrived and shoveled dirt into it from the back of an El Camino.



I'm not sure what's next for the sinkhole.  I've thought about putting up a Maypole there but Menckles  has already planted some sunflower seeds so we'll have to wait to see if those come in before anything else happens.

3) Project Fairgrounds Tim Gunn stands at the gate and scrutinizes Jazzfest attendees' outfits for controversial themes.

On Saturday (April 26), Greenpeace flew a banner over the New Orleans Jazz Fest with a message aimed at Shell, the festival's sponsor: "Love Jazz Fest; Hate Oil Spills." For 30 minutes, until several NOPD officers escorted the Greenpeace members out, the protest took place inside the gates.

Extra points deducted for protesters who don't even take the time to match their complaint to the venue.

The group passed out paper fans and post cards criticizing Shell's efforts to drill in the arctic. Two of them held Jazz Fest-style poles that featured half a polar bear's face and half of Shell's logo with a devil's horn added.

A dying Louisiana coastline and its inhabitants  might find that a little tacky.

Any contestant singled out by Gunn will be given a sun hat, Hawaiian shirt, and sandals to wear for the rest of the day.

4) Park That Bike Simple concept.  Much harder than you may think, though.



So those are my TV hustles. If you're in for financing any of these let me know and I'll get you in touch with my agent Kevin Houser.

Fest inflation

2008



2010



2013



This year, the price at the gate is going up again.

After holding steady last year, the price of Jazz Fest tickets has inched up again this year.

Early birds were able to pick up $50 tickets. Advance tickets, on sale now, are $55 per day, excluding service fees. Latecomers and last-minute weather-watchers will have to pay $70 at the gate.

That’s up $5 across the board from last year, when the same tickets went for $45, $50 and $65, respectively.

We talk about this every year and end up shrugging. In that Advocate article you'll find most of the usual explanations they trot out every year. Most of them are legitimate... given the fest's aims which are their own separate issue. It costs more and more to book the high-profile headliners, festgoers are demanding more "amenities" although I don't see anything here that seems like it justifies a 40 percent increase in the walk-up price since 2008.

Festivals have also added amenities to make for more appealing environments. They are no longer just the grungy parties in open fields they were decades ago. Many provide more — and often cleaner — restroom facilities. Modern services like ATMs and cellphone-charging stations abound.

“You try to build an environment where people can be comfortable and enjoy the weekend with some comforts other than a (portable toilet) that’s been there more than three days,” said Stephen Rehage, founder and producer of the Voodoo Music and Arts Experience.

Okay, but they've had ATMs on site for quite a while now and something tells me we're not paying $20 a head more for phone charging stations.  I'll be sure to keep an eye out for those improved restrooms, though.

Pagan shutters described at shrine

Actually now that there's a Cyndi Lauper shrine I'm coming around to the idea of each washed up or out of place pop act at Jazzfest having its own shrine somewhere in the neighborhood. Each year we can open the fest by following Quint Davis' golf cart as he visits each one like he's doing the stations of the cross.

Authenticity tourism

When is a hot sausage po boy not really a hot sausage po boy?

The breadth and depth of food offerings at Jazz Fest is explained no better than by the grand dame of Creole cooking, Leah Chase: “You go to other festivals and they have rinky-dink foods like corndogs and hamburgers. Jazz Fest is unique because it serves food-food.”

For Ms. Leah, that means the absinthe-flavored oyster Rockefeller bisque or a hot sausage po-boy from Vance Vaucresson. Be mindful, though, that calling it a hot sausage po-boy will brand you as an outsider. To Chase, the proper nomenclature for any self-respecting Creole is a chaurice po-boy.

Here's something you won't read most places. Leah Chase, please STFU. Yes we all know the word chaurice. You still see it on grocery packaging every now and then. But when New Orleanians (yes, real, authentic, born and raised New Orleanians) go to order a po boy we all say hot sausage. The item is listed as hot sausage on every menu on which it appears or has appeared for as long as anyone currently alive can remember. Rest assured, ordering a "hot sausage po boy" will not "brand you as an outsider"

There are plenty of peculiar phrases New Orleanians do use on a daily basis without affectation. Neutral ground would be one. A lot of people still "make groceries" although I think that one is dying out a little bit. Some words and phrases like banquette, for example, are more or less arcane and out of currency. Use of such words is more likely to "brand you as an outsider" or at least a hyper self-conscious local than their more common synonyms.

But now we live in a time when outsiders, hyper self-conscious locals, and most importantly, people in the business of selling our image to visitors and to Hollywood are asserting more and more ownership over how we live our lives in New Orleans. And the local lexicon is being subtly redefined to meet those purposes. One particularly grating example of this I've noticed as of late is the new enthusiasm for referring to what locals call the CBD and Warehouse District by the vestigial 19th Century term "American Sector" in order to facilitate a clever branding effort by a locally-based national celebrity.

The Jazzfest, which opens next weekend, has for many years been the primary engine behind this kind of hip re-branding of New Orleans for the benefit of the smug segment of the tourist market. Like most of post-industrial America this city doesn't produce and sell things anymore as much as it sells services and experiences. In a tourism-based setting, this means we basically sell ourselves... or at least some idealized version of ourselves.

And that's demeaning for two reasons. First, by reducing your cultural touchstones to marketable commodities you allow your customers to redefine you and your traditions in ways that suit their understanding. Second, the traditions themselves become less of a celebration and more of a performance or worse a job. In a way we are really selling ourselves and in the process making the fact of being ourselves less enjoyable.

And this, ultimately, is what I think Treme will end up doing as well. Sometime soon, maybe a year from now, I'm expecting some outfit to start offering a "Treme tour" or some such thing. People will visit and want to see things as they were on HBO. And those things, although they are based on more realistic concepts than much of what Hollywood has produced on New Orleans, still distort things in irksome ways. But eventually the distortion becomes the consensus reality.

Here's a sort-of trivial example of what I'm talking about. Just last week, on the Back of Town blog, Treme was praised for its attention to detail in rendering the "first second line since Katrina" The impressive detail was the fact that some of the marchers at the parade in the show were carrying torn down street signs from the flooded 7th 8th and 9th Wards. The street names were poignant words for the moment like "Desire" "Benefit" "Humanity" and "Pleasure" Because I was at the event being replicated, I can tell you that this really happened. I took this picture of the signs as they were carried in front of me.

That's pretty neat but here's the funny thing. This actual parade, which was a big big deal "All Star" parade on Martin Luther King Day weekend and staged to help raise money for flood-affected musicians, happened in January of 2006. Treme presents the "first second line after katrina" in November of 2005. Maybe this doesn't matter much but I think it's likely that over the long term the lasting influence of Treme history can supplant the actual history in people's minds which leads to a fictionalized version of events gaining a place in the official record.

The punch line, of course, is that the real parade wasn't even the "first second line" The actual first second line I saw after Katrina happened in December 2005 and it happened Uptown, not in or anywhere near the Treme. If you read down in the BoT thread you'll find commenters cite other examples of earlier forgotten second lines as well. But because Treme depicts something like the January 2006 parade, people are now calling that event the "first second line after Katrina" So now we have a fictional history which causes people, in the process of attempting to reassert the actual history, to then misremember a crucial fact about the actual history itself. And so now not only do our cultural idioms become altered for the sake of someone else's product but our memories do as well.

Maybe the next time the Treme producers decide to film a second line scene, they'll remember to add the guy with the chaurice cart. I'm sure Leah would appreciate that kind of attention to detail.

Dr. John does not call Shell a buddy

Via the The Gambit blog we find this video.



This would be the "banner we gonna be draggin'" he's referring to.

Oooh goody a contest

Pick your dream Jazzfest lineup.

My suggestions:

• Jon Bon Jovi



• Michael Bolton



• Clay Aiken



• New Method



• And, of course, these people.

Cyril Neville declined our invitation for some reason.

What the hell

Joe Cocker isn't dead yet?

Subtle Voter Supression Techniques

Orleans Parish registrar of voters, Sandra Wilson, addressing the long lines today as early voting began for the November 4 election made the following remark.

"We're asking people to please be patient and to sort of adopt the attitude that you're going to the Jazzfest: Wear comfortable shoes and bring water."

Statements like this are troublesome because they may discourage some voters from turning out. For example, if I am going to adopt the attitude that I'm going to the Jazzfest then that means I expect someone will try and charge me 50 bucks to do it.



Update: In a related matter, this coming Saturday, New Orleans voters who wish to vote earlywill have an opportunity to literally parade to the polls. Unlike Jazzfest, there is no charge to participate.