Mardi Gras Guide Part 1: Whose Streets? Everybody's Streets

Sirens, gunfire, a panicked crowd reaction, public safety personnel running this way and that.  No we're not talking about the CBD on a Friday night.  No, we're not talking about the scene when Parks and Parkways comes out to clear squatters and ladders off of the neutral ground. We're also not trying to describe the scene of some horrific, but also extremely unlikely, terror attack on a parade route.

Instead we are describing the scene in Armstrong Park last week when a bunch of cops had nothing better to do with their DHS money than go out and LARP their wildest fantasy of such an attack.

The New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness will conduct a "full-scale exercise" simulating an attack on a parade. This important drill will help New Orleans public safety agencies test emergency response plans in the event of a real attack. For example, the simulation will test a hospital surge plan to triage and handle a mass casualty incident. The City's family reunification plan to track and communicate with family members the status and location of people affected by an attack will also be tested through this drill. Role-playing with real people and real equipment allows emergency personnel to fully test plans, policies, and response.

Sounds fun! Was it fun? Looks that way. They had actors and props and floats and all kind of neat stuff. Here's the video.  It's always reassuring to see the SWAT crew show up in tanks.  Really puts you in the Carnival spirit.

The good news is everybody was pleased with the way it went. Emergency responders say they know who to call first and how to get where they need to go in case a drunk driver loses control near a crowd or in case somebody besides a cop fires a gun out there. Both of those things have happened before, of course. Still, it sounds like a lot of these procedures could have been covered in a series of memos and meetings but what would be the fun of that?  As for "terrorism," that's not likely to be as much of a concern.  That is,  unless when police and prosecutors don't want to share exculpatory evidence with defendants. Then there's a terrorist hiding behind every tree. Which is why the trees all have cameras now, probably. Even the floats have eyes.



Anyway, the point of all this is, Happy Mardi Gras!  We're already deep into the season and I've already got one sunburn and two moderate hangovers to show for it.  But, well, I've gone to all these parades and taken all these pictures so doggone it I'm gonna have to write about it a little bit.  In multiple parts, actually.  There's always a lot going on during Carnival season and it's already Friday. Let's see how far we can catch up before I have to go out and drink in the street some more.


The New Mardi Gras is over... or is really the Old Mardi Gras.. or..


Krewe of 'tit Chewbacchus rolling on through


Thanks, in part, to the late Carnival season... and probably to police paranoia as well... the parade schedule got shuffled around a bit this year.  The most significant change saw Chewbacchus moved from the first big Saturday night, all the way up to a week ahead of Krewe Du Vieux.  On the one hand this is probably bad in that it's yet another concession to the city's stupid insistence on supporting only one parade route at a time. On the other hand, maybe Chewbacchus really does belong in the pre-season.

After all, Chewbacchus does have a lot in common with the other small scale parades and street happenings that go on in the weeks before the major parades roll.  NOLADotCom art critic Doug MacCash erroneously lumped them together with a few other recently formed parades and marching clubs into something he calls "New Mardi Gras." But there are all sorts of problems with this appellation chief among them being the fact that there's nothing particularly new about the format any of these groups present. Small, independent, maskers and marching clubs have always been a part of Carnival. In fact, the tradition is older than the larger parade style introduced to New Orleans by Comus in the 19th Century.   We have other nits to pick with MacCash on this point but a lot of this ground was covered on the last Hunkerdowncast which you can listen to here if you really want to get into it. Probably the most thoughtful discussion of Chewbacchus and its place in the Carnival continuity came from this Jules Bentley article in 2015.

I'm still not clear on MacCash's motivation, though. A lot of the time it seems like he's deliberately trolling trolling on behalf of the treps and transplants who do, in fact, comprise much of the Chewbacchus membership. Maybe he's sympathetic to the club's libertarian ethic. Or maybe he just knows this is thing that will get a rise out of people. Just ahead of Chewbacchus, Doug ran with speculation sourced  to one of the Krewe's "Overlords" about the possibility of carrying ads in the parade. 

This year, for the first time, the Chewbacchus parade may include banners or other advertisements for local breweries and distilleries that are sponsors of the krewe. A city ordinance prohibits advertisements of any kind during the officially designated Carnival Parade Season (from the second Friday before Mardi Gras, through Mardi Gras day). But Overlord Ethridge points out that since the Chewbacchus parade falls outside of those dates, it’s legal to display ads.

Anyway, she said, Chewbacchus is actually a church that venerates the “Sacred Drunken Wookiee.” So alcohol is a sort of sacred sacrament and therefore alcohol ads are simpatico.

That touched off the predictable half day or so of yelling on Twitter until someone could follow up with the krewe to discover that, no, they weren't really serious. Was that what MacCash intended? or was it just a stupid accident?  Maybe we'll never know. Sound off in the comments.

Rex dumped Kern


Fancy shop sells fancy things to fancy people


This is going to be the last year of the longstanding relationship between the King Of Carnival and his float builder.  They will celebrate the occasion by staring into the sun together.

After this Mardi Gras, a different float-building company will take on the Rex parade floats after the Rex Organization and Kern Studios decided to end their partnership, according to a WWL-TV report.

Kern Studios has constructed the King of Carnival's floats for more than 65 years. After this year's Rex parade rolls with the theme "Visions of the Sun," another company will take on the task for at least the next five years, WWL-TV reported.

The WWL story doesn't pin down a reason for the split. We do know the Kern family isn't quite as stable as it once was but to say anything on top of that would be speculating. Also I couldn't help notice we got some comments from "Rex Organization official James Reiss."

"We're extremely proud to for 68 years to have had the backing of Kern artists in creating what we think is one of the premier parades during N.O. carnival," said Rex Organization official James Reiss. "As all business relationships do, they mature. We're extremely proud that Kern has now taken New Orleans Carnival not just to other krewes but internationally to places like China,  to Universal Studios. As they have grown, we think that we've been a big part of that growth. We're happy to see what they've done. It's just time for the two organizations to move on. It's really just an internal business decision. We're both very good friends and will remain so."

Yeah, well, good for them.  The thing is, we can't let Reiss's name pop up without mentioning again his role, and that of his peers, in realizing the vision of a new New Orleans, Reiss so helpfully laid out for us in the days after Katrina.

More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St. Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful business circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in 2002.

A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.

He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Yeah, well, good for them, too. They got everything they wanted. The schools are all charters, the "demographics" have shifted, the city is smaller, whiter, and fewer poor people can afford to live here.  And, from the looks of things, our political leadership is fairly satisfied with that. This week, the City Planning Commission considered the results of a study on affordable housing set asides that appears to recommend taking little or no action.

Forcing developers to add lower-cost apartments to their residential projects would be difficult to implement outside of New Orleans' most sought-after neighborhoods, and it likely would create only a few dozen lower-priced units per year, according to a study commissioned by the City Council.

The local housing market is strong enough to support an affordable-housing mandate, known as "inclusionary zoning," only in areas such as the Central Business District and the French Quarter, said the study, a summary of which was released Tuesday.

As we've pointed out numerous times here, inclusionary zoning and developer incentives aren't going to protect our neighborhoods from displacement and gentrification anyway. To do that we need to build actual public housing and, very likely, to implement some sort of rent control policy. By admitting that "the market" isn't going to solve the problem for us, this study actually confirms this. That isn't what the CPC wants to hear, of course. And it's certainly not what they'll hear from any of the Rex Organization men. Maybe if something happened to displace them from their homes they might finally be able to empathize just a little bit.  But probably not.


A black wreath lain on the fencepost at the now ruined Downman Mansion. Rex is still going to stop here on Fat Tuesday.

There's all kinds of king cakes now


Also available in vodka form

King cakes used to be such a prime topic for hot takes.  Do you eat them out of season?  Do you like them filled or plain? Should the baby come in the cake or separately in the box?  Is your neighborhood bakery doing it wrong?

Most recently, I think, the thing that got everyone excited was the Dong Phuong fad and associated manufactured scarcity.  But I think it's time to declare that over now.  There also was a time when everyone enjoyed freaking out over the newest weird flavor with like... tomato sauce and pretzels on it or whatever.  But the process of one-upsmanship has become so baroque now that there are a million varieties and none of them can stand out anymore.  Do whatever you want with your king cake. Nobody is shocked. Nothing matters. 

The only sane move is to stick to basics.  So in light of that, here is a perfectly cromulent king cake guide from NOLA.com.  These are all good recommendations. I am still partial to Antoine's, though.

City government is saving Mardi Gras but also it is ruining Mardi Gras


A civilization rises on Napoleon Avenue


God bless Mayor Cantrell.  She has picked up and expanded on the previous administration's recent emphasis on reminding parade goers to share the public space and not obstruct it with too many ladders and tents and chairs and such. We here at the Yellow Blog have observed this problem closely for many years. We've even appeared in the local media from time to time advocating for change. It's gratifying to see the city take it seriously.

They've made it a major point in the annual get-ready-for-Carnvial press conference. 

The city will also be taking a hard line against those who leave items on the parade routes to try to reserve preferred spots.

Workers will clear away items such as tarps and ladders left along the routes, Parks and Parkways Director Ann McDonald said.

"We will not store items," she said. "We will not tag items. Any items that we remove will be destroyed.”

The "will be destroyed" comment got a lot of attention this week because LaToya repeated it as city workers charged down the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground making good on the threat. But it's worth noting this was the policy from the outset.  Anyway the beatings will have to continue until morale improves because people really do need to be forcefully reminded about these issues every year.  My personal observation has been that, while the enforcement effort has done some good, it hasn't obviated the problem entirely.  This week, the parade route is still tightly walled with tents, ladders, and those dang festival chairs that seem to get worse every year. If people would just put them in the back where they belong everyone would be able to move around and..... well, you've heard all this from me before.

A few weeks ago, this story got passed around about a guy offering to camp out and "save a spot" for on the neutral ground. 10 ft. by 10ft. for $2,000! This is supposed to be a free and open public celebration.  We can't allow the very public spaces dedicated to that purpose become walled off and monetized.

There is something else the city could do to decrease the high demand for real estate.  The city could allow the party to spread back out into the neighborhoods it once belonged in rather than bottle it all up along one corridor like the over-leveed Mississippi River.  One reason the St. Charles route is crowded beyond capacity with campers and ladders is it's more or less the only place anyone can go to catch a parade anymore.  It wasn't always like this as a recent Gambit commentary noted.

Older New Orleanians remember seeing the krewes of Endymion and Pontchartrain rolling through Gentilly and New Orleans East, respectively. The Krewe of Mid-City's unique, foil-wrapped floats once used to delight people in … Mid-City. And the Krewes of Freret and Carrollton used to roll down (you guessed it) Freret Street and Carrollton Avenue, respectively.

The concentration of parades on St. Charles Avenue makes things easier for the city, especially for our manpower-challenged police department, but it has taken something away from New Orleans' neighborhoods. Carnival season is a party we put on for ourselves, and it's time to ask: Can we move a few parades back to their neighborhoods?

We could move a few parades back to their neighborhoods. But the city doesn't want that. The police don't want it.  But the police and Homeland Security don't think we should be doing any of this in the first place and only tolerate it insofar as it benefits the tourism industry.  But our holidays are about more than the most crass and efficient means of turning a profit.  We're never going to put things right if all we do is listen to the police and wealthy few they serve and protect. And we're never going to solve the route overcrowding problem until we see that.

More Mardi Gras Guide to come:

Part 2: Racism, politics, and Carnival con artists

Part 3: The parade ratings matrix

The Fly is Chinatown

A few weeks ago we played our annual flag football game out at The Fly. Sadly for fans of the legendary Vibrio Vulnificus Football Club, things did not go especially well for our heroes. The previously undefeated Vibrios were done in by a lack of preparation combined with just plain being a bunch of old dudes.  Given the week of soreness immediately following the game, there isn't a single one of us who would blame the recently cut [CORRECTION soon to be cut] Marques Colston if he just decided to call it a career.

Still it was a nice day for it. Sunday afternoon at The Fly is quite busy with families and neighbors, picnickers and soccer players, or just anyone there to hang out. Ron Forman says he needs to fence a big part of it off, though. 

Plans for a soccer complex at the The Fly are on hold, as backers hold talks with opponents of the $4 million project.

The Carrollton Boosters, a youth sports nonprofit seeking to build the complex on the Riverview section of Audubon park, already has approval for the project from the Audubon Commission, but the group has agreed not to begin construction until it has heard the public's concerns, said Ron Forman, head of the Audubon Nature Institute.

"It's a short term pause to see input on how we can improve the project," Forman said in a phone interview Tuesday (Feb. 23).

The Audubon Commission is the public body that manages the park for the city of New Orleans and is vested with decision making power over the park. The Audubon Nature Institute, a private nonprofit partner, serves as the commission's staff.

To visitors on any given Sunday, it isn't clear what amenities these "improvements" would provide that don't already exist. There are already soccer fields.  Stupor Bowl 3 made use of one of them with no difficulty. There's already adequate parking. Even though there were lots of people using the fields, we didn't have to pay a rental fee because the space was not made scarce by fencing.  We brought plenty of beer so we didn't have to buy concessions from anyone.  This is different from what Forman and the Boosters are envisioning. 

The commission approved a cooperative endeavor agreement last spring with Carrollton Boosters, granting them the right to develop the soccer complex on Audubon land. Under the agreement, the Carrollton Boosters are vested with managerial authority over the complex and entitled to any revenue it produces from concessions and rentals.

The plans call for a full-sized soccer field, to be in enclosed by a fence, bleachers, a press box, a new concessions building, a playground and two parking lots. The 2.5 acre field would be the only area not open to the public at all times, but the full footprint of the project would occupy more than six acres, a sizable chunk of the 40-acre riverfront park. A large swath of the park is already dedicated to a cluster of baseball diamonds and a trio of soccer fields.

So that seems unnecessary.... for anyone who doesn't stand to make a little money off of the deal, anyway.  Naturally some folks who do not were upset. 

A group of New Orleans residents are banding together to oppose a plan that would expand sports facilities on The Fly in Audubon Park and put the new facilities under the control of a private booster club.

"There has been a lot of concern over what is being considered the taking over of the only wide, green space on the river," said Bill Ives, one of the development's opponents. "We think it should be preserved as a unique resource. There are many places in the city where a sports complex can go."

An online petition opposing the development had 3,800 signatures Monday evening (Feb. 15).

The most contentious part of the new development is the conversion of 2.5 acres of open green space into a tournament-grade soccer field and parking lots. The new facility would be placed under the management of Carrollton Boosters, which is footing the project's $4 million price tag.

Okay wait  a minute. That's not exactly correct.  Technically it may be okay to say the Boosters are "footing the $4 million." But, really, most of it is coming from Tom Benson. 

The $4 million price-tag for the project is being footed by the booster club, which solicited donations from foundations and wealthy individuals, including Saints owner Tom Benson and Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

It should be worth noting that Benson's donation benefits not only his friends in the Boosters but also Ron Forman. In recent years, Forman sat on the board of the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District which is the public entity directly responsible for overseeing Benson's extraordinarily favorable lease on the Superdome and adjacent properties.

Who should we turn to in order to report this obviously inappropriate political kickback? What about our friends at the Bureau of Governmental Research?  They're always keen to weigh in on stuff that seems fishy.  Who is over there we could talk to? Let's ask Treasurer J. Storey Charbonnet. He ought to know how to follow the money for us. Certainly shouldn't be any problem for him also sitting on the Carrollton Boosters board of directors the way he does.  Charbonnet happens to be an Audubon Institute commissioner on top of that so, you know,  connections all over the place. When the reporters check back in on the story I really think this is the guy to talk to.

Probably you see where this is going. Probably you're about to say, "But Jeffrey, we can't rely on Charbonnet or his friends at BGR to offer us an unbiased analysis of Forman and Benson's shuffling of money back and forth. These organizations are all just different combinations of the same elites covering for each other."

Well you had better hold your horses there, bub. Stacy Head says that kind of talk is out of line.

Councilman James Gray and Councilwoman Stacy Head, however, argued that more space is needed for organized youth recreation.

Head blasted some speakers for attacks on members of the commission and the booster club, saying that claims of profiteering from the project or elitism in the organization were out of line.

Maybe we should just listen to Stacy. After all, everyone knows the work done by our city's elite organizations and non profits is always strictly "Pro Bono Publico"

“The generosity of those donating to such a worthy cause has been tremendous as the Pro Bono Publico Foundation hits this $1 million milestone,” said Foundation Chairman Storey Charbonnet. “We’ve seen continued annual growth in contributions to help invest in our community’s future by promoting a strong educational environment for children.”

The grants exemplify PBPF’s drive to assure that all of New Orleans’ children have access to excellent schools. Ninety-three percent of New Orleans students now attend public charter schools. These schools, and organizations supporting their important work, have been the focus of PBPF’s investment, as well as the commitment of dozens of Rex members serving on their boards.

The Pro Bono Publico Foundation was formed by members of the Rex Organization as New Orleans recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Foundation giving, in its ninth grant cycle since 2007, now totals $4.4 million in cumulative cash contributions to schools.

Forget about it, yall. The Fly is Chinatown.

Seriously, consider moving Orpheus to Tuesday night

Otherwise, look what we have to do to entertain ourselves

Lords of Misrule

The post-Katrina decade has been a decade of wish fulfillment for our city's gentry.  It has been a "Shock Doctrine" style recovery where a crisis provides the opportunity for a dismantling of the social contract and the building of the less diverse and more exclusive resort town the city's upper classes only dreamed of previously.  

In other words it has been the Pres Kabacoff decade.

New Orleans is transforming. The city's poorly constructed levees meant that when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, it devastated the city, bringing in floodwaters that forced out residents and flattened neighborhoods. It also created an opportunity for developers and politicians to remake it anew. After the storm, New Orleans was often described as a "blank slate," which was problematic given hundreds of thousands of residents still lived within city limits. But for those who could afford to buy, demolish, and build, the term held some truth to it.

One of those people is Pres Kabacoff. He's one of the city's largest developers. His development company, HRI Properties, is focused on "inner-city revitalization" and he's done everything from convert loft buildings to develop entire neighborhoods from scratch in cities across the country—including St. Louis and Dallas. Kabacoff has a vision for New Orleans that has made him the center of a lot of controversy; he wants to see it "revitalized," which for many longtime residents and critics is just another term for gentrification.

It's sad that pointing to examples of Kabacoff being terrible is starting to feel kind of boring.  We've been at that for a long while now.  I suppose it's something that gentrification critics like Peter Moskowitz a) exist at all and b) are finally seeing what Kabacoff and the "New New Orleans" are all about.   On the other hand, it is at least 10 years too late.  Oh, and it won't make any difference.  I guess it will sell some books so that's nice.

Anyway, here is Kabacoff, for like the millionth time, saying again in public that the best way for cities to tackle poverty is to get rid of all the poor people.

The trick is to get market rate to come. The affordable will come. But if the market rate doesn't come, you end up with all the affordable and the issues they tried to unwind with these programs like Hope VI. On the affordable side, probably a third of those people you would love to have as your neighbor, another third—the kind of people who if their refrigerator stops working their life falls apart—if you can get them stable, you want them, and a third you just don't have the social staff to deal with the issues they're bringing to the table.

When we do developments, it's usually its one-third market, one-third workforce, and one-third former public housing—mothers with children on food stamps and all that stuff. There's a mixture of people. How do we afford to do the affordable piece? You need a lot of subsidy.

How well is your fridge working?  Because if that's a question that worries you in the least, Pres thinks you probably ought not to live here anymore. Again, none of this is new ground for Kabacoff or for the political class who listen to and work closely with him.  It is embedded deeply in the city's long political history of racial and class animus. Katrina provided the plutocracy with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do some things that were not politically possible before then. Kabacoff admits that freely.

How did Katrina remake New Orleans' housing model?

There's always a question of dollars—you get less rent, your building costs aren't different, so you need subsidy. The city got a lot from Katrina and BP. About $100 billion came through here after Katrina. That's juice that no other city really got. What we did is went to the state and federal government in concern; we knew the federal government would dump money here and without it we wouldn't be sitting here today. But we were concerned that they would just create housing projects again and concentrate the poor and we would be right back to where we were, which was a declining city. So I tried to influence the federal government to increase the tax incentive for affordable housing so it so it wasn't just for people making 60 percent of median income but 120 percent. That worked. Now, instead of making $20,000 you could make $40,000 to $50,000 in affordable housing, just to have a broader group, so when you did use subsidies you'd not only be dealing with the very poor but the working and middle classes.

Our policy choice in urban development has been to redirect funds away from combating poverty and providing services and instead put them towards subsidizing for-profit real estate development.  This is the essence of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" theory.  Where a crisis like Katrina could have been an  opportunity for societal soul-searching and a commitment to rebuilding a community that works for everyone, it was instead an opening for grifters to make off with a greater share for themselves. And, of course, for a city's Ancien Regime of plutocrats to settle some old scores.

I'd love to talk about how darned clever it was.  But the truth is anyone who knew anything about the city's politics prior to Katrina knew exactly what was going to happen.  On September 9, 2005, for example, I noticed this quote from James Reiss.. which really should be more famous than it is.

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Before, Katrina, removing "the teeming underclass" was not something that could have been accomplished politically.  There were too many of  us and enough of us still voted. But with a crisis... with a "blank slate" mandate, all sorts of things became possible.

Suddenly you could just fire all the teachers and replace them with a byzantine system privatized education. Rather than pay any sort of political price, the architects of such a coup find themselves lavished with the highest of pseudo-civic honors.

"Of course, (being Rex) is tremendous to one's ego, but when you really put it in perspective, you see a continuum of those who have preceded you and those who come after you. ... My job is to uphold the traditions of the Rex organization but to keep it relevant for today and tomorrow."

The best example of that latter attribute, Hales said, is the Pro Bono Publico Foundation, which is the outgrowth of a December 2005 email from Brown in which he wondered about ways to give Rex a significant role in rebuilding a city that had been battered by Hurricane Katrina and then drowned when the levees failed.

The foundation takes its name from Rex's motto, which means "For the Public Good" in Latin. Since 2007, the foundation, which receives nearly all its money from members' donations, has given more than $3.5 million in grants to charter schools, charter-management organizations and other education-related initiatives.

"That doesn't just have Christy's fingerprints; it has Christy's heart," Hales said. "How good is that?"

Because the foundation was started as New Orleans was struggling to recover, Hales likened Brown to the businessmen who founded the Rex organization during the grim days of Reconstruction.

They say this city is changing. But in some ways, it's the same as it has ever been since "the grim days of Reconstruction."  Then, as now, wherever you find the white upper class reasserting itself in New Orleans, you can be sure to find Rex's fingerprints and heart involved in that somewhere.

Happy Mardi Gras. Let's hope the King's ride isn't too chilly.

Carnival links: Re-routed parades, recycled throws, and ridiculous king cakes

Parade season is upon us.  I don't know why, but for some reason I'm convinced that this is going to be an especially good one. Here's what's going on this week.

• KDV changed their route.
  
  
  
  Then they changed it again! Appropriate anyway, given this year's theme. The route published in the newsletter (above) is different from the one they're actually going to take (see the Gambit article in the link.)
  

  Krewe du Vieux “Begs for Change” when it rolls at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the Faubourg Marigny, French Quarter and CBD. The satirical and risque krewe typically picks themes with a double meaning, but this one is more socially conscious than usual.
  
  “The double meaning is the proliferation of the people on the street corners holding up signs all over the place but the other side of it is hoping for social and political change,” Krewe du Vieux Captain Joe Thompson said.
  
  Among the 17 subkrewe variations on the theme, The Krewe of Underwear “Bulldozes for Change,” taking on the issue of hipster gentrification. The Krewe of T.O.K.I.N. “Burns (One) for Change,” arguing that Louisiana should “put the bud in the budget” and legalize cannabis.
  
  The krewe is following a new parade route. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the parade will cross Canal Street, enter the Warehouse District and end at the Civic Theatre

  Just don't tell our city councilpersons about all the aggressive panhandling.
  
  
  
• One day prior to KDV, a much worse event will take place.



There's no word on whether any cat fights factored into the decision-making process — or whether any scratch marks were left — but the royalty has been settled for the all-feline Krewe of Endymeow for its 13th annual Bal Masque on Friday, Jan. 30, at The Cat Practice Veterinary Hospital in the Lower Garden District, according to a press release.

Carnival for cats. It's really better in concept than in practice... and it's a pretty terrible concept at that.  On the other hand, if your cat likes to party...






• And, of course, if you're looking for an even worse krewe to hang around with, there's always the Rex organization. This year's Rex parade is all about how great war is.. or something like that anyway.



The 2015 Rex procession, which rolls on Mardi Gras (Feb. 17), will include 27 floats on the theme of "Wars that Shaped Early America." The current Rex bulletin, reproduced here, shows artist's renderings of the floats.

Full-size Rex bulletins, which measure 19 inches by 25 inches, are sold through the Rex organization website. Bulletins from past years cost $30.


I don't want to shell out $30 just for a preview of a parade.  I'm guessing there's one about the "War of Northern Aggression" in there somewhere.  Rex also made this announcement last week.


NEW ORLEANS - The King of Carnival will ride the rails, and not the river, when he makes his Lundi Gras arrival by train this year instead of by water, the Rex Organization announced Tuesday.
Since 1987 (though the practice harkens back to the 19th century), Rex has arrived at the Mississippi Riverfront at Spanish Plaza, via Coast Guard cutter, at 6 p.m. on Lundi Gras.

This year, on Lundi Gras, the King will arrive by train – reviving a tradition that Rex archivist Dr. Stephen Hales says dates back to the mid-1880s.

"He's going to revisit an old tradition, long since forgotten," Hales said. "He'll arrive by train, a specially decorated train car pushed by the N.O. Public Belt Railroad will arrive at Riverwalk. The King of Carnival and his entourage will emerge, greet the crowds, greet the mayor, proclaim Carnival and receive the keys to the city."

Trying to get as much use out of that N.O. Public Belt as possible before Mitch sells it off to John Georges's father-in-law, I guess.



• Here's a list of the top 10 revenue generators among Carnival krewes. City Biz loves to kiss the asses of these clubs. Which is why you end up with bullshit like this. 
  

  An analysis on the most recent tax documents available provides a glimpse at the prolific spending of Carnival krewes. What it doesn’t show is the revenue they direct to charitable causes.
  
  The Rex organization, for example, provided more than $860,000 in grants to charter schools and educational groups, through its Pro Bono Publico Foundation.

  Yeah, hey, thank you, Rex, for profoundly fucking up the very concept of public education in New Orleans... for the good of the public, of course.  There's also this factoid.
  
  

  Non-parading Krewe Momus (disappeared after non-discrim ord) has $1.48m in assets. Richest Krewe? Endymion. http://t.co/tSYkxirerF
  — Andrew Tuozzolo (@ATuozzolo) January 29, 2015

  
  
  Momus doesn't parade anymore because they never got over that War of Northern Aggression that Shaped America.  But it's more or less an open secret that the Knights of Chaos is their parade.  Chaos uses the Momus floats and their membership is basically Momus, from what I understand, anyway. Wonder how the money gets moved between organizations, though. City Business isn't likely to tell us. 




• Riders, do you have all your beads, yet?   The timing is getting weird.
  

  NEW ORLEANS - A labor dispute in California is turning into a possible Carnival crisis. Delays at a Los Angeles port has thousands of signature Mardi Gras beads on back order and local businesses are now concerned the throws will not make it in time for Mardi Gras.
  
  Krewes spend all year making, designing and buying throws for Mardi Gras, but right now much of that is just sitting in containers on the West Coast.
  
  "It's about 20 percent of what we would normal bring in that is not here now," says Dan Kelly, president of Beads By The Dozen. "Unfortunately, a lot of it is the custom product we need for the krewes."

  On the positive side, recent years have brought a build up of rumblings about the quantity of non-biodegradable plastic beads that get tossed around every year.  Maybe this is an excuse to cut back a bit.
  
  
  
  Several krewes, like Chewbaccus here, have begun a deliberate movement toward fewer but more interesting hand-crafted throws made from recycled or recyclable material.  Riders also have come to rely more and more on organizations like Arc of New Orleans, who collect and recycle beads each year, for the bulk of their throws.
  
  Arc rolls these bins behind many parades.  If you're not taking yours home, consider tossing them back.
  
  




• The wacky king cake trend has reached such levels of baroque absurdity that it no longer does any good to question whether or not a thing is real.  If it can be imagined, it exists.  Take, for instance, this week's king cake mini-fad: Boudin.
  

  "I saw it, and I thought, 'Why not?' It was a spur of the moment thing," said Steve Himelfarb, the owner of Cake Café, and arguably the godfather of modern king cakes in New Orleans. He made a dozen mini king cakes filled with boudin and topped with crunchy bacon.
  
  At 7:45 a.m., the Cake Café Facebook page posted a photo of one of them, and credited his inspiration, the boudin-filled and cracklin topped king cake conceived by Robert Carriker, who runs BoudinLink.com and kingcaker.com out of Lafayette. The boudin-stuffed king cake he conceived took social media by storm on Tuesday morning.
  
  BoudinLink.com replied: "That is awesome. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - and we appreciate the recognition!"

  Did you get that?  A guy made a boudin king cake but then had to stop and give credit because, come to find out, someone else had already made a boudin king cake.  And hey, that's not all.  You might think that should be all. But it is not.  
  

  Himelfarb said they do not bake other savory king cakes, but for their small catering gigs - they have several this weekend for Krewe de Vieux parties -- they make stuffed breads. One is filled with muffuletta ingredients, one with vegetables and one with roasted pork.

  Actually the savory king cake genre has been explored previously.  Here's a meat pie cake that looks pretty good.
  
  Muffuletta king cakes, though.  Is your mind blown?  Well you are too slow because it turns out this has also been done.
  
  
  
  No satire too outlandish that it can't also be real.  Welcome to Carnival 2015. If you don't like it, you can stay in Mobile.

Mommie Dearest

Not creepy at all

Like her mother years before, Carroll found out about her honor on a family trip to Perdido Bay, Ala. But first, Carroll had to get there.


“I woke up 15 minutes before my flight. So I called my mother, and she asked: ‘Are you at the gate?’ When I told her I had missed my flight, she started screaming so loud that my roommate asked if someone was dying.”

Carroll made the next flight, all the while wondering why her mother was so stressed. When she arrived in Alabama and got settled, her mother said, “We need to talk.”


“I’m thinking I’m in big trouble, but instead my mother hands me a photo of her as Queen of Carnival, but with a cutout of my head over hers,” Carroll said. “She then read a poem asking if I accepted. And of course I did!”

Gah!

Did somebody say boil order?

Coach Ryan takes Sunday's boil order in stride. (Image via The Hayride)

For the third time in less than four years, the city found itself under a boil water order Sunday as, according to S&WB statements, a fire in a natural gas line affected one of the boilers. Here is Gambit's video of Sunday's brief press conference where Marcia St. Martin tells us about the "berler" which may also have been affected.




For the third time, S&WB officials have singled out their plant's antiquated power system as the source of their problem.

The S&WB's aging power plant has seen better days. Built in 1903, it flooded heavily during Hurricane Katrina, suffering damage that has led power outages and boil water warnings becoming more frequent in recent years, including a 41-hour advisory in November 2010 and another 25-hour one in October. Both were linked to steam boiler problems at the plant.

Debate is raging about how to fix the plant, which generates a rare type of energy known as 25-cycle, or 25-Hertz, electricity. It relies on steam heated by natural gas to power most of the city's ancient pump stations. More modern pump stations, such as those east of the Industrial Canal, rely on more common 60-cycle electricity, the power type supplied by Entergy.

During discussions that led to major rate hikes last year for water and sewer services to businesses and residences, a taskforce of outside engineers and consultants determined that the S&WB should focus on converting the power plant fully to self-generated 60-cycle power. The current gas-to-steam system has too many opportunities for failure, taskforce spokesman Jeff Thomas said Monday.

"At any point along the way there, something can go wrong," he said, "which it has."
The task force, led by former S&WB member Gary Solomon, recommends that the station's four turbines be fueled directly by heat from natural gas, removing steam from the system. Older pump stations should be outfitted with converters that switch 60-cycle electricity to 25-cycle, Thomas said.

Click here for an image of the Rex Bulletin from 1903.  Not many people know this but the parade's theme that year, the somewhat bland "Feasts and Fetes" was originally going to be "Hurrah for 25-cycle power!" but Krewe members re-thought this out of concern over alienating visitors with a too-provincial NOLA-centric subject. "As we all know, tourism is the lifeblood of our city," said sugar refining magnate J.Thornwell Witherspoon who reigned as Rex that year, "and there's also the national Rex brand to think about."

Kidding aside, the modernization of the water and drainage system was a significant achievement of civil engineering.  Among several improvements, it made possible the eradication of one of New Orleans's major pre-20th century bogeymen 

The last Yellow Fever epidemic in the United States struck New Orleans in 1905, which was the same year that doctors working at Walter Reed Hospital discovered the link between mosquitoes and Yellow Fever. With an understanding of the disease, New Orleans officials were able to fight it, primarily by ordering that all cisterns be covered.

And with dependable running water available, the obsolete cisterns were steadily decommissioned. Now, in the early 21st Century, we're seeing this infrastructure begin to reach the end of its life cycle.  Yesterday, on the tweeter tube I sorta joked that the modern response to this problem would probably entail some sort of misguided green-foodie "well-your-own-water" trend.  Turns out such a thing has already been proposed.

Several homes in the two most advanced green communities—the Make It Right development spearheaded by actor Brad Pitt, and Global Green, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s project just a few miles south in the Lower Ninth Ward’s Holy Cross neighborhood—have 1,000-gallon underground cisterns to collect New Orleans’ copious rainwater. The plan was to use solar energy to pump water from the cisterns into a separate plumbing system that would be used to flush toilets.

But the state of Louisiana has outlawed such cistern and non-potable water use for nearly a century, and has not changed its stance, citing public health concerns. The law was written when mosquito-borne illnesses such as yellow fever washed through the area like a storm surge, according to Lousiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) Clyde Carlson, a district engineer who now finds himself in the middle of a water re-use debate in New Orleans.

A Fear of Water
The historic fear was that poorly maintained water systems would serve as breeding grounds for infected mosquitoes, contributing to the spread of disease, Carlson explains.

While yellow fever is no longer a threat, West Nile virus is, says Gordon Austin, chief of environmental affairs at the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, which would administer any water re-use programs at the city level.

But until the whole city turns water vigilante and we all die of West Nile, we can only express the utmost confidence that the S&WB task force will get this worked out given the can-do quality of its leadership and the resources it will have at its disposal.  And if not, at least it's still crawfish season.

 Update: Did I confuse Gary Solomon with George Solomon in that last bit? Yes I believe I did. Mea Culpa. Been not feeling so well today anyway.. although I don't think it's the water.

You know it's Carnival time when...

The Rex organization is suing somebody.

Pro Bono Privato

Rex Organization donates half a million dollars to local efforts to privatize education, hosts a party for union-busting Teach For America members because.. well.. because they are Rex and that's the sort of thing they do.

In a related matter, here's a link to last week's Frontline on education reform con-artist Michelle Rhee in case you missed it.

One moment that stands out is this bit where Rhee makes a mockery of the practice of open government.

JOHN MERROW: With no time to waste, Rhee had been criss-crossing the district, talking about ways to improve the schools. But she kept her most controversial proposal under wraps, closing two dozen half-empty schools, schools that were draining the system of resources.

MICHELLE RHEE: It would have been extraordinarily unwise of me to have started this process by saying, “So I’m going to close some schools. What do you all think?” I would lose faith immediately in that person. You have to have a vision. You have to have a strategy. You have to have methodology, and then data. Then people can react to that once it’s laid out.

JOHN MERROW: But her proposal was leaked to The Washington Post. The next six weeks were all about damage control as Rhee tried to explain the proposed closures to angry parents.

MICHELLE RHEE: The bottom line is that we made the proposal, which was a proposal. We wanted to have a number of community forums during which we could hear people’s input.

A lot of the decisions that I’m going to be making, as long as I’m chancellor, are going to raise this kind of opposition. For me, it’s about the fact that if we make these decisions now, and we take on the people who are not in favor of it now, what it will result in is greater resources quicker for kids in classrooms. And that to me is way more important than how many nights I have to sit around getting yelled at.

Obviously Rhee doesn't actually value any of the "input" she's soliciting at the forums if she is withholding relevant information up front.  We see this sort of empty outreach PR exercise all the time.  Mayor Landrieu's community budget hearings are a good local example. We also see Rhee's arrogant style emulated in Louisiana Education Superintendent John White's use of "deliberative process privilege" exception to state open records law.

The proliferation of such arrogance depends, in part, on belief in a "Great Man/Woman" theory of government where one righteous sounding butt kicker enters into an arena full of incompetents and evildoers and "fixes" everything through force of will.

Despite the stereotypes and prejudices we've developed in recent years, front line employees are not overwhelmingly incompetent or evil.  But the "Great Person" who trades on those prejudices is almost always a grifter. Rhee's con revolves around using standardized test scores as a pretense to abuse as many bogeyman teachers as possible.  She may say it's all about "greater resources quicker for kids in classrooms" but that doesn't seem to be the overriding factor for her in measuring results.

The placing of these two states (Louisiana and Florida) at the top of the list is curious. StudentsFirst gave higher ratings to states that emphasized the use of charter schools and teacher evaluations based on high-stakes testing. But her organization ignored actual results. For example, it gave a “D” rating — the second-worst — to Massachusetts, which has some of the highest test scores on the  National Assessment of Educational Progress exam.

There is one thing that Florida and Louisiana have in common — they are among the worst states for teacher compensation. Florida in 2011 ranked 47th in the country for teacher salaries. Louisiana’s average teacher salary is 42nd in the country.

By and large what we currently call a "reform" movement in education is funded by elites, executed by grifters, and aimed, not at improving this essential public service but at looting it.  Much of what's being looted is coming directly out of the pockets of teachers. Which is one reason you see so many of them trying to escape now.

Tuesday digest

Busy and tired today so not a lot of Yellow Blog going on. Obviously we don't have the game re-cap ready but Wang has one (or part of one) up which is what you should be reading anyway.

I can report that there lots and lots of Bears fans sitting near us. They were a little scary at first but seemed to become more and more tame as the game went on for some reason. One of them even let us have a prize which the kids are holding up in the picture below. By the end of the day she just didn't want it anymore.



Let's see, what else is there today? Oh look oil on the sea floor doesn't degrade. What's the matter? Is it no longer Magic Microbe season?

Okay next thing.. um. Oh, going on right now! The Lens is hosting a live web stream of a community forum about conditions at Orleans Parish Prison. I'm told you can access the video by clicking here.

Also, there's this.



I call it T.P. Rex. I hope King Logan doesn't sue me because of that.

Finally, today is the official repeal of DADT. Consult your internets for news stories like this one on the event. There's an informal gathering this evening in the Quarter to commemorate the passing of this singularly stupid policy. I'm planning to drop by there for a while but not for too long as I'm exhausted. And on that note, I think that's enough for now. More football later in the week. Try to stay out of any bar fights in the meantime.

Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar

We're still a month away from the major Carnival events but some of us are starting to get into it a bit already. On Twelfth Night, we dutifully stood on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground with a glass of wine long enough to record this 16 seconds of dark phone video of the Phunny Phorty Phellows streetcar ride.



The Pussyfooters Blush Ball is this Saturday night at the Howlin Wolf. Tickets are $35.00 at the door. The ball and accompanying raffle raise money for the Metropolitan Center for Women and Children which is a non-profit organization providing services to victims of domestic violence. Plus the ball is an all-around good time. Last year, we were there to take in the debut public performance of the now famous 610 Stompers.



Meanwhile, I'm sifting through recent years of photos. These are all of Rex making his majesty's royal pee break and toast at the Downman House on St. Charles and Third. (For some reason my Flickr account is missing 2006 and 2007 right now. Will update if I find these pictures at home)

REX 2005 (photo by Daisy)



REX 2008



REX 2009



REX 2010 (note the Saints flag)

Flying the Flags

It's Carnival season once again. This is a picture of the Downman House at the corner of St. Charles Ave and Third Street this morning. The flags indicate the household's "royal" lineage. Because this is the only home of a former Rex currently on the Uptown parade route, Rex crosses the street and stops here for a toast on Fat Tuesday.



I wrote some more about the "Old Line Krewes" and their flags in this post last year.