The beatings will continue until morale improves

For those of you who were wondering what would happen to Bobby Jindal if he didn't get assumed up into a Mitt Romney Administration before the Louisiana he'd set on fire had burned completely to the ground.. well.. here you go.

Just 24 percent of more than Louisiana residents who participated in a recent poll think Gov. Bobby Jindal should run for president in 2016. Of the 603 voters polled by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling, 66 percent said he should not run. 10 percent were undecided. The firm released another poll earlier this week, showing a Jindal approval rating of 37 percent among respondents.

While those results may not bode well for the governor, who very clearly has ambitions beyond his current job, the good news is that both jindal2020.com and jindal2024.com are still available as of this writing.

If the plan was to get off the island sooner than now, though, why isn't Jindal running for Senate? Or maybe there's still time for that.  In the meantime, it's right back to polishing those ideological bona fides. 

Update: And also, right back to the "catastrophic negligence" of our state's most pressing issue. 

In the early days, he was bursting with confidence*

(Getting caught up.  This has been sitting in draft since the Carnival-Superbowl interruption.)

This is a sort of point-counterpoint piece by Stephanie Grace and Clancy Dubos where we delve into the mysteries of  the NOLA punditocracy's favorite parlor game, "Where Did Nagin Go Wrong?"

For what it's worth, I think Grace has a slightly better handle on things than Clancy does. Public perception of Nagin (and especially the image of him cultivated by the media)  may have made a major shift during his second term, but that doesn't mean Nagin himself was ever any different.  Grace and Clancy both seem to understand this now.  Each admits to having been an early supporter. Each admits to that having turned out badly.

The difference is Grace's part of this reads like actual introspection. 

Sure, Katrina changed everything, from his political base to the gravity of the problems he was tasked to solve. But some patterns that emerged later, culminating in accusations that he accepted bribes from several former city contractors-turned-government witnesses, were apparent from the beginning.
 
He did things his own way, played by his own rules, in ways that jibed with his early image as a businessman out to make government more nimble, efficient and responsive. When he trampled the turf of the seven elected assessors and released their data in searchable form, for instance, Nagin revealed just how unfairly the tax burden was distributed. Many observers, myself included, cheered him on.
 
But Nagin also ignored convention in far less productive ways. His administration deleted emails that it was legally required to retain, even though his own city attorney had written a memo outlining the state mandate to preserve records for three years. When pressed, Nagin just shrugged off criticism.

 Whereas Clancy, after all this time, still writes about Nagin with the scorn of a betrayed lover.

For all his talk of “changing the paradigm” at City Hall, former Mayor Ray Nagin’s arc from telegenic reformer to accused crook followed an all-too-familiar plot line: He started out full of ideals and good intentions, and then, step by step, one small seduction and compromise at a time, proceeded down his personal road to perdition.
 
To be sure, some politicians are corrupt when they get in the game. But the more common story line is one of a starry-eyed guy who runs for office to make a difference — a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington tale, if you will, that somehow morphs into Mr. Smith Goes to Jail.

See the man Clancy once held up for his readers as a righteous exemplar of paradigm changing civic reform was gradually seduced away from the light and into something that made Gambit look silly in retrospect.  Clancy isn't saying he was wrong to back Nagin. He's saying Nagin just let him down.

Grace, meanwhile,  is writing about a key characteristic of Nagin's; his iconoclastic personality; which she admits she originally saw as a strength but in reality turned out to be a weakness.

Any creatively can-do instincts Nagin had left, the indictment basically confirms, he put toward setting up himself and his family for life after City Hall. In many ways, he was still the same old Nagin we met back in 2002, the defiant guy who just wasn’t going to be bound by the rules that other people followed. To an older and wiser city, there was nothing funny or charming about it.

I don't always agree with Grace but I do miss her level-headed fact-based politics column in the T-P (especially in comparison to James Varney's cartoon page which has replaced it).  Of the two writers in this piece she's the one less likely to make a similar mistake in the future.

Still, I'm not sure either of them gets the lesson that those of us who didn't buy into Nagin in the first place understood at the time. Ray Nagin was a con man. And, as we've learned over the course of the indictments, he wasn't even a very sophisticated con man.  Sure, he possessed a certain glib charm that even now we all miss a little. These are qualities common to most grifters.  But Nagin's talent, wasn't really so dazzling. Instead, his con was enabled by a buy-in from the local press and other powerbrokers (but mostly the press) based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what elections are for in the first place.

It's a misunderstanding common to the political press although various press persons come to it for a number of reasons.  Some get there out of laziness, some out of an over-inflated concern for appearing impartial, and a certain number get there out of sheer dishonesty.  But whatever the reason, it's the most risk-averse way to write about politics and so becomes the consensus approach.

Every look back at Nagin's early "rock star" days begins and ends with his promise to make city government run more efficiently. Of course everyone wants a government that fulfills its purpose "efficiently" but that isn't the problem elections exist to solve.  Elections, rather, determine what those purposes will be and on whose behalf they will be executed.  Seeing to it that those purposes are executed efficiently and professionally is largely a non-political issue. Or, at least, we try to keep it that way.  It's one reason why we have a Civil Service system that insulates career public servants from political pressures. (Incidentally, our current Mayor is planning to gut this system in the name of "efficiency.")


Simply put Ray Nagin taken at face value was a hollow man. But, by-and-large, Ray Nagin at face value was all that voters were presented with in 2002. The so-called paradigm changing, "outsider"; The reforming efficiency expert promising to "run government like a business"  was essentially asking voters to buy into a politics devoid of any purpose. An election whose theme is "efficient government" is an election that isn't really about anything.  Or it's about something other than what's being presented on the editorial pages. If you want to know "Where it all went wrong" with regard to Ray Nagin, I suggest you look there first.



*

If ever we cease

And yet another Mardi Gras day fades away like the hazy dream they all seem to be.  Of course the rain wasn't a problem.  Of course Rex played that same song over and over. Of course I didn't get a coconut.

 

Carnival 2013 was uneven; at times thrilling, at times frustrating, at times ugly, at times sublimely gorgeous.  I guess, at the end, the thing to say is it was everything it's supposed to be.  For now that will have to be all I say because I am spent.  Luckily I managed to get Ash Wednesday off this year so there should be time to describe it all eventually.  Of course, that's always what I seem to be telling myself.



Anyway, now comes the long and shitty part of the year.  Only seven more months until football season.

The return of Comus

Okay not really. Proteus's theme this year was "Unseen Carnival In New Orleans." Their floats paid homage to the so-called "Old Line" krewes who either never did or no longer do stage parades during Carnival.  These organizations (of which Proteus is one) are primarily debutante societies and supper clubs comprised of the city's bluer blooded families.  Nell Nolan would have adored this parade.

But you don't have to be Nell Nolan to remember that the original New Orleans "krewe" took itself off of the streets in 1992 in a protest of the city's attempt to require parading organizations  to open their membership to all races.  This proved too much to ask of  the club founded by ex-Confederates and the Comus parade has not been seen since.

The club, of course, is doing just fine.  Around this time of year, you can still find its flag flying from the balconies of many a Garden District home.



And, as Peggy Scott Laborde will no doubt enthusiastically tell you, Comus's appearance at the Rex ball signals the "official end of the Carnival season" at midnight on Tuesday.  Yet somehow they just can't bring themselves to bless our poor city with a parade anymore since we hurt their feelings being all mean about their racist little club and all. We seem to be managing okay without them.

Witness, for example, the now 20 year old Krewe of Orpheus.



Itself formed during the aftermath of the anti-discrimination ordinance controversy, Harry Connick Jr.'s club replaced Comus with a celebrity powered "Superkrewe" in the modern Endymion-Bacchus style. Orpheus' immediate hugeness threw into further relief just how out-dated Comus's notions of itself were.  While the Old Line krewes aren't exactly irrelevant to modern Carnival, they're also no longer the sole keepers of what has become an elaborate cross-cultural citywide tapestry of traditions.  They've never quite gotten over that, as Proteus's theme tonight demonstrates.

On a rainy night tonight Orpheus can be a special treat. (And there seem to have been a high number of rainy night Orpheus parades over the years.)  Lundi Gras is a strange time to have a "Superkrewe" parade in the first place. Many folks expecting to start early on Mardi Gras day are taking Monday night off in preparation. The wet conditions only further keep the crowds light... but never too light.



So, if you've got the time and energy to invest in Orpheus, you'll have a great vantage point for a spectacular event.



On the other hand, you might want to take it easy anyway. I cut my Orpheus a little short tonight and got started cutting vegetables instead.  And now it's time to get some rest.  It's been a long and unusual Carnival this year due to the Superbowl interruption. But in most other respects it's been exactly what we're used to. Highs and lows, familiar scenes, and strange surprises both good and bad.  But overall I think it's been good.  And now there's one more day. We'll try to let that be a good one too.

More to come

Carnival tends to consume everything especially at my place where I'll be straightening the house and chopping vegetables tonight for tomorrow's red beans.

 

Plenty more parading stuff to come as soon as I get to it.  Happy Lundi Gras.

Please don't rain on this

Might be able to squeeze the day parades in Sunday. Gonna try anyway.

Sunday, February 10, 2013
Okeanos, Mid-City and Thoth are all planning to roll at their regular scheduled times with Okeanos preparing to start 30 minutes early at 10:30am, allowing Mid-City and Thoth to follow. All three parades will follow their normal route until they reach Canal Street, at which point they will turn right with traffic towards the river to their normal disband area.

Bacchus will be staged and ready for their normal start of 5:15pm, however if all elements are in place they will start earlier than their normal 5:15pm time.

 Thoth den last weekend. It's a big parade.  Would be a shame not to put it on the streets.

Parade culture

Still not sure Ronal Serpas gets it. 

Serpas on Thursday said there is little his officers can do to prevent every person on a parade route from breaking those laws. He said a parade culture has developed in which people believe they are entitled to essentially live on the neutral ground for parades.

While he said his officers often ask people to move ladders or to remove furniture, they comply but replace the items once the officers have left the area.

One aspect Serpas said his officers will zero in on this year is blocked intersections. That, Serpas said, will not be tolerated.

Ultimately, he said, the police will ask parade-goers to use “common sense, common courtesy and common safety,” a theme echoed from previous years.

In fairness to NOPD, I will say that they have indeed been keeping the intersections  clear all season. And that's not an inconsequential improvement.  For one thing, it means there's at least one spot every block where a crowd can use the available space comfortably.  The majority of the neutral ground, however, remains pretty jammed up.



I know it's going to rain for the next few days so it's reasonable to see some temporary shelters go up.  But they do take up an awful lot of real estate and make what would be the back row of the crowd practically unusable to all but a few spectators.

They also cause part of the crowd to spill out into the side of St. Charles Avenue which is technically still open to traffic, thus further jamming things up unnecessarily.



The prohibitions against erecting structures on the neutral ground exist in order to make it possible for everyone to enjoy the parades comfortably.  Maybe "a parade culture has developed" which makes these laws unenforceable, but as long as the experience remains less than optimal, then the police should at least make the effort to remind people of them.

Sometimes, though, the enforcement effort should be more active than that. Friday night a group of college age kids were allowed to set up a private port-o-let on the neutral ground at Third Street.



Every so often, while the port-o-let was occupied by one kid, some of the others would come by and push it just enough to make it appear as though they might tip it over.  Thankfully we were not treated to that particular demonstration of  "parade culture" hi-jinx. We did, however, get to see this guy climb up onto one of the Morpheus floats and dance for us for a good 10 minutes or so while the parade was halted.



This seems like the sort of thing NOPD might want to step in and say something about in the interest of "common sense, common courtesy and common safety" but there weren't any around.  Eventually the float riders made the point by dousing the guy with beer.

Just to be clear, my commments here should in no way be taken as a complaint against "parade culture" or drunkenness or even general jackassery. I myself witnessed these events while quite drunkenly stomping and dancing up and down the street all night.  That's what Mardi Gras is for.  But these ordinances are there so that we can all engage in our civic jackassery in a (relatively) safe and happy manner. If the Chief of Police isn't going to take that seriously, then how can we expect anyone else to?

Tonight there was a triple shooting in the 400 block of Bourbon Street.  I can't imagine that will be as easily shrugged off as an inevitable result of a "culture that has developed" but we'll see.

Organizing Chaos

Owing to the gracious hospitality of Adrastos and Dr. A, I had an opportunity to hang around near the beginning of the Uptown parade route as Chaos was coming out of their den yesterday afternoon.  Here are a few photos. 

The king float followed by the title "Chaos goes overboard"



This was a "meeting of the courts" toast with the King of Babylon just prior to that parade shoving off on Magazine and Napoleon.



Mounted officers moving into place



Chaos uses the old antique Momus floats.  Here's a shot of the wheels.



This float themed after the city budget fight is titled "Captain Crunch"



Along Napoleon Avenue other units wait to fall into formation.  Here is a group of Flambeaux preparing to march in Babylon.



This is a young drum major with the Roots of Music band on the Napoleon Avenue neutral ground getting ready to march in Chaos.



And here's one more shot of Chaos set to roll on Napoleon just as Babylon is passing along Magazine.



More from last night including all the Muses stuff later but right now as I type this I see

Hermes is at St. Charles & PeniSton.
— WDSU Parade Tracker (@parades) February 9, 2013

Which means it's time to move again. 

Smashing return of Carnival season

Living a block off of the parade route during Carnival can be a blessing but it can also be a curse.  As the season begins to reach its climax and the bigger more popular parades start to come along, parking comes at more of a premium.  For those of us in the neighborhood who rely on on-street parking, there comes a point where we are hesitant to move our vehicles at all except under the most dire of emergencies.  It helps to have a bike available to make the occasional beer and snack run but, come the second week's stretch of parades, you're pretty well hunkered down. 

Which is why walking out to the parade only to find a car you haven't touched in two days has managed to sustain an  injury anyway can be such an annoyance.



The good news is I happened to have plenty of duct tape on hand for just such an emergency.  My car, at this point, is about seventy percent duct tape anyway.  Sort of like the Superdome electrical system. In any case I'm not moving it until after Mardi Gras anyway.  So the patch job will have to hold until then. In the meantime, there are parades.

Unlike last weekend, when we were impressed with how strong the crowds were, Wednesday night was pretty subdued. This isn't too surprising given the weather but it is kind of a shame because it means a lot of people missed the best Druids parade I've seen.. probably ever.



Druids is comprised mainly of members of other krewes who treat this parade as kind of a laid back side gig. Often that can result in a forgettable event for spectators.  Sometimes, though, it makes for some clever irreverence.  This was one of those times.

Druids' theme was "Phobias." At first glance this seems similar to Pontchartrain who went with "What are you afraid of?" last weekend.



But the two krewes approached this differently. Where Pontchartrain just played it straight theming its fill-in-the-blank float titles after typical fears, (Flying, Going to the doctor, etc.)  Druids used it as an opportunity to skewer some of the other parading organizations.

Some examples:

A "Muse-a-phobia" referenced the ongoing feud between Muses and Le Krewe D'etat.  The float featured a stiletto heel jammed into the eye of the D'etat logo.  (I didn't get a photo of this. But check Uptown Messenger who did)

There was a "Whine-a-Phobia" reference to an internal controversy within the Bacchus organization.

A Thanatophobia float featured names of several now-defunct krewes.

This "Westbank-a-phobia" float can be read as a comment on the CCC toll controversy, but I also think it was about the Westbank parades who had to move to the St. Charles route this year.




The most interesting contrast with Pontchartrain's parade involved a re-cycled float from Pontchartrain which Druids had revised slightly to fit its own purposes. Here is the float as it appeared in Pontchartrain.  The idea was that some people are afraid of "Your Mother In Law."



Because Druids had squabbled a bit this year with the Krewe of Nyx about the parade order this year, they made one slight alteration to this float.



After Druids.. well, there were many fluids.



Because of the increasingly rainy conditions, I wasn't able to get many photos during Nyx..or really take notice of what was going on with their parade for that matter. I know I caught a pink fortune cookie from Lauren "Fleurty Girl" Thom. Here is a picture of the Pussyfooters approaching along the messy street.



The good news is, if you come prepared with a decent poncho and some rain-proof shoes, you can watch a pretty heavy-throwing parade amongst a light crowd of die-hard and make off with an impressive bounty of loot. And even if you've shown up less than optimally equipped, there are always means to improvise something. I suggest keeping duct tape handy.

People still need to mail stuff

Especially people who have no or infrequent internet access.  I, myself, have internets out the wazoo but I still pay all my bills via mail.  Hope they all get there on time.

Reward good behavior

Everyone, a quick round of applause for Councilwoman Cantrell.

February 5, 2013
Chief Ronal Serpas
New Orleans Police Department
715 S. Broad Street
Room 501
New Orleans, LA 70119

RE: ENSURING SAFETY OF PARADEGOERS THROUGH INCREASED ENFORCEMENT OF MUNICIPAL ORDINANCES

Dear Chief Serpas:

We are now in the midst of another Carnival season in New Orleans-one of the most exciting times of the year for visitors and residents alike. This year’s festivities, as in the past, will bring thousands of revelers to the streets of District B and many will line parade routes with ladders, chairs and other instruments in violation of municipal ordinances.

I have heard extensively from constituents who live along the Uptown parade routes who are exasperated by the lack of enforcement of municipal ordinances that ban the placement of certain household items on the neutral ground, the cordoning off of public property, obstruction of intersections and the placement of ladders too close to the curb.

I am writing to request that the NOPD enforce compliance among paradegoers of the ordinances designed to ensure public safety and avoid the public confrontations over public space that have marred the parade season in the past. I look forward to working with the department to develop to a strategy for this and future Carnival seasons.

Please feel free to contact me directly about this issue or have a member of your staff Contact Mason Harrison, who is the policy advisor Working on this issue for my office. Thank you for your attention to this matter and the department's non­stop commitment to public safety during this very busy time of year for New Orleans police officers who have performed in exemplary fashion during Super Bowl XLVII and Carnival 2013. I look forward to partnering with you.

Sincerely,

Latoya Cantrell
Councilmember, District B

I should note also that last Sunday afternoon, we witnessed NOPD asking people to remove their chairs from the middle of the intersection of Third and St. Charles.  I think the rows of impassable chairs are, along with the large tents, the worst obstacles that people put up out there. So a tentative round of applause for NOPD too.  Thanks, also, to Gambit for highlighting this issue a few weeks back.

Of course we all know the second weekend is when things get really hairy.  We'll see how that goes.

The usual suspects

Emergency officials thought maybe the Occupy kids were to blame for the power outage because... this is the sort of thing emergency officials think about.

18:26: "Just be advised the FBI's currently tracking the Occupy NOLA movement," advising anyone to who sees members to contact the security operations center. (Occupy NOLA members had staged protests earlier in the day.)

Fairly confident they weren't "tracking" anyone using any of the drones they said they didn't bring in but one never knows. Of course if they had bought the drone, then they'd at least have something quieter than a low-flying orange helicopter to run up and down the parade routes all weekend.




But then how would they ruin your ability to hear the bands?

In any case we're relieved to learn that Entergy has ruled out terrorism or anything like terrorism as the culprit in the power outage.   Jury may still be out on raccoons, though.

Update: Also has anyone considered the possibility that the problem occurred when Mitch Landrieu plugged his heart into the Superdome electrical feed?

Mitch Landrieu expanded for the first time Tuesday on what it feels like to be mayor when the lights go out in the middle of your city's big moment on the national stage. It was not so much what passed through his mind at the Superdome on Sunday, the mayor explained: "My heart stopped."

One thing you have to love about Ray Nagin

Dude is not afraid to just keep on talking. 

At one time, the theory was that maybe this whole series of federal prosecutions was ultimately aimed at Dell.  I wonder if that's still a possibility. 

Just one block

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.  Line 'em up all over Carondelet and Prytania Streets.

During the parades, more trucks will be parking near friendly bars or in other pre-arranged spots. Without a lottery-awarded spot, vendors must stay at least one block off parade routes, and websites and Twitter feeds are the best ways to track them down.

Usually the first weekend is a bit more sparse for parade food, but, if last week was any indication, there is plenty of room for more vending options one block off the route if you concentrate on the stretch between Jackson and Louisiana, for example.

The just-opened Hotel Indigo is selling a few basic items from a kiosk in front of the building.



Usually, The Grocery at Sixth and St. Charles sells sandwiches out the window. (This photo is from 2007. I haven't yet seen what they've got there this year.)



Aside from that, though, if you're in that area you're pretty much going to have to walk several blocks for a corn dog.


Monument to what was once food on sticks

So an enterprising food truck operator with a strong enough social media presence to announce his or her presence could do well to set up a block off the route here.  Or, the more adventurous among them might even manage to sneak in a bit closer.  A van marked "Mr. Tasty's" set up at Third street one night a few years ago. Nobody complained.. although most paid in advance.

Ultimately Paul Tagilabue will have to make a ruling

Whoever it is, I'm sure the solution will be a new surcharge on everybody's light bill next year.

Early this afternoon, Entergy and Superdome management company SMG announced plans to hire a third party expert to investigate the cause of the outage. Entergy, the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District and SMG will team up to select the company, and pass their choice by the NFL before selection. Entergy is continuing its own analysis of the root cause of the outage.

Bike friendly?

As we've discussed numerous times here, New Orleans is naturally a near-perfect biking city. At least during the non-crap weather part of the year it is. The terrain is flat. The city is relatively compact. If you live in town, it's highly likely that biking is the most convenient way to get anywhere you might need to go. This is especially true during special events when streets are blocked off or parking is in short supply such as the just passed SuperBowl or the just now re-starting Carnival season.

Well, it's true for now, anyway.

I've argued with people over whether this makes it necessary to go around installing bike lanes everywhere.  I still think that causes more problems than it solves, in fact. According to this study, we can at least say that it has encouraged more people to use bicycles.

The study is more exhaustive than previous studies of local bike lanes. Observers at designated areas not only counted cyclists on South Carrollton Avenue but also on the two streets running parallel on either side, capturing a larger picture of riders in the area.

The overall number of cyclists grew by 110 percent on South Carrollton Avenue and the side streets. But the greatest increase happened on the street with new bike lanes – a 225 percent increase from 79 daily riders a year ago to 257 daily riders.

“This study shows that bike lanes promote physical activity among all ages and are a cost-effective tool for planners, engineers and government officials,” Parker said. “The total cost of the South Carrollton Avenue bike lanes was less than 1 percent of the total road resurfacing project.”

Again, I think this is a dubious conclusion. Maybe the lane does "promote physical activity." I'm not sure it promotes an easier commute, though. Now that we've been so successful at getting so many people to bike around town, we're approaching a point where the congestion is starting to negatively affect the convenience.

In one particular reflection of this problem, it's getting harder and harder to find a place to park a bike. Here are some signs I've noticed popping up around town prohibiting the tying of bicycles in places where, just a few years ago, no one would have had any problem with it.   If we're investing so much effort in becoming a "bike-friendly" city, maybe we should be more friendly when it comes to bike parking too.

So what happened?

Something minor in a piece of surge protection equipment as far as I understand.  But why? Nobody seems to be saying, exactly. Although Russell is looking in an interesting place.

The LSED's December minutes are not available, but the agenda for that meeting shows the board was to consider approval of a motion to spend up to $946,500 on an "upgraded feeder cable system" and other items.

Thornton did not return calls seeking comment Sunday night. Nor did Ron Forman, head of the LSED's board of directors.

Something got installed in a last-minute job by one fly-by-night non-union contractor or another.  Personally, I thought the blackout was fun but now I want to know just what happened.  The blackout is a pretty good litmus test for what kind of New Orleanian you are.  Either you were entertained, like most of us were, or you were VERY SERIOUSLY CONCERNED about it and paranoid that it will impact our ability to be blessed with future Super Bowls.

And the VERY SERIOUSLY CONCERNED people will likely be responsible for enthusiastically hiring the next fly by night contractor.

Update: FOX8 reports that the Dome management is blaming Entergy. Which is hilarious because last night Entergy tweeted

Power issue at the Super Dome appears to be in the customer's side. Entergy is providing power to the Dome

The original tweet, though, appears to have been deleted, though.  Sorry I didn't screen capture it.

Wrong!

So glad to be wrong about the way that game turned out.  Congratulations to the Ravens.  Now the Niners can't talk, the Falcons can't talk, and the Saints have a head coach again.  The healing can begin in earnest. 

Just as soon as we get the Dome wired back up. Nobody could have predicted the Loyola Streetcar was going to short the whole thing out.  Tom Benson says he'll change the breakers out for another $5 million if that's okay.

The great thing, though, is now idiots all over America have something new to complain about.  The power outage is one of those classic NOLA moments.  Nothing here actually works right.  We don't expect it to. In fact, we'd be disappointed and a little bored if it were otherwise. You either get it or you don't. I expect we'll hear from a lot of people who don't get it. If you're one of the people who does get it, though, consider spending some time here. You may be one of us. We have fun.

Anyway they'll be talking about this SuperBowl for a long time.  Way to keep the brand out there.  Seriously. You're welcome, America.

Meanwhile... I guess it's Mardi Gras again.

And now, on to business

The 49ers are terrible.  Their fans are terrible. Their defensive backs are terrible people.  If you grew up in New Orleans in the 80s they probably ruined your childhood.  If you lived in New Orleans back in 2012, they probably ruined the rest of your life as well. The 49ers are terrible. Fuck them.

But anyone who paid attention to the just-passed Saints season we are currently trying to forget will probably agree, the 49ers were the team that finished the Saints off this year.  When Drew Brees threw a pick-6 just prior to the half of that game I felt something I hadn't felt at a Saints game in several years.  I felt like I'd just seen something the Saints could not possibly come back from.  They didn't.  And they spent the next two games reeling so badly from that blow that we can convincingly identify it as the point where all reasonable hope ended. 

Goodell may have set the Saints on their descent this year but the 49ers delivered the coup-de-grace on the season and the moment when it happened was palpable.  I came away from that game thinking they were the best team in football. They probably are. 

Meanwhile I'm a little surprised that the Baltimore-NOLA comparisons I thought we'd see this week have been as muted as they were.   There's the David Simon connection, of course, but there are other things. I've spent some time in Baltimore.  It's where I spent the last week of my evacuation after Katrina.  My wife is from there.  Both it and New Orleans are port cities, blue collar, victims of similar late 20th Century periods of decay.  Both have a distinctive working class accent that only the locals seem to know about.  Both have a quirky "artsy" side.  Both are, in fact, recent hipster magnets. John McDonough was from Baltimore.  Both cities celebrate the same species of blue crab (although they mostly have to buy ours nowadays). I could go on. There are plenty threads to pull if you're a media outlet desperate for a "narrative" but mostly that stuff has gone untouched.

Mostly what I see in that place when I visit, though, is not New Orleans but instead more of a cautionary tale about what New Orleans might become if we ever stop trying; if we ever give our historic neighborhoods over entirely to gentrifiers, the way the Inner Harbor there has been Disneyfied;  if we allow our endangered fisheries to be as badly spoiled as the Chesapeake; if we let HBO come in and.. oh well too late for that one.    Maybe I need to spend more time in Baltimore to get this right but what I do feel when I'm there is a certain bitterness that's missing at home.  Like something has been stolen that you can never get back.  Anyway.. just a theory.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah.. fuck the goddamned 49ers.  I think they're going to win but fuck em anyway. I'd love to see this team with a chip on its shoulder from my Menckles' angry but proud home town prove me wrong about this but I don't think that's what's in the cards. 

NOLAmercial

Like most of New Orleans you probably just watched CBS's NOLA infomercial that ran this morning ahead of its Super Bowl coverage. The piece... which ran approximately 8 hours long.... featured interviews with the same recycled club of what passes for our city's spokesmuppets in the national press. John Goodman, Wynton Marsalis, Mitch Landrieu, Chris Rose, James Carville, Leah Chase.. you know the drill. It was a beautifully shot, well researched, and well thought out presentation.I think we've passed the point where national media outlets who put in even a little time don't know how to present our city accurately.

I enjoyed the segment on Roots of Music. Here they are on St. Charles during Mardi Gras 2010.

 

Having just come from loading a float myself this morning, I was particularly interested in CBS's treatment of Mardi Gras. I thought it was perfect. Well... almost perfect. The Krewe Du Vieux footage was heavily edited to keep out certain unpleasantries.



Also I had to chuckle a bit when Mayor Landrieu referred to himself as a "street rat" while talking up the joyous experience of watching parades from ground level.  If he really cared about such things, he'd perhaps put a bit more muscle behind efforts to keep that experience enjoyable for everyone.. but that's an issue for another time.

I very nearly cried during the segment where they talked about how important  a symbol the Superdome is and has always been to New Orleans.  Everything in there was spot-on.  It's a shame that we've allowed Tom Benson and Mercedes-Benz to desecrate our this publicly financed civic monument so many New Orleanians obviously think of as a sacred place.



Also, CBS talked up the post-Katrina reopening but somehow neglected to show us the Gleason blocked punt. That's so wrong, I've  taken the liberty of including the missing footage here to correct the error.



Remind me again, why we never got around to putting a Falcons jersey on that statue.

So the problem with all of this isn't that the New Orleans brand isn't being kept out there in a way that locals can appreciate.  Not most of the time, anyway.  Do yourself a favor and don't go read the terrible copy about New Orleans attractions that was posted on the SuperBowl Host Committee's Website.  It's too embarrassing.

The problem is that this infomercial wasn't produced for your benefit.  A lot of money went in to making this advertisement.  A lot of money has come to New Orleans this weekend but most of that isn't going into your pocket. It's going into Tom Benson's pocket and into the hoteliers' pockets and into the pockets of people like Mitch's krewe of talking muppets CBS just had dance across your TV set today. 

Sure some of us pick up some of the loose change that gets thrown around in this process but by and large we deserve better than what we're getting which is basically an inconvenience and an insult. Some suggest there are ways to push back against this sort of thing, but I have my doubts. Not while all the people who claim to represent you are working so hard at selling you out.

The bottom line is CBS isn't doing that because they love you. They do it because they and the money interests they represent want what you have. So when I see stuff like what they produced this morning or what HBO presents in its NOLAmercial as well I think, ah, they have figured out something of ours that we've always known was good. And now they are here to take that from us and sell it to one another.  And soon it won't be ours anymore.

Shit my Jackie says

I'm sure all of New Orleans has read this one by now. Here it is anyway. You will be relieved to know that many of your City Council representatives had the good sense to turn down an "opportunity" to spend $850 per seat on tickets to a football game.

Except Jackie Clarkson, of course, who also turned down the ticket purchase offer but in a more nonsensical manner.  

Clarkson also said she's skipping the event, but for a different reason.

"I did not turn them down because of the price," she said in an email, "but because they were terrace level and I don't do the terrace."

I guess as a Terrace season ticket holder I should feel a little talked down to by this.  I'm still pretty happy I had deigned to "do the terrace" on this day, for example.


Halas Trophy Presentation NFC Championship Jan 24, 2010

Admittedly nothing quite so exciting will be happening in the Dome tomorrow.

Which is why I have a hard time believing the Mayor would shell out his own money be there.

With Mayor Mitch Landrieu acting as New Orleans' ambassador to the fans and dignitaries flooding the city for the Super Bowl, it seems only logical he attend the game on Sunday. So he bought two $1,250 tickets through the NFL for himself and his wife, Cheryl, Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni said.

$2,500!! Mitch must not do the terrace either, I guess.  Not that the mayor of the host city shouldn't be at the game, but at that price the guy looks bad no matter who is paying for it.  (The T-P asked if maybe his campaign fund paid for the tickets.  Since this whole event has been one big Mitch for Mayor ad, anyway, that only makes sense.)

But honestly I think he and the Governor and a handful of other elected representatives of Louisiana taxpayers probably should have been comped. Or at least the bill could have been taken out of our collective tab.

Competing Faux "Gras"

Spent yesterday afternoon tooling around the Super Bowl excesses in the Quarter. Woldenberg Park is set up in the style of a kind of mini French Quarter Fest with all the regular local music acts one would expect to find at such a thing.  

Here is Ingrid Lucia near the end of her set.



I also caught a bit of James Andrews who led the crowd in a round of "Who Dat." Because the crowd was pretty heavy with locals, this went over pretty well.  Today Jefferson Parish is offering free shuttle rides to Super Bowl visitors who may wish to take in the... um.. slightly less impressive musical line up at its "Family Gras" (literally Fat Family) celebration.  

On the other had, at least there are parades in Jefferson today... such as they are anyway.

Tale of two cities

This is a somewhat annoying interview with Wendell Pierce where he says "best practices" a bunch of times and even sort buys into the deceptive "blank slate" myth popularized by conservative columnist David Brooks after Katrina.

Pierce may say a lot of dumb things but I think he probably means well by it.  He's (sort of)  right about this anyway.

Q.With Super Bowl week in full swing, New Orleans seems to be on fire right now. As someone from here who cares deeply about the city, what are your feelings about it all?

 

A.It’s great, man. It’s a milestone. It’s a milestone of the recovery. Seven years ago we weren’t sure if it would even be a city. At all. So at this point to be able to host one of the biggest sporting events, one of the biggest events, period, is a real milestone. It lets people know that we’re back on our feet, that the recovery is going well, but we’ve got to make sure it doesn’t become a tale of two cities, that just only downtown is working, because a lot of neighborhoods still need time to recover.

Of course, he's probably a bit late with that sentiment.  There are undoubtedly chunks of money being thrown around town this weekend.  It isn't evident, though, that our political leadership is interested in seeing that money benefits more than just a few of us.

Here are some pretty pictures of the contrast at work.

Speaking of commenting on websites

Not sure why Disqus isn't working on this site right now.  I've been trying to get a handle on the spam coming from Blogger. That might explain the problem but I'm not sure right now.  Working on it. If you've got a complaint, send me an email or tweet at me.

Sal Perricone: The reson for and solution to all of the city's problems

The city wants out of the NOPD consent decree.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu was a strong proponent for the 492-point agreement from its introduction last summer, but recently changed course, citing the $55 million cost of implementation, on top of expected costs associated with the Orleans Parish Prison consent decree, which was preliminarily approved by Judge Lance Africk on Jan. 22.

The city's motion alleged misconduct on the part of DOJ in three areas, including the involvement of disgraced former Assistant United States Attorney Sal Perricone as a DOJ "point person" during negotiations.

Look, a $55 million plus unfunded mandate is a pretty scary proposition; particularly with the cost of.. well... everything else skyrocketing and the "cavalry not on the way" from Washington or Baton Rouge as the Mayor likes to say. So it's not surprising that the city might want to try and back out of such a commitment. Hell, it's plausible that they're doing the right thing considering the circumstances.

But the Perricone angle... that's just pure genius.

—DOJ’s Designation of Sal Perricone as the U.S. Attorney’s “Point Person” During the NOPD Consent Decree Initial Investigation and Negotiations 

Mr. Perricone attempted to become the Superintendent of Police during the Landrieu administration and his subsequent blogging related to Mayor Landrieu, Superintendent Ronal Serpas, the timeliness of the signing of the proposed consent decree, the appropriateness of a court-appointed police monitor, secondary employment (“paid details”), and the need for DOJ intrusion in the reform process. Reports have shown that Perricone was the originator of the comment that the paid detail system was the “aorta of corruption” in the NOPD. Such invective in a public forum by the DOJ’s representative who was engaged in the negotiations wholly undermines the integrity of the negotiation process.

 Recall that one of wanna be NOPD Chief Perricone's NOLA.com handles was "CampStBlue." Also some day the world at large will cease referring to participating in a newspaper website's comment threads as "blogging." But it is apparently not this day.

Anyway in order to buy this at all, you'd have to buy the part about an assistant US Attorney in the local office being the US Department Of Justice's "Point Person" in these negotiations.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is at least a slight overstatement of Perricone's role. 

Un-RESTOREd?

Depending on your definition of "economic restoration" it's possible that "Pot 1" is too big in the first place.

The controversy erupted as Sara Gonzalez-Rothi, senior policy analyst at the National Wildlife Federation, read the web site of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, which is charged with disbursing RESTORE Act funds under a formula established by the act. To Gonzalez-Rothi’s surprise, the Council stated that the 30 percent share of the total fund called “Pot 2”—much as $6 billion from the $20 billion fine—would be used to “implement a comprehensive plan for ecosystem and economic recovery of the Gulf Coast.”

Economic recovery? This contradicted the letter as well as the spirit of the law which was passed after months of sometimes testy negotiations between politicians from the five gulf states, environmental groups and business interests. Pot 2, they had agreed, was to be used only for ecosystem restoration. Funding for economic restoration was to come from “Pot 1,” a 35 percent share of the fine – about $7 billion — that will go directly to each state.

Simply put, there is no issue of greater importance to the future of Louisiana than making sure that these funds are spent appropriately.  And despite some optimistic estimates, ensuring the future of the Louisiana coast is likely to cost much more than even the $6 billion tentatively appropriated to "Pot 2" here.

I realize "economic restoration" can, in the best case, refer to the very real and ongoing need to compensate coastal businesses.  But it also just mean that Gulf Coast hotels and restaurants aren't finished making TV commercials. Either way it looks to me like the wrong hands are dipping into the wrong cookie jar in this case.


Also, great to see Bob Marshall back on this beat in a more full-time capacity.

Service economy

A "Charter School Teacher" comments under a Lens story about United Teachers of New Orleans's efforts to organize a scattered workforce.  I don't know enough about the particulars of UTNO's strategy to address the criticism at the end of this but the observation I've bolded here struck me as particularly astute.

As a (non-union) charter school teacher, I saw the headline and was pleased to see UTNO reaching out to teachers at schools like my own. While unions might have been heavy-handed in the past, collective bargaining is an absolute necessity in the long run to give teachers a voice in how schools are run. Charter teachers are largely ineligible for tenure, work under at will contracts and can be disciplined or fired for any reason at any time- and there’s no district to appeal to. Teacher salaries in this city have plummeted while hours worked have drastically increased. More importantly, most charters have no publicly available salary scale or ladder- when a stellar teacher wants a raise, they move schools, or become an administrator, neither of which have particularly positive outcomes for students. Teaching is becoming a service industry in this city for young people to burn out on before moving on to another career.

 Having said all that, I was hoping to see news of a UTNO organizing drive, first steps toward planning collective bargaining agreements with the bigger charter operators, or a discussion of the workplace challenges faced by teachers and the benefits that a union could bring. Instead, they won’t disclose their dues and offer professional development when most charters already offer vast amounts of training. UTNO needs to wake up and listen to their real clients, because students aren’t the ones paying union dues.

This is, perhaps, an echo of the jungle ethic of the city's dominant tourism industry spreading itself across other disciplines.  No job security, no benefits.  Employees are intimidated, under-compensated, and the great majority are used up and discarded.  Sound like any number of bars or restaurants or hotels you might have worked in?

Economic impact

Related to the law enforcement story cited below, there are still plenty cases of prostitution going on in Louisiana where the feds are willing to look the other way.

The New Orleans Saints will receive a $5 million windfall from state coffers as a reward for hosting the Super Bowl, under the terms of an agreement negotiated by Gov. Bobby Jindal and Tom Benson in 2009. The bonus comes on top of the $6 million the state is paying to support the Super Bowl Host Committee’s operations before and during the game.

You'd think that maybe Mercedes-Benz could pick up the tab here... or is that not how these things work?

Where's my Serpas signal?

It's a busy and festive time  in New Orleans but I've yet to see the first indication that there will be any DUI checkpoints this weekend. You'd think that since NOPD is taking extraordinary measures to protect all the important visitors in town (as opposed to just us regular folk who live here) Chief Serpas would be ready and willing to deploy his most favored law enforcement tool in order to guarantee their safety from  the "greatest threat to a law-abiding citizen's life."

Maybe he just doesn't care about these people the way he cares about the rest of us.  Kind of warms my heart.

Update: In a related matter, the presence of federal law enforcement downtown has uncovered something. 

Federal authorities say they uncovered a sex trafficking ring in the French Quarter in recent days, rescuing five women and arresting eight men.

The women were forced to come here to work as prostitutes for pimps, authorities said.

Agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been heavily targeting human trafficking and counterfeit goods with the influx of tourists here for this weekend’s Super Bowl

Obviously they knew Goodell and his executives were coming to town.

King Cakes (Non Vodka Edition)

This New York Times feature on King Cakes (and other local confections) is pretty good though not perfect. Kevin Allman picks out the most annoying bit in this post.

I'll add one nitpicky thing. I realize this is an impossible task but the article could have included a few more of the popular "traditional" bakeries in there.  And then there are the grocery store cakes which are ignored altogether although I'd guess they probably account for at least half of all the king cakes consumed in a season.

Just today I noticed these in Rouses decorated with the Super Bowl teams' colors.



We bought the Ravens cake, by the way. Because, of course we did.


See also:  This NOLA Defender article from a few weeks back about how weird it's getting out there. King Cakes are kind of becoming the new novelty food dare around town as bakers compete to see who can come up with the weirdest thing; like competing booths at a county fair trying to see what they can deep-fry next.  (And yes the NYT article does note that there is such a thing as a "deep fried king cake")

Wisner Fund

Interesting post by Dambala on this covering a lot of background on a nearly 100 year old land trust that is getting ready to expire.  At first glance there appear to be the following possibilites for the approximately $7 million fund.

1) The beneficiaries agree to continue dividing the money along a similar plan to what is outlined according to the current rules. This doesn't seem likely, and possibly not even desirable for a few reasons I'm not ready to get into yet.

2) The city takes a much larger share or possibly even all of the fund for itself.  I can imagine some upside to this but it would depend on a great many things that I'll need to understand better. 

3) All parties agree to sell it off for a one-time windfall.  This sounds very Mitch to me. And Dambala hints that it's definitely a thing that could happen.  Imagine the city is awarded the 2018 Super Bowl and Mitch spends his entire second term preparing for that by blowing this money installing parkettes up and down Poydras Street or three new streetcars that go from one end of the Convention Center to the other or something.

4) Legal chaos!!  Dambala doesn't think that sounds as fun as I do for some reason. 

Anyway, go read what he has over there and tell him or me what I'm not seeing yet.

He said, he said

NOLA Media Group prints what looks like a response to James Gill from a Jindal PR flack in a space where one would expect to see an editorial correction.  At the bottom of a James Gill column on Nagin we find this blurb.

Spending on mental health higher: Sunday's column suggested that, because of budget cuts, treatment of mental illness had "pretty much gone by the wayside" in Louisiana. Spending on mental health is  30 percent higher than it was when Jindal took office in 2008, according to his spokesman.

"According to his spokesman"  Anybody want to fact check this assertion before running it in this space?

In 2010, the city released an analysis of psychiatric bed capacity in New Orleans compared to five other similarly sized and situated U.S. cities: Atlanta, Cleveland, Memphis, Tenn., St. Louis and Washington, DC.

At that time, the report found, there were 165 inpatient psych beds in New Orleans, a rate of 46.5 per 100,000 population — down from 364 total and 78.9 per 100,000 pre-Katrina. Of those, 60 were adult inpatient beds — fewer than the 77 at Charity Hospital alone prior to August 2005 — 16.9 per 100,000 population. Of course, these numbers were based on a slightly inflated pre-Census estimate population of about 354,000. Based on the actual 2010 population of 343,000, the rate is about 17.5 adult beds per 100,000.

The disparity was huge, the report found, compared to those other cities. Atlanta had 100 total beds per 100,000 population, 57.1 adult. Memphis: 74.7 total/ 63.5 adult. St. Louis: 59.1 total/46.3 adult. Washington: 62.5 total/52.4 adult. "We're at a huge deficit," says (Cecile) Tebo.

Update: Yesterday, in the Letters To The Editor section (where the Jindal PR factoid should have run) we find this question.

If the administration's claims are true, then we taxpayers are spending more money for reduced services. How did that happen? Have the governor's privatization initiatives increased state payments to private contractors while reducing services to the people of Louisiana? That seems to be his agenda, especially in health care and education.

Carnival interruptus

It's a big responsibility being "the Arthur Hardy for a new generation." But don't worry. There's a complete re-cap of the first weekend's Carnival events coming along soon enough.  In the meantime, enjoy these photos Liprap took from Krewe of 'tit Rex, an event I didn't manage to cross Canal Street and catch myself this year.

Also, as  a follow up to Todd Price's report, I noticed the Taaka brand King Cake Vodka was back down to $5.99 at Rouses this week.  So enjoy that... if such a thing is possible.

Public space, private party

The same question I asked yesterday can be applied today to this.

So why is (Armstrong) park closed for a full week’s time for a one-night event?

Initially I’d thought that it’s because the city didn’t want to maintain security/a police presence, but now I suspect that there’s an even simpler explanation: because there’s nothing for the visitors to buy there, it’s been sold out for a private event, denying the public reasonable access without a second thought.

In discussing this casually online, one friend suggested that possibly it was a measure to keep our city’s visitors within the Clean Zone’s boundaries; he added that the enhanced police presence in the Clean Zone would also reinforce this theory.

Another friend replied, “[It's] more like without a first thought — not a second one. It seems right now that we (the folks) are all in the back row for the big show.”

One can only wonder how much the city is being paid for this week of exclusive use and hope that those funds will eventually serve the public-at-large in a meaningful way.

I doubt they gave it much, if any, thought.  In their minds, our local elected leaders don't work for us.  Their clients are the NFL and its attached sponsors. And their job is to move us out of their clients' way while they use our stuff.

Quote of the Day

Actually this is from earlier in the week but I missed it. Found it again via Aswell via Oyster.  It's from a Jindal primer by Dakinikat the national pundits obviously haven't read as she notes at the beginning.

For some reason, the villagers in the beltway appear to have my governor confused with some one who is not a sociopath.  There is absolutely no way they’ve done any background work on Bobby Jindal and the horrible things that he has done and suggested for my state.

The rest is pretty much a must-read. Go do that.

Shut up Shut up Shut up

Knew it was coming. Here is a taste of the glory.

A list of sentences from Super Bowl Week articles employing terrible New Orleans cliches

Cool and Current

I wonder if John Georges thinks he is buying the internet for his children.

That's not why he wants into newspapers, he said. He is doing this partly for the sake of his children because the business is "cool, digital and current" and thus "more suited to their skill sets and generation." We'll see if Georges has a future in the business.

Just a few years ago, Georges was concerned that there were too many "dangerous people" in digital media. Now that the "legitimate" operators are pushing their way in... and working harder and harder to push you out... Georges sees something "cool and current" there.  Funny how that works.

Whose side are they on?

Gambit's Charles Maldonado gives us one more look at the NFL "Clean Zone" policy and how other host cities have implemented it in recent years.

Yesterday's settlement on the Super Bowl Clean Zone may have left some wondering how, exactly, New Orleans city government could have drafted an ordinance with such obvious constitutional issues: sanctioned and permitted signs only, 60 percent NFL branding or "feel" in order to obtain a permit.

The answer is that neither the Landrieu Administration nor City Council invented any of this. The Clean Zone, as defined under the original, pre-consent judgment ordinance, has been around at least since last year's Super Bowl in Indianapolis.

And we've always understood that to be true.  The question raised here, though, is why do the city's elected representatives acquiesce to NFL policy simply as a matter of course?  Over the past week there's been a side debate going about the "economic benefit" to cities of hosting these events in the first place.  

Those estimates, though, are likely fool’s gold, according to an assortment of academic research into the actual economic impact of Super Bowls and other major sporting events. When professors Victor Matheson and Robert Baade studied the economic impact of Super Bowls from 1973 to 1997, they found that the games boosted city economies by about $30 million, “roughly one-tenth the figures touted by the NFL” and an even smaller fraction of what New Orleans officials predict. A later Baade and Matheson study found that the economic impact of a Super Bowl is “on average one-quarter or less the magnitude of the most recent NFL estimates.”

Similarly, a 1999 paper from professor Philip Porter found that the Super Bowl had virtually no effect on a city’s economy. Research on other events New Orleans has hosted, including the men’s Final Four, is similar. When Baade and Matheson studied Final Fours, they found that the events tend “not to translate into any measurable benefits to the host cities.”

Depending on whom you believe the impact of hosting a Super Bowl is either negligible or far more limited than what the NFL sells to the politicians it is attempting to trade favors from.  But rather than ask why our elected officials are so gullible, let's assume that there is at least some "economic benefit" that accrues to cities hosting the Super Bowl and that it is at least significant enough to be worth the trouble.

The question then becomes, how is that benefit dispersed, and who bears the brunt of the trouble? We'd like to think that our elected representatives are.. you know.. representing our interest in this matter; that they're bargaining with the NFL over every use of our space; that they're writing ordinances and setting policies that ease the burden on residents and spread the benefits of the event across the city.  If tourism really is the "economic engine" that makes this city go, it's our political leaders' jobs to make that engine run efficiently. 

And this is why it's so disappointing when, instead, they blindly write the NFL's boilerplate policy into law or they allow CBS to just stick its signs wherever the hell.

These actions indicate that our mayor and councilpersons are to be acting on the NFL's  and the NFL's corporate partners' behalf instead of our own. In some cases, the closeness is so obvious that our supposed representatives just repeat the bullshit they're fed verbatim.

“The Talk” responded Tuesday (Jan. 29) morning with a statement:

"The sign, which was placed due to a light reflection issue, has been removed. Our goal continues to be to showcase this great city in the best way possible."

@lunanola This was a light reflection issue. @cbstweet is working w/ us taking extra care of Jackson Sq. Showcasing #nola better than ever.
— Mitch Landrieu (@MayorLandrieu) January 28, 2013

Update: This is interesting. The locally famous "Bon Jovi Shrine" was created by Tara Ciccarone one of the plaintiffs in the anti-Clean Zone lawsuit. The shrine itself was originally a form of protest against similar measures surrounding Jazz Fest.

Maybe it hunkered down the drain

Uptown Messenger: 

“Our biggest question is, ‘Where did the water go?’” said emergency-response meteorologist Tim Erickson during a recent trip to Freret Street to investigate.


Most weather stations in the New Orleans area recorded 10 to 15 inches of rain during Isaac, but researchers have verified four gauges that recorded significantly higher amounts. One in Gretna recorded 23.96 inches; one at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Carrollton recorded 21.14 inches; another nearby at Audubon Park recorded 21 inches as well; and a station atop Andy Brott’s 43-foot tall home on Freret Street recorded 27.38 inches.

When the meteorologists climbed Brott’s roof to inspect his station earlier this month, they found a pole nearby that some rain might have slid down, increasing his total, they said. But that would likely only account for an inch or two of extra rainfall, they said, bringing it in line with the other three abnormally high readings.

In fact, when rain gauges fail during a hurricane, they most often under-perform, said National Weather Service hydrologist W. Scott Lincoln — because the rain blowing sideways is hard to catch.

“It’s atypical for gauges to over-report during hurricanes,” Lincoln said. “For four independent gauges all to fail in the same area, in the same way, the chance is very low.”

Of course we were all so extremely hunkered at the time that few of us would have had any eyewitness experience of street flooding anyway. But that sideways rain thing, that was real.  Isaac's wind damaged the roof of my building flooding several units. It blew water in under the flashing on the roof at work, at my parents house and similarly damaged more than a few other buildings I happened to check on that week.

Isaac was a weird storm.  But then I guess they all are.

Quote of the Day

Mitch Landrieu: "This streetcar line is not just a red box on a rail going to nowhere"

Of course not. We're pretty sure it's not just that, anyway. But in the meantime we'll take what we can get.

Also from that Gambit report, we find this video of the St. Aug Marching Band leading the ceremonial opening voyage of the Loyola car this afternoon.



In 2007, when the St Charles line finally re-opened after a lengthy post-Katrina repair, that ceremony was led by Warren Easton.



In the late afternoon today, I had occasion to bike through the "Clean Zone" for a while. I traveled the entire length of the Loyola line which, on bicycle, takes less than five minutes. While I was down there I took a few pictures including this "welcome" message on the Joy Theater marquee.