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    ReburnsABurningReturnsPatrick Melon
    8/25/15 11:45am

    New Orleans is a city that you can really ... sink your teeth into. Like, if you only go there for one weekend to get trashed on Bourbon street or for Mardi Gras, I think you are really missing out. I live over in Texas, and now that I have a kid I probably won’t go back there for awhile because travel is so exhausting, but when we were young and unencumbered, we used to try and get over there a few times a year just to go to some new part of the town we hadn’t gone to.

    It’s not even necessary to find the “authentic” places where locals go, even though that is fun to do. The touristey side of New Orleans is in and of itself a pretty diverse collection of restaurants, museums, sights and shops that you just really can’t fully experience in a weekend where you are focused on getting wrecked and seeing boobs in the French Quarter.

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      Ginger Is A ConstructReburnsABurningReturns
      8/25/15 11:49am

      I agree, Bourbon Street is to be avoided like the plague, unless you have folks in town who insist on having a hand grenade. Is it such a beautiful and creative city. Mardi Gras isn’t just one drunk weekend, there are parades all year round. It really is a different pace of life and outlook on living, and one that I miss very much.

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      buskerdooGinger Is A Construct
      8/25/15 11:57am

      For real dude. I moved to south Louisiana after college and thought I was gonna stay a year max. I stayed there for eight years. The way of life and the people there are unique in the south. Festivals and parades year round, great food, lots of booze, and very friendly people who immediately want to be your new family. Of course, I’ve seen all those things swallow some people too (especially the nonstop drinking and partying) but if you can hang, it is a great place to live. Too bad it’s gonna be swallowed by the sea at some point in the near future. :( But sometimes I wonder if that’s not one reason people live so hard and so fully there.

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    Medieval KnievelPatrick Melon
    8/25/15 11:44am

    There are more mixed-raced neighborhoods now, mostly due to all the white renters that have come into the city, which isn’t in itself a bad thing but certainly lends a hand in the many reasons New Orleanians haven’t been fully able to reclaim their town.

    You know what you call “all the white renters”? New Orleanians. It’s everybody’s town what lives there.

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      patrick melonMedieval Knievel
      8/25/15 12:01pm

      You make a great point Medieval. However, many things are leading to the original residents of the city being shuttled further and further away while other people are coming in and living in areas established by generations of families. There is a thriving arts community in New Orleans with artists of many races coming and moving into these areas. However, the city has seen a significant decrease in its African-American population over years. I point that out to say that the city needs to protect its residents. Period.

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      gailthesnailMedieval Knievel
      8/25/15 1:56pm

      is this not just a basic statement of fact? if the neighborhoods before were not as mixed race, because they were mostly black, and now they are more mixed race...

      as an all the white renter who constantly ups the mixed race quotient (and the rent, fuck, sorry) in each neighborhood i move to in brooklyn, i don’t understand the challenge with this statement. no one is saying i’m not a new yorker; i’m just clearly part of the changing face of a neighborhood, by way of the great, unstoppable gentrification train.

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    Ginger Is A ConstructPatrick Melon
    8/25/15 11:47am

    As beautiful as these images are, I feel like they really focus on the ruins of NOLA. Sure, there are parts of the city / metro area that look like this (East NOLA looks particularly apocalyptic in parts) but there are plenty parts of the city that look pretty similar to pre-Katrina. You really have to know the little signs of devastation (like, for example, that the post office took out many of the mail boxes after the storm and simply never brought them back.). I am not saying that NOLA has been completely rehabilitated, far, far, far from it. But I would say that the Katrina-specific wreckage can sneak up on you. As for the decay of a city in a broke state made more broke by Bobby Jindal...

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      patrick melonGinger Is A Construct
      8/25/15 12:02pm

      There are enough images of the beautiful sides of New Orleans. I take just as many touristy photos, but these are the things I see in my city daily.

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      Ginger Is A Constructpatrick melon
      8/25/15 12:07pm

      Maybe it’s because I moved from New Orleans to Detroit, but I have really mixed emotions about images of ruin. It’s no coincidence that both cities suffer from the same perception that they are blank canvases / smoldering ruins just waiting for white saviors.

      And as I said, so much of the decay in NOLA is not even about Katrina, it’s about the shite infrastructure that preceded and followed the storm.

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    Wonder WomaaahnPatrick Melon
    8/25/15 12:00pm

    I love this piece - beautiful photos. My family is from New Orleans, and while I grew up in California, I visited often. After my warm and loving grandparents died (when I was in college), I frankly couldn’t bear to return until just this year, as the memories of home cooked Red Beans and Rice, smoking with my grandmother on my patio, jazz and close neighbors - now gone - were all too much.

    Well I finally returned this year for my 40th birthday - to Jazz Fest, with a group of friends. I stayed in the French Quarter, which looks like a partially completed outdoor mall - with palm trees! - and was appalled at how destructive the tourists were on Bourbon. Literally pissing on the walls, vomiting and treating Black kids and families asking for money like they were garbage. The Quarter was always like this to some degree, but I used to see people revel in delight for its unique culture - not treat it like TJ, with all the horrible racism and drunken arrogance that makes Mexicans shake their heads in disgust.

    I ended up walking from the festival to the Quarter at night, not a smart 5 miles, but we had no choice. The poverty and confusion of the streets, the homes that have trees growing through their closed roofs, the dealers openly congregating in a kid’s new park with white hipsters riding their bikes to the new Whole Foods....it was all too schizophrenic to describe.

    This is a city that may never recover, especially if the local and federal government continue to ignore the thousands of people who need help and housing. It struck me as the worst of Southern racism - not the anger or brutality, but the apathy that these black families somehow deserve to “make due” on their own after Katrina.

    I want to return to New Orleans permanently some day soon. I want to help it change into a vibrant community again, into an engine of innovation that it could be, given how people think and solve problems (outside the box to many on the U.S.). But the destruction was so overwhelming - the billions needed just for basic services like food, shelter and education. I hope people understand that this isn’t a city we can ignore because people “refuse to help themselves.” They can’t be expected to take this on alone, and New Orleans is part of our country’s history, and at best the most intensely diverse and culturally strong city in U.S. history. People in NO are ready to work, they are ready to rebuild and thrive, but they need REAL help to get there...

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      snackpackWonder Womaaahn
      8/25/15 2:07pm

      Thank you, that is a wonderful attitude to have. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to return after Katrina, but my husband convinced me. He said, “How many times in your life do you get to have a hand in helping to rebuild a city?” My hands have joined millions of others in helping, but there is still plenty of work to do.

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      patrick melonWonder Womaaahn
      8/25/15 2:10pm

      Thank you so much for your kind words. I consider myself something of a historian and draw myself to the things that are actually happening around the city as opposed to the manufactured version of “everything is awesome” that is shared with mass media. I do hope to see the good in the worst parts of our realities. I help when and where I can and I hope more people that are looking to help can come together to effect actual change.

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    EatTheCheeseNicholsonPatrick Melon
    8/25/15 11:43am

    Last time I went to New Orleans, as I was leaving the airport, a stranger stopped me and gave me a knife and a lighter, since they wouldn’t let him take it through security.

    New Orleans is the best.

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      ThisGuyEatTheCheeseNicholson
      8/25/15 11:49am

      Congratulations, you received evidence

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      KlewlessThisGuy
      8/25/15 2:12pm

      My cubicle neighbor had to check on me because of the noise I made when I read that. It was a sort of strangled snort laugh choke thing

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    bay_estrianPatrick Melon
    8/25/15 1:09pm

    i was in Baghdad serving with the Army all of 2005. we were so far removed from everything. we only had internet access intermittently, and we were subject to communications blackouts often. it is so weird to be alive during such an impactful event and have no real memory of it.

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      HeadfakePatrick Melon
      8/25/15 1:38pm

      That graffiti-laced wall is in the Marigny, not the French Quarter.

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        Ru-debegaPatrick Melon
        8/25/15 12:22pm

        I’ve lived in South Louisiana my whole life. Went with a friend to look at her house after they started letting people back into the city.

        Wasn’t great.

        Also, here’s a car on a tree, just because that shit was crazy.

        Everything was gray and terrible and covered in mud and dirt, and most of the streets were impassable because of debris. Never seen anything like it. I hope I never will again.

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          WesPatrick Melon
          8/25/15 11:46am

          If you guys are going to cover Katrina, it’d be a solid piece to cover the entirety of the Coast, including the Mississippi Gulf Coast.


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            CrazyJoeDevola1Patrick Melon
            8/25/15 4:32pm

            What struck me about the 9th Ward a few years ago was the randomness. Empty lot after empty lot, then a house or two, then an abandoned house, then a couple more empty lots. Zero rhyme or reason (beyond who survived/came back and who didn’t.)

            One thing that the storm did was help usher out incredibly corrupt public systems that had held the city and its residents hostage. Time will tell if they were replaced by similar manifestations or improved ones.

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