NOLA rising

The reports of the death of New Orleans are greatly exaggerated

Some 75% of New Orleans was devastated 4 months ago, and some media reports would suggest that recovery is moving slowly. The German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on December 16th that only one coffee shop was open along the main shopping street in the Garden District. The price of a cappuccino? 5 dollars…

The empty Jackson Square at 11 am local time on December 21, 2005. Normally, this Square would be full of tourists, street musicians, acrobats, and "normal" New Orleanians (an oxymoron, I know). The square was never this empty, not even at 5 am on Sundays. Most of the people in the numerous bars, coffees shops, and restaurants now open are waiting for tourists to return and making do with the locals and recovery workers in town.

Strangely enough, only four days after that report in the German paper, more coffee shops were open than you could shake a stick at -- not only in the Garden District. A coffee didn’t cost more than $3.25 anywhere, and that was the jumbo size mug. Wifi and laptop power was free all over town.

At the Zotz café in Carrollton, you can be served by a real transvestite. On the other side of the fourth of the town that is now up and running, the Clover Grill in the French Quarter has been once again open 24 hours a day since December 30th. The guests at this greasy spoon sit on bar stools facing the grill, where cooks use hubcap as covers for the skillets. It’s a tradition, not an emergency response to Katrina. Your waiter may not be a transvestite, but he may be queer. And since he does not know which party belongs to which on the barstools, he may start taking orders by declaring, "Ok, ladies first! Now, which one of y’all is the lady?"

The spirit of New Orleans lives!

In a bar, a woman serves me my drink with a smile, adding "Here you go, darlin’." Music is in the air. Three women come dancing out of a shop in the Vieux Carré singing "You better shape up, ‘cause I need a man" from the movie "Grease." In another shop, the salesman interrupts his sales pitch to sing the soul song playing in the radio in the background.

At the Mid-City Lanes, people are bowling to zydeco in a raised building. A fishing show is projected onto a giant screen above the lanes. In the back, a band is drowning out the TV show with swamp music: rock & roll on guitar, accordion, drums, and washboard. Almost a tenth of the more than 100 people dancing are racially mixed couples. Everyone looks like they are having a blast. They have not lost what counts.

Frenchman Street in Faubourg Marigny offers more live music than a person can handle in one night. At Snug Harbor, Ellis Marsalis is playing -- a godfather of jazz and father of the Marsalis clan, which began dominating the jazz world in the US at the end of the 1970s. Ellis thanks the crowd for their support; locals have been keeping the place full since the city lost its tourists. Ellis’ sixth son Jason is accompanying him on drums, his fifth son to become a major jazz figure.

Across from Snug Harbor, the Jazz Vipers are playing old time jazz at the Spotted Cat. Locals are dancing the Lindy Hop from the 1920s, a dance that has been called a "marriage for three minutes." Next door, a funk bank is playing at d.b.a., and then there is a blues band in a fourth club -- and we have not even been to Café Brazil on the corner yet. One block of this street offers more great entertainment than you can enjoy in one night, even on weeknights. So when do we have time for the French Quarter, Tipitina’s, or Oak Street and Willow Street in Carrollton?

Characters, not people

This is New Orleans with just 70,000-80,000 people living in it. "No," my enchanted guest from Germany corrects me, "New Orleans doesn’t have any people; it just has characters." At the Spotted Cat, an old man enters the bar wearing a cat around his neck that will not leave him all night. In a café, a biker covered in tattoos begins talking to me about literature and the best bookshops in San Francisco. He also recommends I take a walk in the calm of a small redwood forest just north of SanFran. In another café, a stranger begins chiming in on our discussions about the Tenth Commandment. Is it really a sin just to covet someone without committing adultery? Doesn’t everyone desire others all the time?

There probably is no better time to visit New Orleans. Almost all of the attractions have survived the storm and the flood. The main thing the city now lacks is drunken tourists. Those who visit now can dive deep into local culture while the locals pull together and celebrate what makes them special.

Everywhere, people are taking about Katrina. How is everyone doing? A singer from the Pfister Sisters announces between songs that tips are very welcome now that she has lost her teaching job: the first schools outside of the unflooded Westbank will be opening soon, but not hers. New Orleans is bereft of schoolchildren.

But people do not complain much; they choose to enjoy the day instead. The bassist of Walter Wolfman Washington’s band tells me between sets that the band fared well: only the drummer lost his house. In the next set, they all continue to play their hearts out as though nothing were amiss.

7 hours of sustained winds up to 100 mph have left their mark where renovations were already sorely needed. The movie "Down by Law" was partly shot here. A photo of this building taken last January can be seen here. Otherwise, one finds houses burned down even in parts of town not flooded. When the power was switched back on after some 4-5 weeks, some homes immediately went up in flames. Ironically, the New York Fire Department, which had come to NOLA to help, had to put out a fire in the French Quarter at a house numbered 911.

From the Marigny to the Riverbend, a stretch one local called the "sliver on the river," one has trouble imagining the complete devastation just 5 blocks lakeside of St. Charles Avenue. But everywhere, businesses are looking for workers. The unemployment rate is basically zero. Restaurants are offering $2,000-6,500 dollars up front. The lack of workers makes itself felt on tables: people now often eat on Styrofoam plates with plastic knives and forks, and not just in fast food chains. Waiters explain that there is no one to wash dishes.

Aside from wind damage, the Sliver on the River looks good, at least for a town that was well worn in to begin with. When looking at some buildings, one cannot help but wonder what damage Katrina caused, and what already looked that way in the summer.

Lots of traffics lights are not working. The locals stop at intersections and repeatedly signal to each other that the other person should go first until someone finally does. No one seems to be in a hurry. The menu at the Clover Grill puts it well: "If you are not served in 5 minutes, relax, it may take another 5 minutes. This is not New York City."

"Tent City" on the largest parking lot in the French Quarter near Jax Brewery. Here, FEMA staff spend some of their free time when they are not in the striptease joints in the Quarter. They may need some space to themselves: many New Orleanians feel that FEMA left them in the lurch too long. The owner of a bed & breakfast told me he would rather have empty rooms than FEMA guests.

So why was service at K-Paul’s http://www.kpauls.com/, one of the best restaurants in town, so rushed? In France, you reserve a table for the whole night; dining is the sole purpose of the evening. In the US, people dine in shifts, and the check is often smacked on the table before you are even finished, especially when people are waiting to be seated.

New Orleans has always been a bit French -- or is it more of an Hispanic mañana approach? At any rate, for $60 a head you do not expect to be rushed. What an absurd situation when the waiter appears with the main course before the appetizer is finished and even stands by the table waiting until you have cleaned off the last bite so he can take away your exquisite Creole plate and serve the delicious entrée! Has K-Paul’s been forced to hire anyone and everyone as a waiter, or did it always serve à l’américaine?

At the Court of Two Sisters, guests set the tempo themselves: for around $25, you get a brunch buffet of local specialties, ideal to have a test taste of just about everything. (Don’t forget sunscreen for the inner court when it is 70° and sunny on a winter’s day.) But Katrina has left its mark here, too: a lone banjo player has replaced the jazz combo, and the bus boys are gone. The city has lost its poor, and there are few left to do menial tasks. Hispanics repair roofs; not all of them speak good English. Many suspect these immigrants are being exploited.

There are enough problems to solve, but there is also enough reason to try: the city has not lost its character. That may also be a problem; after all, people who prefer to dance and eat well rather than work are not likely to build and maintain good levees. Katrina was as much a man-made disaster as a natural one. And New Orleans has tolerated extreme racial and class divisions for too long.

So when we rebuild, we do not have to restore the status quo. But for now, it is a relief to know that there is something to rebuild. There will be time later for discussions about improvement, time until the next big one hits. Won’t there?

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