New New Orleans

The problem with the US is given enough time most people will entertain you but simultaneously destroy your trust in the human race. It took somewhere special to restore that, NOLA to the locals.

Not many places in the developed world can say they’ve had it as bad in the past 5 years as NOLA. The area is constantly battered by Hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina destroyed many parts of the city with floods and high winds, the rebuilding of the cities flood defences still continues today.

On Marconi Drive along the west side of City Park you can still see the place where building of the wall along the canal from the Mississippi has halted (124+635). A barman in the Lost Love Lounge told me that the small gap between the wall and the highway is a constant reminder of how vulnerable they are to the hurricanes.

Then came the BP Oil Spill which not only slowed down oil extraction in the Gulf but devastated the other main industry in NOLA, fishing. Seafood which was eaten in and exported from NOLA disappeared. As a consequence many businesses had to close or adapt. Stores are only now getting oysters back but many won’t eat them for fear of contamination. Everyone knows the oil is still there, at the bottom of the sea along with the compounds used to make it sink.

Perhaps it’s due to the lack of disposable income or the fear of losing their livelihood to another disaster, but people are reluctant to spend now. One waitress told me her tips are down 75% after the oil spill but I doubt she’ll be reimbursed by BP.

Despite all this, the scorching heat and crime – NOLA is one of earth’s great wonders. Words can’t express how wonderful it is to sit behind a flee-market watching buskers who would be more at home in your local jazz club.

You’ll find phenomena not unique to NOLA here too. Homosexuals claiming part of the city as their own and simultaneously lowering sky high crime rates. The “French quarter” label being extended to damaged areas for higher real estate earnings.

One of the biggest pressures to the old NOLA that I was expecting came as a surprise. Everyone who comes here is touched by compassion and humility, and some of them stay. Students, artists, hippies, humanist, Hare Krishnas.

East of the French quarter is Bywater. This area was once a hotbed for crime and drugs. I shared a beer with one ex-resident who only came back to Bywater after the restoration started because of the new inhabitants. The new neighbours have brought a community spirit mixed in with a hipster lifestyle which is slowly rebuilding the area into a hotbed of cool bars, coffee shops, and art projects. Whilst true some of them are more interested in facial hair and Seth Lakemen vinyl than sustainable restoration, they’re all having a definite impact on what happens in the city both culturally with the Fringe Festival and in the materials used to rebuild. A lot is reclaimed from piles of rubble and gives the area a shanty town feel which makes you think you’ve washed up onto an island of shipwrecked tourists.