It's Weird Here

I guess it depends on where in New Orleans you live, but it sure is weird here. I took a bike ride around my neighborhood, and the oddness of so many houses and no people was rather disquieting. It's like living in a ghost town, at least in this area; if the destruction were greater and the people fewer, I would think the setting akin to Pompeii.

It's also strange to see so starkly the effect of only a couple feet in elevation; up Fontainebleu (most folks say Fountainblue) towards Carrollton maybe 10 blocks, sit beautiful unravaged houses in varying states of grandeur. Here in the bowl of New Orleans, though, there isn't a house that didn't take at least 5 feet of water. Some sit higher and the first floors survived mostly intact, while others that were built slab-on-grade did not fare as well. There are at least three houses on surrounding blocks that have been raised - one with poured concrete pillars, one with cinder blocks, and another by hook/crook - this last guy is a daring individual. I'll get a picture up as soon as I can.

And then you can get out of the area and head over to Magazine Street, over to Le Bon Temps Roule and hear the Soul Rebels every Thursday night for free, which I highly recommend, and from the inside of this bar, it seems like normality, or at least New Orleans-style normality. I've never seen people having this much fun on a Thursday night in Chicago. Maybe I didn't go to the right places. But to see a room packed with sweaty happy people, arms and legs waving and kicking to the sounds of a New Orleans brass band, is a relief from the enervating effect of living in a ghost town.