Whither New Orleans? — Update ’07

Posted: May 10th, 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Features, Politics, Ruminations | No Comments »

New Orleans needs help.

There’s a small Starbucks in Canal Place, a tony shopping mall at the edge of the French Quarter. Last year during April’s JazzFest, the first after Katrina hit, the coffee shop had not reopened. Now it has.

Over the counter, hovering above a sizeable early morning line of turista in need of caffeine, is a sign that reads: “Now Hiring!!! Baristas. Flexible Hours. AM & PM. 401K. Stock Options. Health Insurance. Tuition Reimburse.”

If cranking out lattes is your current career choice, the Crescent City is the place to be.

It’s the same everywhere around the Crescent City. There’s hardly a restaurant, hotel or drug store without a Help Wanted message out front. At Drago’s, an eatery in Metarie specializing in to-die-for garlic and butter-laden grilled oysters, there’s a massive sign seeking service help for a new location in the Riverside Hilton. (Drago’s is where the waitresses, before they remove plates from the table, ask if “you’re still dippin’?” They’re talking about that sublime sauce, not chew.)

New Orleans is America’s singularly eccentric town. That said, it is giving lip service these days to a goal of normalcy. It’s part of the city’s post traumatic stress syndrome. Rebuilding houses for the working, service class is a reasonable place to start. The town needs bus boys, hotel maids, grocery clerks, doormen, oyster shuckers and, obviously, baristas. They need affordable places to reside.

Harry Connick Jr., a loyal ex-patriot, returned to play the closing set on the big stage at JazzFest. His photo ran in papers nationwide. He and his daughter were painting a house in a throttled neighborhood for Habitat for Humanity.

Louisvillian Sally Isaacs has been attending the music festival with her hubby and friends for more than a half decade now. A native Mississippian with a caring soul, she wanted to help out. Her daughter Anna, a senior at Manual, intended to fly down during the daze between — as JazzFest veterans call the weekdays between the two JazzFest weekends — to join her working rehabbing houses.

Well in advance, they applied online with the city’s Habitat for Humanity.

When they didn’t hear anything they contacted the Louisville office. Somebody there told them that someone from New Orleans would contact them the next day with instructions.

The call never came. Anna stayed home. Sally spent the daze between visiting with family, kicking back.

Such is the nature of New Orleans. That laid back attitude was part of the pre-Katrina charm. The City That Time Forgot and all that. Now what can fairly be called an undercurrent of civic ennui seems a disturbing impediment to a quick recovery.

New Orleans needs help.

But before you get the idea that nothing is happening, understand that’s far from the truth.

A startling realization hits long time visitors when they enter the French Quarter now. That something is different is immediately apparent. It takes a minute or two to figure it out.

The Quarter no longer smells. True. Fetid has long been the Vieux Carre’s best descriptor. No longer.

The city hired a new waste management company. It’s on the job 24/7.

I asked Anne at Laura’s Pralines & Fine Chocolates (“The City’s Oldest Candy Shop”) how things were going?

“With me? Or the city?”

“Well, uh, both.”

“I’m doing better. I’d moved to Colorado with friends, but returned when this store’s owner asked me to come and manage it. I used to run another shop down Royal.”

“And the Quarter, it seems so clean?”

“The new garbage company is great. They promised to have the streets cleaned by 7:30 on Ash Wednesday. Sure enough, the morning after Mardi Gras, there wasn’t a scrap of paper on the streets. Business has been up and down. There have been good months and bad. We’re staying with it.”

Indeed, Royal is certainly more alive than a year ago. It’s the bucolic street running parallel one block over from the titty bars and drink stands on Bourbon. Royal is the home of antique shops and art galleries for the most part. It is again as pleasant a stroll as it’s ever been.

Nancy Lambert is keeping her promise. She’s finally retiring from her gig selling soft shell crab po boy tickets at the festival after thirty years. She lives in St. Tammany Parish. It’s on the other side of Lake Ponchetrain, between Mandeville and Madisonville.

She too paints a hopeful — relatively hopeful — portrait for survival.

“Our neighborhood of about 250 homes had 65 homes that either flooded or had a tree in the roof. The rest of the homes lost trees, fences and out buildings. No one was spared. It took us months. Little by little we did it.

“70,000 people moved to St. Tammany Parish after the storm. Most of them from St. Bernard or Chalmette. The traffic here is unbelievable. We still wait in long lines because they can’t find anyone to work in the stores. We take bets on how large the NOW HIRING signs are going to get.”

New Orleans needs help.

But it remains inimitably itself. Felix’s Oyster Bar has reopened. So too, the Camellia Grill. Bob, our man at Galatoire’s has stayed the course. And, with a wink, advises he’s “upsized the tuxedo jacket.” (Read Whither New Orleans elsewhere on this site.)

The Jazz and Heritage Festival remains the best music event anytime, anywhere. This year’s six-day attendance of 350,000 was the largest since 2003. The city’s musicians, frankly the backbone of New Orleans’ culture, seem for the most part as resolute as ever to carry on the tradition that fostered Professor Longhair, Satchmo, Danny Barker, Irma Thomas, Galactic and the inimitable force that was Ernie K-Doe.

Our trusting waiter at Cafe du Monde actually let us run a tab. Not that there was room for more than one round of beignets after a sumptuous dinner at Stella on Chartres Street.

New Orleans needs help. Then again, it always has. What must be remembered above all is, as the t-shirts read, “New Orleans Matters.” In a time when culture in our country is increasingly homogenized, New Orleans matters more than ever.

---