The first thing I noticed once I got to New Orleans was there were beads everywhere.
The second thing I noticed was something was still terribly wrong in the Crescent City.
We were staying in the French Quarter, a pretty hotel with a pool a few blocks from Bourbon Street. We rode bikes to a big park one day and saw some signs of the destruction along the way, but it was during the day. Sunlight helps even the saddest situation not seem so bad. There were tours of the Lower Ninth Ward, but I didn’t feel right about poking my head out from a bus to stare at one of the country’s biggest failures. I hate and silently mock people who ask me for directions to “Ground Zero” in Manhattan–wasn’t this the same thing?
On my vacation agenda was a tour of the Garden District, some po’boys, cold-brewed coffee, a few nights out for some brassy jazz. I did not have time to think about slimey local politicians, but New York followed me, via daily email updates about Greg Meeks’ continued involvement with duping Katrina victims out of money and shelter. And there I was, in the place where the wrong was supposedly done, with hints of all that did go wrong just peeking beyond the gilded surface
On our third night in New Orleans my friend and I decided to grab dinner away from the main drag. After some research we settled on a popular soul food restaurant that was a few blocks away. The map said to hook a right after Toulouse Street and take Basi Street past the highway until it turned into Orleans Avenue and we hit Dooky Chase’s. We got dressed and set out and it didn’t take long for us to realize things had changed.
Basin Street was dark and empty. We heard sirens off in the distance and didn’t see anybody for a few blocks. There was an abandoned old pharmacy and some boarded up corner stores and we finally saw some people gathered around a store in the middle of a block that sold candy and cigarettes. All of the houses on the street were abandoned and boarded up, with spray painted tallies and dates on the white or blue or beige clapboard.
There was one white house, the paint curling up and peeling off, with black spray paint scrawled on the front. Two cats, one chow. Two Xs. The “chow” had two Xs on it. The cat had a box. 9/26/05. Five years ago. Five years and that house still looks like that?
And all I could think about, despite what I told myself I wouldn’t, was Greg Meeks. All that missing money. No, it wasn’t millions of dollars. No, he didn’t wait five days before visiting it via helicopter. But here was a New York guy, representing areas of Queens that hurt without the hurricane, and promised them something and they never received it. What could that money have done for Basin Street?
We got to Dooky Chase’s—it was closed for the night.
“You wanna go back?” I asked my friend, and he said yes almost as soon as I asked, and we walked fast back to the French Quarter. I like to pretend I’m streetwise and tough and not scared by dark corners in strange cities but I was. I felt bad feeling better walking away from the piles of rubble and towards the bright lights and hand grenades of the French Quarter.
Halfway through our walk back a man stepped out of an abandoned house and walked by us.
“Bourbon Street,” he said, in that low, smooth, mumbly New Orleans accent I tried deciphering in the remaining few days in the city. Yes, I thought. And I’m sorry.
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-Seminal NYC journalist Gabe Pressman wrote about Meeks and New Orleans on Friday
-Some residents are saying the Aqueduct deal fell through because of “racist journalism”
-Greg Meeks had to stand in front of the class and tell them he’d been served a subpoena . Officials say he’s been complying with requests for documents and tax returns on various non-profits.