New Orleans
May. 18th, 2016 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI have found my way to New Orleans, and it is unpleasant.
I haven't been here since Katrina, when I was trying to get over a shitty breakup and for some reason decided that I would go be a hero and join the relief operations. It was a miserable experience, because of course it was.
The city is still a mess. It resembles Philadelphia in its state of flagrant urban disrepair, except one does not go to Philadelphia expecting charm, so the breakdown of public infrastructure is all the more apparent here. There's still a lot of storm damage, with derelict houses abandoned and boarded up right in the middle of residential neighborhoods. The paving on many of the smaller streets might as well be cobblestones. A lot of the major streets have been torn up by the city and then just left that way, with their chain link fences rusting and orange traffic safety cones bleached almost yellow. Water doesn't drain, and after it rained for an hour yesterday several of the main avenues became swamps.
Although hey, at least it's not Baltimore.
I'm here for work, and I have been put up in a bed and breakfast that I think is supposed to be quaint and historic, but it kind of creeps me out. I come from an area in rural Georgia that has its fair share of dilapidated Queen Anne houses with high ceilings and plantation shutters. My father lives in a house like this, as did many of my friends growing up. Where I come from, these houses are for poor people, as they're old and cheap and dirty. These are the sort of houses where people hoard newspapers and use large black trashbags as curtains; the plumbing doesn't work, there's never enough light, and the second and third floors are filled with literal piles of moldy "antique" furniture no one cleans or uses because the staircases are dangerous.
The owners of the bed and breakfast are white, and they are welcoming and genteel and speak in softly accented English, but all their employees are black and speak in Creole patois. This is also historic, I guess.
It was my New Year's Resolution to visit New Orleans, and I have accomplished that resolution. I want to go home now.
I haven't been here since Katrina, when I was trying to get over a shitty breakup and for some reason decided that I would go be a hero and join the relief operations. It was a miserable experience, because of course it was.
The city is still a mess. It resembles Philadelphia in its state of flagrant urban disrepair, except one does not go to Philadelphia expecting charm, so the breakdown of public infrastructure is all the more apparent here. There's still a lot of storm damage, with derelict houses abandoned and boarded up right in the middle of residential neighborhoods. The paving on many of the smaller streets might as well be cobblestones. A lot of the major streets have been torn up by the city and then just left that way, with their chain link fences rusting and orange traffic safety cones bleached almost yellow. Water doesn't drain, and after it rained for an hour yesterday several of the main avenues became swamps.
Although hey, at least it's not Baltimore.
I'm here for work, and I have been put up in a bed and breakfast that I think is supposed to be quaint and historic, but it kind of creeps me out. I come from an area in rural Georgia that has its fair share of dilapidated Queen Anne houses with high ceilings and plantation shutters. My father lives in a house like this, as did many of my friends growing up. Where I come from, these houses are for poor people, as they're old and cheap and dirty. These are the sort of houses where people hoard newspapers and use large black trashbags as curtains; the plumbing doesn't work, there's never enough light, and the second and third floors are filled with literal piles of moldy "antique" furniture no one cleans or uses because the staircases are dangerous.
The owners of the bed and breakfast are white, and they are welcoming and genteel and speak in softly accented English, but all their employees are black and speak in Creole patois. This is also historic, I guess.
It was my New Year's Resolution to visit New Orleans, and I have accomplished that resolution. I want to go home now.
