New Orleans Ambassador in Training
I have declared myself an ambassador for this great city, and I’ll tell anyone who wants to know how great the charms and ways of New Orleans are. After Katrina, I decided the least I could do is proselytize about a place that has me thoroughly under its spell. So when Tom & Matko came from Croatia and one of them is an architect, I made it my business to put together a walking tour around the bayou that dates and gives an historical background on the houses that surround this body of water and make up my neighborhood.
Yesterday, I was giving a driving overview of the city to my girlfriends that began with us leaving Bayou St. John and driving to the lakefront – we went down Wisner because I thought we should pass the Spanish Fort, the Greek Church, and the new bike path that was installed after Katrina along that part of the bayou, but honestly going down Marconi is way better because you pop out at the lake and it has this sense of awe when you see the enormity of Lake Ponchartrain suddenly glittering in front of you. That is the route I took Doug & Carl on when they were here and we were on our bikes – it was then that D decided he wanted to move here and buy a boat. He’s a boataholic.
Then we drove back through Fountainbleau and I told them about how there were three neighborhoods that were devastated by Katrina that rarely get play in the news and writings. The 9th Ward is certainly the most tragic as a way of life ended with Katrina that will never recover. But there was also Lakeview (land of the wealthy who mostly did not return or relocated Uptown to what we call the Isle of Denial as their storm effects were minimal), Broadmoor by Fountainbleau (a citizen recovery success story) and New Orleans East (still appearing to be teetering on the verge of recovery).
We then hopped over to Carrolton Avenue and followed the trolley car route around the River Bend and then went by the university area – Tulane, Loyola – Audubon Park on the right and then uptown where Napoleon Avenue meets St. Charles Avenue and where most of the best parades on Mardi Gras begin and where I used to live next door to Anne Rice’s St. Elizabeth’s – an enormous old orphanage that she converted into her party house and office.
We continued into the Garden District turning down one of the number streets to find Anne Rice’s old mansion and then back up through the muses – to get to Downtown and the Warehouse District – the enormous D Day Museum that my professor Stephen Ambrose spearheaded and the Ogden Southern Museum that hosts Thursdays music conversations in its lobby and packs the locals in to share our rich musical heritage and then Lafayette Square home to Wednesdays free summer concerts and the greeting of Kings and Queens of Mardi Gras.
Then to the French Quarter and across Esplanade through the Marigny where Frenchman Street has chock a block of music venues that singularly define the rich musical life of New Orleans and then to the Bywater where we got derailed at Sound Cafe by a Second Line parade that had spontaneously gathered the multitudes and so we backtracked and made our way down St. Claude and across the Industrial Canal looking down to the our left at where the barge had breached the levee and where the lower 9 was completely annihilated – but now there are many houses from Make It Right – Brad Pitt’s (who should be mayor) pet project to restore housing to the families who lost everything in Katrina. Then passed Fats Domino’s house and back up and to the Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme – the oldest black neighborhood in the country.
At one point, my friend asked me about some historical facts that I didn’t know – what year was the Louisiana Purchase (May 2, 1803 – my birthday, I should at least remember this date, the US purchased from France 828,800 square miles for $11,250 and the cancellation of $3,750 worth of debt*). Wikipedia offers a nice overview of the other facts – the French and Spanish settlements prior to the land purchase. The Indians who lived here before the Europeans arrived used the bayou as an important trade route – then traders arrived in 1690 – and the City of New Orleans was founded in 1718 by the French – in 1763, New Orleans was ceded to the Spanish hence the very Spanish architecture that dominates the French Quarter, in 1800 Bonaparte, reclaimed Louisiana under French rule hence the neutral grounds and the Napoleon House, where I sat with my friends having a Pimm’s Cup in the courtyard, which was built to accommodate Bonaparte on his travels here.
*Napoleon Bonaparte said, “This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride.”