So read a bumper sticker I saw in the Marigny district yesterday though a lot of people in New Orleans seem good and ready to pass judgment. One popular T-shirt says Meet the Fockers and depicts Bush, Brown etc. as the people who focked the Big Easy Hard and a popular mayoral race shirt depicts Willie Nagin and the Chocolate City (“Semi-sweet and a little nuts”). The political races of the future will be won and lost on T-shirts, I fear, but there is a sense that someone should be held accountable, if not for the hurricane then for the fact that no one seems to be in a hurry to clean up the mess.
Jeffrey and I took a drive through the Ninth Ward to see the worst of it and it’s a whole lot worse than it looks on television. Houses on top of cars, buildings condemned, spray paint alerting rescuers to the number of people and animals, dead or alive, who were inside nine months ago. Fats Domino’s publishing business is still standing though his house is a little worse for wear. There were a few random tourists and us, taking photos of the devastation before thinking better of it.
“You would have to be crazy to want to move here,” I heard the concierge in my hotel telling a guest, “especially if you have kids.” Only 30% of the elementary schools are open and I suspect that Baghdad has a better record than that. And a lot more US money being poured into it. The thousands who have descended upon this city for JazzFest are leaving (some are staying for ancillary events like Piano Night at House of Blues tonight, and more will return for the second weekend) and there is a palpable desperation on the part of the store owners and many of the restaurateurs: Don’t leave us!
Of course the culture we’ve come to partake of abides. Out at the fairground’s Bell South Jazz Tent, Troy Andrews aka Trombone Shorty had the crowd in the palm of his 19-year-old hand with a jumped-up version of St. James Infirmary. It was throughline to Louis Armstrong, a new take on one of Satchmo’s signature songs, but there was no pretense, no passing of the mantle stuff (in closing he introduced himself as Wynton Marsalis), just good fun(k). Allen Toussaint made a rare appearance at the Acura Arena and was treated like the royalty he is, sharp and sweat free in his linen suit, and he was joined by Elvis Costello who has a Toussaint produced CD coming out soon. Elvis was in fine form, better than I’d heard him in years — maybe working with the master helped — and when he sang the song Toussaint had penned for Little Feat — “The same people you misuse on your way up/You might meet up with on your way down” — it had a certain je ne sais quoi, as they say.
More judgments to come.