Cab Stand

“They never take nobody,” he said, glancing toward the beige taxi van in front of us. Through the foggy window I could see the driver eating the last bites of a paper-wrapped sandwich.

“He’s on his lunch break or something,” I say. “He’s been eating that sandwich for ten minutes now.”

“No,” says my new companion, “I’m here every day and they never take nobody from the street. Always waitin’ for them folks at the hotel.”

Silence hung like a cloud between us until, judging the moment right, he jumped from out of the large window opening in which the two of us had taken shelter and walked away in the rain. This was my second day in the city of New Orleans, and I had already learned an important lesson: bring an umbrella, always. I had left that afternoon from our apartment in Bywater and biked two miles down Royal Street to the end of the French Quarter where there was a branch of my bank. Though it was clear when I arrived, the afternoon downpour had begun in full force by the time I left.

For a while I sat in the bank, but feeling out of place, I went outside and stood under the best shelter I could find: a first floor window in the Hotel Monteleone. Tourists were congregating under the iron balcony of the building on the other corner while businesspeople with umbrellas trod through the flooded sidewalks. Directly across from me a covered trash receptacle was collecting a three-story waterfall pouring from a broken drain-pipe of the building above. I was just wondering whether or not that pipe was broken before the hurricane when another temporary tenant wandered into my window shelter.

She was a dark-haired, middle aged woman who looked as if she had been hopping from balcony to balcony down Royal Street. “That’s a bad rain,” she said, taking stock of her wet belongings: a purse and a shopping bag.

“Yes but I think it’s already clearing over Canal Street.”

“No it’s gonna rain like this for a while, darlin’.”

She had been eyeing the taxi van across from us since she came to the window; with a farewell glance she ran toward the taxi in the rain. I tried to warn her with no luck. She exchanged words with the driver, who had reluctantly cracked his window and shook his head. I watched her run desperately into the street to chase down a passing taxi car. By the time she got in her clothes and possessions were soaked.

Alone again, I noticed the waterfall slacking and the light shining more clearly over the CBD. I glanced at my bicycle, chained with others to the iron-encircled trees at the far end of the hotel entrance. In five minutes, I told myself, the rain would let up enough for me to leave.

After retrieving my bicycle, one of the hotel doormen called me over. He cordially told me to park my bicycle to the iron horses across the street; that the hotel management likes to keep bikes off their trees. I smiled and told him I’m new to town. His toothy grin widened: “Welcome to New Orleans,” he said as the rain dripped off my helmet.

Leaving for home I passed the window where I had spent the last twenty minutes. Another doorman, with his long white overcoat and umbrella, approached the beige taxi van. “Two guests to the airport?” he asked. The driver rolled up his window and nodded his head.

-Jason Richards

Fleeting Moments

On my second day in New Orleans, I decided to wander through the French Quarter with my boyfriend Ryan. After walking through a majority of it, the August heat and narrow alleys forced us to search for a shaded haven to rest. After seeing a Starbuck’s just beyond the Quarter, we headed for its shaded patio where I waited while Ryan went inside for coffee.



Sitting a table away was a middle-aged African-American woman, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the parking lot, seemingly deep in thought.
“Nice day,” she said without looking towards me.
I nodded in agreement, too tired to actually respond.
She continued to ask me if I was from here, and I politely said no. I told her I was from Kentucky and just here temporarily.
“I been here thirty years,” she said as she exhaled cigarette smoke. I could tell she wanted more from me than a one word response.
“Wow…that’s a really long time.”
“Mmmhmm,” she agreed. “You all ever have floods in Kentucky?” I quickly realized where the conversation was headed and wasn’t sure if I was prepared.
I explained to her that certain areas of Louisville had experienced moderate flooding a few times in its history because of its location on a river.
“Anything like down here?” she asked concerned.
I quickly responded, “Oh no, nothing like that at all.”



She looked back out towards the parking lot; inhaling her cigarette before continuing, “Some people won’t ever come back and it’s such a shame,” as she nodded her head.
I didn’t know whether to offer solace or no response. After all, I had never had a one-on-one conversation with anyone fresh out of a natural disaster. I simply nodded my head in agreement.
“This here a party town. They party all the time. Too much if you ask me,” she said.
“So I’ve heard,” I replied. Her statement intrigued me, as it seemed to implicate the excessive partying or a lack of care for the city’s well-being as cause for the flooding.
As Ryan emerged from Starbuck’s, coffee in tow, I reluctantly rose to my feet. In the middle of our conversation, my exhaustion had given way to intense interest: Where had she gone during the hurricane? Was her house damaged? So many questions I had left unasked and would never know the answers – even her name.



“Have a nice day, honey,” the lady said warmly as she put out her cigarette.
I grinned at her and said, “thanks, you too.” As we walked off I glanced back at her and realized that I may never know her name, but I would never forget her.



A few weeks later, my roommate Dara and I headed for the French Quarter to meet her co-worker, Bobbi, for some shopping. We met up at her apartment on the outskirts of the Quarter and headed towards the boutiques.



As we walked down the street, Bobbi slowed her pace and peaked in at a yard through an iron gate that had been left ajar. We asked her what she was doing, and she explained that her aunt and uncle lived there and she hadn’t seen them since her arrival in New Orleans.
“I just want to go in and say hello for a minute,” she explained. “They just got back from France a few weeks ago.”
We reluctantly followed Bobbi through the gate, hesitant to detour from our shopping mission.



We made our way through the gate and the gorgeous front yard canopied by tall, lofty trees instantly lifted my mood. The house was obviously an older home, but it had been vigorously renovated and updated with landscaping that was nothing short of amazing.
An old, short bald man greeted us around the side.
Bobbi said excitedly, “Hey Uncle John, it’s Bobbi! How are you?”
The old man looked surprised at first, almost as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Bobbi introduced Dara and me. With a deep and raspy voice, he introduced himself and treated us as if we had been friends for years. John showed us to the front door and told us to make ourselves comfortable.



A warm and familiar smell overcame me when we stepped inside: a combination of cigarette smoke and aged wood that reminded me of my grandparent’s house. I immediately felt at home.
“Hey Aunt Dell!” Bobbi exclaimed as she greeted her aunt in the living room. Dara and I walked into the room and were met with southern hospitality. Bobbi’s aunt had the kind of Louisiana accent one could get lost in and a warm aura that made you secretly wish she was your grandmother. She was a beautiful older woman – her gray hair neatly pinned back in a bun and her prominent cheek bones glowing.
After Bobbi and Dell became reacquainted, Dara and I played with their dog and explored the first floor of the house. From their conversation we gathered that John and Dell had two homes: one in Paris where they lived during the summer and this gorgeous home for the rest of the year. I knew this was a side of New Orleans not many people get to see.
John emerged from working outside. “John, show the girls around the house…let them see everything you’ve done,” Dell insisted.
“Yeah Uncle John, they would love to see it,” Bobbi added.
“Okay,” John replied as he lit a cigarette and led us to the kitchen. He explained that the house was originally built in the early 1800s – a fact I found intriguing. For some reason historical architecture had always interested me.



“The original part that we’re in right now was a three-room slave quarters,” John explained. I began thinking of what it must have been like to be a slave, living in a three-room house with many others. “The house next door is also mine and was the original owner’s home. I rent it out now.”
My mind raced with images of a small plantation and its slaves who returned home at night to one of the very rooms in which we were standing. “How fascinating,” I thought to myself and as my eyes explored every architectural detail. This house had experienced so much social change and its function had transformed so much throughout the history of New Orleans.
John continued to explain that these houses were two of only a few original homes left in the Quarter since the turn of the 19th century.
Obviously passionate about architecture, John showed us the additions he had made to the house. They really did blend well with the original house; so well in fact, you could hardly tell any difference between the two.
We followed John up the stairs where he showed us all the bedrooms, bath, and a Spanish style balcony that overlooked the beautiful courtyard we had seen upon entering the property.
After the tour was over, John asked, “Do you all know the famous pirate Jean Lafitte?”




Dara and I nodded our heads with anticipation.
John explained that after Lafitte had been exiled from New Orleans at the end of the 18th century, he moved to Galveston, Texas to resume his piracy. It was at this time that his two daughters purchased and lived in this very house.
We were both stunned. Not only had Creole slaves lived in the home, but the children of the famous pirate John Lafitte as well. Part of me wished I had brought my camera along to capture the moment, but part of me knew this was more than a touristy picture: it was an authentic New Orleans experience.




After Bobbi and Dell said their goodbyes, John escorted us out to the front gate. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same entrance that Lafitte’s daughters and the plantation residents had used back then?
John lit another cigarette as we said our goodbyes.


I knew I would never see the old lady or John and Dell ever again. Our paths crossed each other only for a fleeting moment in time, not meant to be recorded with a photograph or souvenir. They exist only in my memory, where they will be revisited over and over again.

-Allison Shaw

Welcome to the neighborhood!

After a short visit during the summer to look for an apartment, Ashlea, Lindsey and I found a place in the Lower Garden District. We knew we could not move in until September 1st and needed a place to stay during the first few days of class. I made arrangements to stay with my dad’s cousin Sara in the Broadmoor neighborhood until we could move in to our apartment. The Sunday before classes started, I left home from Houston with my car full of boxes, and headed for New Orleans.

Sara gave me directions to her house using alternative routes to help me avoid construction that had given her two flat tires in a week. Driving into Broadmoor down Napoleon, I was worried I’d miss my turn due to the many street signs still missing or hard to read. Fortunately the sign I needed was still up, and as I turned onto the street I was greeted by an enormous pothole. Welcome to the neighborhood!



Although it was Sunday, Sara welcomed me to the area with a traditional Monday night New Orleans dinner of red beans and rice. Over dinner we talked and she told me what life was like for her post-Katrina. Sara was lucky in that she was able to come home only a month after Katrina hit. Though her area of Broadmoor got seven feet of water, her second story living space was not badly damaged. At the time, Sara was only one of two residents able to move back to their homes on her block. One year later, there are now only four occupied houses on her block.




As I took my bags to the guest room, she pointed out the window to a few houses with lights on and told me when each of them had come home. While many of the houses in Broadmoor are currently under construction, the neighborhood is only a shell of what it once was. It is unbelievable how many houses have been abandoned by their owners and have not been touched since Katrina.



Every morning I would wake up to the sound of construction crews, saws being used to cut down damaged trees and large trucks moving down narrow residential streets lined with FEMA trailers and piles of moldy debris. The crews often blocked the streets with their heavy machinery which made it necessary to leave a few minutes early in case an unexpected detour was needed. My second morning there I could barely get out of the driveway because a crew was working on one of the houses across the street. By the time I came home from studio at seven, the house had been pulled off its piers and raised several feet in the air. Others feel that raising their house to the suggested level is not enough and have raised their homes up to a foot higher than where Katrina’s flood waters peaked.







Now, a few weeks later we’ve gotten settled in our new apartment and I no longer wake up to the sound of construction crews outside my window. Our apartment is located a block away from Magazine Street, and a few blocks away from downtown. While there is still some construction in the Lower Garden District, it’s a much different scene from the clean-up in Broadmoor and many other areas of New Orleans. The boutiques, restaurants and bars on Magazine Street have a constant buzz of activity which adds to the strange feeling that everything is fine. Sitting on our porch people pass by riding bikes, running, and walking their dogs to the park – casual scenes that don’t exist in many neighborhoods because at the end of the day people are tired from rebuilding their lives.






-Sarah Wilson

"Last Stop"

The last weekend of June, John Brock and I flew to New Orleans to secure ourselves a place to live. Our prospects, which were diminished by the general housing shortage, were spread across the city and, lacking a car, we intended to reach them all via ferry, foot and city bus. Transportation task #1 would be getting from the airport to where we'd be staying: Dara and Tony's apartment. We emerged from Louis Armstrong airport, pillows crammed under our arms and carrying backpacks into the uncomfortably still early afternoon heat, our new enemy. A helpful airport employee showed us the bus route, and explained that the stop at Carrollton & St. Charles was as close as we could get to where we needed to be. Being frugal students, we were pleased to hear that since Katrina, riding the buses was free. After a half hour of waiting on an empty bus while the driver smoked a cigarette, we headed east towards town on Airport Drive. Slowed by vehicular congestion and frequent traffic lights, the bus was soon packed as we passed the Saints training facility and deserted strip malls. Descending from an overpass, I felt a startling uneasiness as everyone else onboard shuffled about and started to stand up. The driver confirmed my suspicions with a garbled sentence that unmistakably included 'last stop'.



Shit. We were jetissoned from our air-conditioned nest only to land in hostile pedestrian conditions, the corner of Tulane & Carrollton. To our right, Carrollton dipped under several arms of I-10, and we were otherwise surrounded by empty businesses and parking lots. The only active building in sight was a Burger King across the street. Being on Carrollton was good but who knew how far north of St. Charles we were? Not us. We walked over to the parking lot to where people appeared to be waiting for a bus. After a long, quiet fifteen minutes, it came to my attention that we probably needed to be at the stop on the opposite side of the intersection, where a crowd of Mexican and Latin American construction workers were huddled in the shade. Thankfully we never got on the Burger King bus.










Our new ride got us directly to St. Charles and we walked the remaining ten or twenty blocks with shaken confidence. We knew we couldn't get into Dara and Tony's until they got home from work but we successfully stashed our now burdensome pillows and bags on their porch. Overcome with an increasing thirst, we spent the next two hours on a failed search for cold drinks, finding a different environment at every turn. Calhoun Street, on the border of Loyola University, was a street whose houses' guts lay piled on the curb or in the yard and whose telephone poles had amassed plenty of phone numbers for 'STUMP GRINDING' and 'MOLD REMOVAL'. The iron gates of St. Charles Avenue's robust mansions silently mocked our struggle. Even Magazine Street proved only a mirage of stores closed either for the evening or indefinitely. We gave up and headed back, our adventure ending after pit-stops in Audobon Park's hot dirt and the air-conditioned loung of Loyola's student center.

Hours later, I was at the Maple Leaf Bar, nursing a beer while two musicians I admire (George Porter Jr./bass/The Meters and Russell Batiste/drums/funky Meters/Vida Blue) sat next to me eating, drinking and talking about fried chicken with a Zephyr's baseball commentator. I was speechless, silenced by the combination of fatigue and the euphoric shock of hanging-out with such legendary musicians in their "home". Even before the music started, New Orleans had proven itself as a place where both the unavoidable and the unexpected would befuddle, excite and revive my spirit - Patrick Fromm