“Oh, it’s all bullshit. The high design? That has nothing to do with reality. That’s just architectural self-indulgence.” The greening of architecture is quite a contentious subject. Because of a renewed emphasis on traditional home-building methods, The Green Home of the Future is in many respects not dissimilar from The Green Home of Yesterday. A tornado in Greensburg, Kansas provided the impetus for a vote to decide on what green methods would define the movement in that small town. The competition's results stymied many architects' conceptions of what "green" should mean. But in New Orleans, larger-scale destruction by Hurricane Katrina has provided a unique opportunity for proponents of distinct conceptions of green innovation to bring their ideas to life. Opinions among residents are mixed.
posted by jefficator on Nov 2, 2009 - 43 comments

Enrich your Halloween experience with some seasonally appropriate art: the whimsical and charming SkeleCANS (flapjax recommends: slideshow viewing) from New Orleans' indefatigable Skeleton Krewe.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 31, 2009 - 6 comments

One effect of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was to render existing bike maps of the city obsolete and incomplete. The NOLA Cycle Bike Map Project is a grassroots effort to create a comprehensive, freely-available bicycle map for New Orleans (like those that already exist for Chicago, Portland, and other cities). Because the project is driven by DIY maps produced by individuals and by volunteer social events organized around mapping different locations that can then be added to the project's database, it's been described as "Wiki-style involvement in the real world." (Here's some video of the project.) [more inside]
posted by liketitanic on Oct 29, 2009 - 4 comments

It has a key, like a Ferarri! Quintron and Miss Pussycat. Puppet shows, Innovative drum machines, nightclub proprietorship, Touring performances, Recorded artistry. Is there anything they don't do?
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist on Sep 8, 2009 - 28 comments

Happy Katrina Day. [more inside]
posted by vapidave on Aug 29, 2009 - 16 comments

Sister Sue, tell me baby what are we gonna do. She said take two candles, and then you burn them out. Make a paper boat, light it and send it out, send it out now ... Willy DeVille (formerly William Dorsay), died of pancreatic cancer on August 6, at the age of 58. So much of his music evoked the languid heat of a city night. This might be a good evening to turn it up loud. [more inside]
posted by maudlin on Aug 7, 2009 - 21 comments

It all started with a t-shirt. When Tulane University art historian Thomas Bayer posted a list of thirteen reasons why Brad Pitt, whose local Make It Right Foundation builds post-Katrina homes in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, should become New Orleans' next mayor (among them: New Orleans will become the magnet for conventions of professional women’s organizations worldwide. The warm glow of pink Cadillacs will illuminate our Southern nights. This mass of sensually charged femininity will attract male visitors eager to contribute their economic stimulus. ), a local entrepreneur whipped up a t-shirt designed to draft Brad. With many anxiously awaiting the end of Mayor Ray Nagin (Nagin's Last Day bumper stickers have popped up in town) and the Jolie-Pitts known for their New Orleans aid, the story's gotten legs. [more inside]
posted by liketitanic on Jun 26, 2009 - 50 comments

NEA Jazz in the Schools takes a step-by-step journey through the history of jazz, integrating that story with the sweep of American social, economic, and political developments. This multi-media curriculum is designed to be as useful to high school history and social studies teachers as it is to music teachers. Start with the introductory video to get a feel for the place. The education outline contains five lessons. If you just want to listen, all the music samples are on one page. Perhaps you're more interested in individual artist biographies, or a jazz history timeline. [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 21, 2009 - 11 comments

Snooks Eaglin has died. One of New Orleans' most authentic and underrated guitar players won't be making his jazz fest gig this year. Next time you have some red beans & rice, take a moment to remember the guy who some called the human jukebox.
posted by msconduct on Feb 18, 2009 - 23 comments

At Sammy's at 2016 Main, on September 8, a historic jam session occurred, an impromptu reunion of many of the city of New Orleans's finest musicians. Each player who walked in the door was much more than a mere musician that night -- they were an affirmation of life. Not only did their attendance indicate that they had survived the storm, but their collective presence also indicated that their music would survive, too.

The New Birth Brass Band (and friends) tears it the hell up in downtown Houston post-Katrina. The whole show is great, but if you're short on time, parts one and three are especially smoking.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas on Dec 14, 2008 - 3 comments

It's snowing in New Orleans.
posted by swift on Dec 11, 2008 - 108 comments

The Isleños are said to be a dying traditional American subculture. Descendants of Canary Island immigrants of Louisiana, the name Isleños was given to them to distinguish them from Spanish mainlanders, known as "peninsulares." But in Louisiana, the name evolved from a category to an identity. For a long time they were one of those rare subcultures that found a way to maintain a living tradition as the world around them modernised by carving out a livelihood as crabbers and 'shrimpers'. Then Katrina hit and the wetlands, which were central to the Isleños identity, essentially dissapeared. Despite the blow to their economy, they still have their songs and annual fiestas, evidence of a strong culture which binds their community together, and their rebuilding following Katrina demonstrated how strong that sense of identity and culture can be. So perhaps the Isleños shouldn't be written off just yet, then. After all, as Isleño Irvan Perez says, "This is home. Where else would we go?"
posted by Effigy2000 on Dec 7, 2008 - 7 comments

In the French Quarters of New Orleans you are very likely to come across various street entertainers. Grampa Elliott is one such performer.

Elliott Small has had a smattering of recordings over the years like the 1976 Malaco record discussed here

Since that time no record lables have produced any of his work that I can find. He spent his time performing on street corners in the Quarter until Katrina, some people feared the worse, but he turned up on Royal street in 2005 no worse for wear. Here is a story by Rick Bragg of the NYT [more inside]
posted by nola on Sep 24, 2008 - 6 comments

The Gulf Coast has just witnessed what's being called the "the largest evacuation in US history", but let's hear from those hardy souls who stuck around NOLA to ride it out, shall we? Hey, where else are you gonna see National Guardsmen (charged with the task of enforcing curfew) put down their rifles and take the stage at a local bar for a little blues jam? And be sure to watch the video that accompanies the article: immensely entertaining!
posted by flapjax at midnite on Sep 3, 2008 - 16 comments

Three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf, London street artist Banksy travels to New Orleans to put up some commemorative pieces, saying the city's levee wall offered "the best painting surface in the state of Louisiana." Some of the pieces are statements on the clean up effort, and some are protests against Fred Radtke, New Orleans' Grey Ghost, who has been described as a street artist and an anti-street art crusader.

Like him or hate him, expect more of the same from Bansky: propaganda, magical realism, cartoon rats, a lot of technical finesse and a complete lack of subtlety. See the pictures on his site with irreverent/poignant commentary and then go to the flickr pool to see it from a few local perspectives.
posted by elr on Aug 31, 2008 - 74 comments

More worries in New Orleans, this time from the Police Department. Within three weeks, Police Superintendent Warren Riley (as seen on the left) has suspended three NOPD officers in separate incidents: one for leading Crescent City Connection police on a high speed chase which ended in one pursuit officer grazed by the fleeing car and another slapped (video). One involved an off-duty officer brandishing a gun at a children's camp and shouting expletives, apparently even backed up by responding officers, according to witness accounts. Another was suspended for wearing the wrong colored shirt on the day he retired, a punishment Riley sees as appropriate as a "consequence of his actions".
posted by kuperman on Jul 17, 2008 - 28 comments

A new sort of pop art has sprung up in New Orleans - cars emblazoned with brand names, usually snack foods.
posted by plexi on Jul 11, 2008 - 117 comments

The [US] National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its 21st annual list of the nation's Most Endangered Historic Places. Among them: Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, (where Linda Brown tried to register for school, resulting in Brown vs. Board of Education); New York City's Lower East Side; California's State Parks; Philadelphia's Boyd Theatre, and several others. The previous 20 years of Most Endangered Historic Places can be found in the Archive. [more inside]
posted by Miko on May 20, 2008 - 16 comments

Sounds of America is a new monthly streaming audio program, a collaboration between the National Museum of American History and Smithsonian Global Sound. Up now are 3 episodes: African-American music in New Orleans, Women in American Music, and Freedom Songs of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
posted by Miko on Apr 2, 2008 - 12 comments

New Orleans after Katrina, as the world knows, is a bleak, desolate place, devoid of hope and perpetually awaiting the change that never arrives. Where better to stage Waiting for Godot? [more inside]
posted by Bromius on Jan 7, 2008 - 31 comments

From the Magnolia to the Calliope to the Melph (part 2, 3, and 4), New Orleans projects are notoriously violent, but through the haze of murder and decay there is a project culture of dancing and revelry. Now the projects are being torn down in a mix of protest and unrest.
posted by plexi on Dec 20, 2007 - 23 comments

Salvador and Mabel Mangano, the owners of St. Rita’s nursing home in St. Bernard Parish, where 35 patients drowned in Hurricane Katrina’s flood waters, were found not guilty of negligent homicide and cruelty to the infirm charges tonight by a six-member jury. Read their story and decide for yourself if they're guilty.
posted by ColdChef on Sep 7, 2007 - 34 comments

Since when did we get cat 5 levees? Or a working flood plan? Behold the New Orleans Levee, where 'We don't hold anything back.'
posted by localroger on Aug 30, 2007 - 21 comments

President Bush touched down in New Orleans at 7:11 p.m. this evening The 84-year-old Chase sat close to the president and accepted his praise for the meal of jambalaya, stewed okra and gumbo z'herb, an all-greens gumbo that's a tradition at Chase's Holy Thursday dinners.
posted by nola on Aug 28, 2007 - 51 comments

Chess legend Jude Acers. In prison.
posted by The Deej on Aug 9, 2007 - 44 comments

"How do the tacos help gumbo?" Hold the tacos, New Orleans says. In yet another pig-ignorant move in Post-Katrina New Orleans, local politicians have decided to destroy the booming taco-truck business that is feeding the workers (and plenty of the locals) who are rebuilding the city. Blame racism, blame taxes, blame immigration politics: A hundred years ago this line of reasoning would have banned the muffulettas and poor-boys that those invading hordes of Sicilians were using to corrupt our youth.
posted by ColdChef on Jul 16, 2007 - 93 comments

Not long ago, Old Crow Medicine Show shot a video for "I Hear Them All" in New Orleans, LA [quicktime video] Filmed by photographer Danny Clinch.
posted by nola on Jul 12, 2007 - 29 comments

The Best Laid Plans: The Story of How the Government Ignored Its Own Gulf Coast Hurricane Plans. A new report from CREW describes FEMA's plan to respond to a hurricane of Katrina’s magnitude and its subsequent failure to implement that plan. [Via C&L.]
posted by homunculus on Jun 28, 2007 - 33 comments

From 1970 to 2004 Michael P. Smith photographed musicians in performance at every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. With an excellent sense of timing, Smith was adept at capturing the exultant, transcendant musical moment. Whether they be of the very famous or the relatively unknown, his are photographs you can practically hear.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Apr 21, 2007 - 29 comments

Google Maps has restored New Orleans to pre-Katrina The views Google Maps is now providing show the city as it was prior to the storm. It's not clear why.
posted by Kirth Gerson on Mar 30, 2007 - 67 comments

Last Chance. "It took the Mississippi River 6,000 years to build the Louisiana coast. It took man (and natural disasters) 75 years to destroy it. Experts agree we have 10 years to act before the problem is too big to solve." [Via First Draft.]
posted by homunculus on Mar 5, 2007 - 19 comments

In Setback for New Orleans, Fed-Up Residents Give Up. After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fiancé, Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye.

Not because of some great betrayal but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend; the human feces deposited on their roof; the two burglaries in the space of a week; and the overnight wait for the police to respond.
posted by four panels on Feb 16, 2007 - 76 comments

Killings Bring New Orleans to its Bloodied Knees In the sixth New Orleans murder in less than 24 hours, Helen Hill was killed and her husband (who co-founded a sliding-scale doctors' office to serve the impoverished community) was shot in their home Thursday about 5:30 a.m., said police, who found the bleeding man kneeling at the door of the couple's Faubourg Marigny home, clutching their 2-year-old son.
posted by ColdChef on Jan 5, 2007 - 106 comments

The McDonogh library has no books. The stalls in a girls’ restroom have no doors. Fights break out daily. About 50 students have been suspended; 20 have been recommended for expulsion. Several weeks ago, a teacher was “beaten unmercifully” by a ninth grader enraged at being barred from class because he was late.

The principal, Donald Jackson, estimated that up to a fifth of the 775 students live without parents. “Basically, they are raising themselves, because there is no authority figure in the home,” Mr. Jackson said. “If I call for a parent because I’m having an issue, I may be getting an aunt, who may be at the oldest 20, 21. What type of governance, what type of structure is in the home, if this is the living conditions?”

This is John McDonogh High School in New Orleans.
posted by four panels on Nov 1, 2006 - 56 comments

Louis Moreau Gottschalk - an unjustly forgotten American composer of classical music
posted by Gyan on Sep 9, 2006 - 13 comments

A little more than a year after leaving New Orleans, I miss the culture of sophisticated drinking. Sure, maybe not on Bourbon Street, home of the sickly sweet hurricane and Hand Grenade. But you head off Bourbon and you can get a very pleasant Pimms cup at the Napoleon House. And just down the street is a military antiques store that was once the pharmacy where Antoine Amadie Peychaud invented the sazerac, which lays claims to being the word's oldest cocktail. Any good bartender in New Orleans will be able to make you one; finding a sazerac-capable bartender outside the city is almost impossible. Of course, just outside the French Quarter, in the Fairmont Hotel, is the Sazerac bar, but, surprisingly, their specialty is not the sazerac, but the favorite drink of Huey Long, the delicious Ramos Gin Fizz. Nearby, back in the Quarter, on an upper floor of the Pharmacy Museum, was the former home of the Museum of the American Cocktail -- now seemingly in transit after Katrina. At the opening, cocktail chef Dale Degroff served up his specialty -- pre-Prohibition cocktails, including a brandy crusta that still makes me weep from the pleasure of it. Sure, up here in Minneapolis we invented the cosmopolitan, but somehow a drink that's also become popular as a perfume doesn't have that same Crescent City je ne sais quoi.
posted by Astro Zombie on Sep 4, 2006 - 36 comments

Oops: Impostor scams Louisiana officials Burned by the yes men. A prankster poses as a HUD honcho and promises NOT to destroy perfectly good housing projects slated for demolition. later, the prankster explained: The New Orleans projects are sturdily constructed brick buildings that, nevertheless, are slated for demolition, he said. "Basically, the real reason, of course, is they want to develop New Orleans into something pleasing to tourists -- even more pleasing." Video here. Wikipedia has info on more of their exploits. My favorite was the bhopal fiasco.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht on Aug 29, 2006 - 19 comments

Wizbang sez that the levy in New Orleans that broke during Katrina was going to break even without a hurricane, and that the Corps of Engineers knew it and suppressed evidence of it until just recently.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste on Aug 28, 2006 - 72 comments

New Orleans City Ordinance #26031 --...those who have not been able to make the necessary repairs to their battered homes by August 29th risk having their property seized and bulldozed by the city.... Bush says today: Katrina Repair Will Take Time, but time's up for many New Orleans residents. (more here from ACORN, who has been trying to help save homes there)
posted by amberglow on Aug 23, 2006 - 62 comments

Stress building in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina anniversary could spark more problems Like many other New Orleanians nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina, John McCusker was experiencing the overwhelming stress of rebuilding his life. McCusker, a photographer who was part of The Times-Picayune's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning staff(reg. required, but worth it. Trust me.), was seen driving wildly through the city Tuesday, attracting the attention of police. He eventually was arrested, but not before he was subdued with a Taser and an officer fired twice at his vehicle. During the melee, he begged police to kill him. For some, it's still Katrina every day.
posted by ColdChef on Aug 10, 2006 - 141 comments

Mr R. A. Zimmerman has confirmed his intention to release Modern times, his forty-fourth official LP and first album of new material in five years, on August 29, 2006. (Unofficial track-listing from RollingStone.com; report on an advance listen from the NME; Dylan namechecks Alicia Keys?; Dylan covers 'When the levee breaks'?;)
posted by docgonzo on Jul 12, 2006 - 32 comments

Much like synchronized swimming or a standard drill team, a book cart drill team requires coordination and panache and is complicated enough to warrant its own manual. This year at the 2006 American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans, the winners of the “golden cart” in the Second Annual Book Cart Drill Team Competition were the city’s very own Tulane University “Booked on New Orleans”, (YouTube video, no sound) who had only started rehearsing 6 weeks prior and had practiced in the formerly flooded basement of the library.
posted by nekton on Jul 5, 2006 - 21 comments

Transvestite Gang Pesters Magazine Street. "A house fell on my sister..." "That weeping sound of despair? That's just some chick trapped in an elevator." A Baptist Church burned, then destroyed. Mail delivered. Life in New Orleans nine months after Katrina.
posted by bukharin on Jun 29, 2006 - 16 comments

Hilton Ruiz is dead. The wonderful pianist Hilton Ruiz, who "had been in a coma since May 19, when he was found outside a French Quarter bar with severe head injuries," has died in a New Orleans hospital. He'd played with everyone from Freddie Hubbard and Rahsaan Roland Kirk to Charles Mingus, Betty Carter, Archie Shepp, and Clark Terry. Sad news, especially coming hard on the heels of the loss of Billy Preston.
posted by languagehat on Jun 8, 2006 - 16 comments

Flash flood! A New Orleans Times Picayune flash animation of exactly how, and where, and when the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Here's the accompanying article. Even as a local, I had no idea how weak the levee systems were. And apparently still are. Here's some more info from a local grassroots group fighting for better levee protection.
posted by ab3 on May 18, 2006 - 18 comments

"The water, it came to your school. The gasoline, chemicals, sewage and blood came to your doorstep. It settled into the ground of this courtyard where we now gather." Chris Rose's commencement speech at Ursuline Academy in New Orleans.
posted by ColdChef on May 15, 2006 - 13 comments

Nueva Orleans Before Katrina, Hispanics accounted for 3 percent of New Orleans’ population, with just 1,900 Mexicans showing up in the 2004 Census. No one knows for certain how many new ones have arrived, but estimates put the number between 10,000 and 50,000.
posted by ColdChef on May 9, 2006 - 105 comments

Cajun Music MP3s, featuring music from the 1920s to 1970s.
posted by LarryC on May 6, 2006 - 16 comments

"You drowned 1,200 people! I rebuke you." Politics as usual? Yes, if you're from Louisiana. Is it hot where you are? Well, at least your federal government didn't trick you into living in your car in 100 degree weather because they won't give you the keys to your trailer. Oh, but try not to get sick, because even though New Orleans is almost back to its Pre-Katrina size (1 million out of 1.3 million), half of the hospital space is gone. Only six weeks until hurricane season! Woot!
posted by ColdChef on Apr 19, 2006 - 37 comments

The 3rd Battle of New Orleans, a post-Katrina group weblog, visually debunks the notion that most of New Orleans is 10 feet below sea level and that not enough residents had flood insurance.
posted by turbodog on Apr 7, 2006 - 62 comments