tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-248438542024-03-13T06:42:06.386-05:00New Orleans Slate~~~Ill Mannered and Occasionally Unseemly Outbursts~~~
"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." --Catherine AirdSam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.comBlogger200125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-80441333719345531942018-01-31T16:23:00.001-06:002018-01-31T16:28:06.027-06:00Sin City-What Happens in Vegas . . . You know the rest<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">In
the late 80's Vegas tried a more family friendly marketing plan. Many
casinos set up areas like arcades for kids to play in while their
parents hit the slots. As a long time visitor it was disconcerting to
find ourselves on a casino floor watching cargo short wearing dads
pushing oversized strollers through the banks of machines and
blackjack tables.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">When
I was a kid there was a very definite line between adult activities
and kids' presence. “Go outside and play. The adults are talking,”
was a standard refrain in my house and my parents sure were't
“swingers.” It was just very clear that some things were for
grown ups only, and they were entitled to their space. Mom, Dad and
their friends certainly weren't swinging from chandeliers, not that
we had chandeliers, but their conversations whatever they were were
things they didn't want to have to explain to us until we were
“Older.” At least that was the explanation I was always given
when I asked why all the secrecy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">Meanwhile
around 2008 Las Vegas seems to have largely abandoned the push toward
family friendly weekend stays and reverted back to showgirls and
drinks at gaming tables. Their tourist bureau started using the “What
happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” and it's been one of the most
recognizable and apparently profitable marketing campaigns ever
created. Why? Because Sin Sells. Even if Mom and Dad aren't availing
themselves of the more outre offerings of Las Vegas, they can go, be
adults with other adults and get a little naughty. She'll pack her
black lacey teddy and they'll book a nice room. They might even get a
little drunk one night and hit a show. He'll ogle the long legged
beauties in the ten foot wing span headdresses, she'll look at him as the slightly faded Lothario he still thinks he is but he's
HER Lothario. He got her after all, didn't he?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">New
Orleans has also been seen for a very long time as a “naughty city”
our Tourism bureau make it look like out city is one continuous party
and many of our tourists treat her as such. Then they go home having
done some things here they'd never do at home and may never do again,
but they will always get stars in their eyes when they remember their
trip to New Orleans.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">Sin
Sells. Folks can sin for a week or two on their vacations then head
home to their local churches and all will be well.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">Our
current raids on local strip clubs just ahead of Mardi Gras is in my
view counter to our “Naughty City” marketing. No we're not
Bangkok but a less enlightened Amsterdam might be a viable
description. We'll never make the list of the Naughtiest Cities
except by virtue of our bar hours. And kids can't get into the clubs or bars. No ID. So no real problem.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">I've
always thought one of the dumbest things New Orleans ever did was
accede to the Secretary of the Navy's prudishness and shutter and
demolish Storyville while one of the smartest things was its creation
in the first place.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">This
current war against the clubs on Bourbon is a job wrecker for a city
whose population relies so heavily on service industry jobs. I know
several dancers, all but one of them are either students in college
working for tuition or single mothers. None of them are prostitutes.
They're just dancers and all of them chose it, not one was forced
into nor are any of them being held against their will. They dance
because they're good at it and the money is great, “much more than
I could ever make waiting tables.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">What
are we doing New Orleans? I know the days of Evangeline the Oyster
girl are long gone unfortunately. I would have loved to see some of
the ladies from that era. We are visited because of our history
architecture and Mardi Gras for sure but also because of our vaguely
sinful reputation. Do we want to be Dayton Ohio? Nothing against
Dayton but it's not particularly evocative is it?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">I'm
also a bit concerned about the tinge of “judgment” I'm seeing
regarding the dancers and the clubs. We gonna slap a degenerate art
banner over their doors after we shutter them? And what exactly would
the city fathers prefer? More tshirt shops or do we just let the
developers come in, get some boffo tax abatement, build some luxury
timeshare condos who market themselves as the former strip club,
counting on the “naughty” to sell units? I'm just not sure what's
being accomplished by all this raiding other than to put a lot of
folks out of a job. And the timing is terrible. Not that I'd think it
a great idea at any other time but two weeks before Mardi Gras is
really really dumb.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">Our
tourist bureau will I guess just come up with a tag line like “where
you drank too much in New Orleans will stay in the cloud forever! We
have cameras!” Yeah, that'll bring folks in. I'm also not saying that we should ignore folks who bring the family to our city but truth is there's not a hell of a lot of interest to most of today's 11 year olds unless they're serious history buffs. My grandson at that age was most impressed by the Lucky Dog carts. The WW2 museum was terrific for about an hour! Let's embrace our "adult entertainment" reputation. See the link below to see how really very tame we are.<a href="https://www.scoopwhoop.com/AdultOnly-Travel-Destinations/#.7fewd7dmw">Places that make us look like relative Puritans</a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , monospace;">Ten
Years. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Sin Sells!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-50736438809560817292017-01-25T20:58:00.001-06:002017-01-25T20:58:07.826-06:00He Won't Actually DO That<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">He
won't actually DO that, but Hillary . . .”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">It's
taken me two weeks to pull myself together to write this. The reasons
for the procrastination run the gamut from feeling disloyal to too
much rum. I also tried to make sense of it, going over it and over
it, thinking perhaps I had missed something that would explain it.
That was time wasted. My attempt was in vain.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">Sometime
in 1972-73, I went to dinner at a close family member's house. I even
remember that she made a roast beef cooked with peppercorns and
cranberry juice that was wonderful. We talked about the weather,
maybe a few other things, then somehow wound up at Richard Nixon and
Watergate. Yeah. I know. She was and remains a New Jersey Republican,
which as Chris Christie illustrates, is a breed unto itself. After
listening wide eyed to my outrage over Cambodian bombing missions and
other Nixonian horrors, she put her fork down and said, “I think
it's a shame and a sin that we ever found out about Watergate.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">I
was speechless. I stared at her, no doubt in horror, for a few beats
as I felt my face getting hotter and probably redder. I was choking
on obscenities. Instead of vomiting them up, I somehow calmly put
down my fork and said, “I'm sorry. Dinner was great but I have to
leave.” From then until now we have talked about current events
only rarely and then only when there's no way around it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">During
the primaries she told me she really liked Ted Cruz, which surprised
me as she's not a Christian fundamentalist. She hated Jeb Bush, she
might've seen her way clear to Huckabee, she saw nothing in Kasich, Trump
was ok. She wasn't passionate about him. I think she really thought
Cruz/Rubio would be the ticket. I should have asked her. Once the
primaries were over and Trump won, she was a Trump person all the
way. I avoided conversations with her for almost the entirety of the
campaign. It was chickenshit and I knew it but the energy it would
have taken to either avoid the topic or discuss it was more than I
felt I had. Although actually that's probably a cop out. I knew I'd
be hitting a wall and I didn't want the bruises.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">A
little background: This is a woman who is very very smart and not
overtly mean, nor is she overtly racist. She didn't grow up wealthy but was comfortable. After
her first marriage, she remarried, and she remarried up. At 82 she is
fairly comfortable, still has her own house with some acreage and
usually some pitiful little rescue dog as she's got a penchant for
the most damaged canines out there. If no one else will take them,
she will. She still drives, is cosmopolitan, has traveled across
Europe and in her 50's lived for over a decade in Ireland. She
belongs to a group of women who get together once a year in a retreat
type atmosphere with distinct pagan/goddess/earth mother overtones
celebrating the “We are all One” spirit. Widowed now, her retired
single brother lives with her, she has some investments, private
health insurance in addition to her Medicare and is in pretty good
health. This is a woman who's pretty secure.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">How
does that woman vote for Trump. She fit none of the “Trump voter”
profiles. I really wanted to know. I wanted to understand. I was an
idiot.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">After
the election I knew I couldn't put off calling any longer. We mostly
communicate via text or Skype. I always forget that while I can see
her, she can also see me. I have caught sight of myself slack jawed
and/or seething in the little box on the Skype screen. This one I
should have recorded.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">Weather.
Check. Dogs. Check. Health. Check. Daughter. Check. Grandson. Check.
Adjust her webcam. Check. Half and hour went by and then, I'm not
sure which of us brought it up. Probably me. My curiousity bites me
in the ass every time. While of course I knew she was a lifelong
Republican I really thought perhaps she would see the Fanta Fuhrer
and be appalled at his crassness, as she is unfailingly polite, or
maybe in her pragmatism, decide that Trump's utter lack of experience
was a negative and vote for Clinton if only because Hillary knew what
governing was. She'd hate it but do it, I thought.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">I
was wrong.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">She
said yes she had voted for Trump and she thought he'd be great for
the country. She said it in her perfectly modulated voice with no
gloating, not even a sparkle in her eye. I asked her where she got
the majority of her news: Fox News for broadcast, Drudge first thing
every morning, another conservative website I can't remember. I asked
about Breitbart and she said sometimes but that she'd really liked it
when Breitbart was alive (she did NOT say she now hated it with
Bannon and boys in charge). She used to love Glenn Beck but has
soured on him recently. She reads the Wall Street Journal pretty much
daily.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">(Editor's
Note: I started this piece on 12.2.2016. I kept coming back to it and
back to it and couldn't make headway, mostly because the news was
stranger and stranger each day. Time to finish it.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">So
yeah. As the conversation progressed, I sounded more and more like
that kid in '72. I was screaming, only this time some of the
profanities actually exited my lips, much to my surprise. I asked her
about the Muslim registry idea. Her response was, “Oh, he's not
going to actually DO that!” When asked about mass deportations, her
response was, “Oh he's not going to actually DO that! He didn't
mean THAT!” When asked about his views of women and women's health,
her response was, “Oh for heaven's sake! He's a man! What he said
he said years ago. As for the rest, he doesn't mean it. He won't
actually DO that! He said it to get elected.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">Catching
a glimpse of my face in the lower corner of the laptop screen, my
mouth was agape, eyes wide and my disembodied head was shaking back
and forth, my hands just to the sides of my head in a gigantic HUH
expression. Seeing it I composed myself to go on.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">We
moved on to the Wall, the great big glorious peso funded Wall. Her
response was, “Well you know ISIS is coming into this country and
between them and the illegals, we have to do something. We need
borders, but I don't think they'll let him actually do that.” I
asked who were the “they” she was referencing. “Oh all the do
nothing Congressmen.” She sounded genuinely scared, like she half
expected to find an ISIS fighter hiding behind the gate of her goat
pen, and if not that then quite possibly a Mexican rapist.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">We
went three or four rounds, with me bringing up something he said and
her responding with the “he won't actually DO that mantra” at
which point I asked, “Well, if you don't think he'll actually do
any of this, why on earth would you vote for him?” She looked very
serious and said, “This country is in trouble and he's not perfect
but HILLARY is a criminal.” This was said with absolute sincerity
and conviction. “She should be put in jail. He's right about that.
Besides we just had OBAMA.” That line she nearly spat.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">I
then asked exactly how she herself had been negatively impacted by
Obama's presidency. She said a few things about light bulbs (told me
she had bought enough “regular” light bulbs to last years), and
laughed. Then she thought for a minute and said, “Interest rates.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">I
was truly speechless—for a moment, then I sputtered, “The only
way you personally have been impacted by all the horrors (in your
view) of the Obama presidency is interest rates? That's what tipped
you into a vote for an insane man?” She explained that when one is
her age and there are investments, interest rates are a big deal. I
told her that I could understand that but couldn't understand at all
how she could overlook the misogyny and racism, the xenophobia and
talk of nukes and still vote for him. “Well he'll deregulate
everything and the interest rates will go up.” Before I could stop
myself I heard my voice say, “So THAT you think he'll actually do
but all the rest, all the terrifying other stuff, you're banking on
him NOT doing?”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">Oh,
he just said it to get elected. He's not perfect but Hillary . . .”,
she said shaking her head. “That woman needs to be locked up!” I
asked her what she felt Hillary had done to warrant that.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">Emails!”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">BULLSHIT!”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">(Insert
WTF Face emoji here-that's about what I looked like in the little
screen square on the Skype screen. I'm still not sure if it was her
answer or hearing myself yell bullshit at her that caused the face.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">We
both calmed down. She told me an old friend of mine wasn't coming to
the retreat this year, but she'll go. Amazingly she'll go and not see
an iota of irony in her taking part in the We are all One rituals. I
haven't had the courage to call her since then, much to my shame,
although now I'm curious about what she thinks so far. Now that he is
actually attempting to DO those things she said he'd never do, has
she changed her mind? Does she think any of it cruel? Does she think
he's unstable? Would she vote for him again? After all those Cold War
years, does she feel any little shadow of concern over the Russian
connections? Hell, even Nixon must be rolling in his grave at some of
this.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">And
today, he talked of our country locking people out, booting people
out, reprising torture and essentially tossing the UN to the curb.
That's just today.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Courier New, monospace;">He
won't actually DO that! But Hillary . . .”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-90250820414991200092016-05-03T15:01:00.000-05:002016-05-03T15:04:39.274-05:00Monday May 9 City Hall Meeting re: Cabrini Park<div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Below was sent to me by a friend who's been working tirelessly on this issue. Please pass it on.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Monday May 9 at City Hall</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">8th floor conference room</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">5:00 pm</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">See below for details:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /></span>
<span style="color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">At the meeting the subcommittee is going to discuss whether to recommend an off-leash dog area and Cabrini and -- we hope -- vote to bring it to the full NORDC committee in July. it's important that we have plenty of people there who have an opinion on the matter so that the subcommittee can see how big an issue this is.</span></span>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-11473761737758731392015-11-14T19:37:00.000-06:002015-11-14T20:39:15.236-06:00AirBnb STR Regulation? Questions and Issues to ConsiderI wrote a piece last month that ended with a declaration that I was working on a list of questions that needed to be answered and would have the list in the next couple days. I was overly optimistic. Each question seemed to add two more ancillary questions. After watching the CPC meeting, I started reading through the comments submitted to Cpcinfo@nola.gov (they can be found at nola.gov/city planning—<span style="color: red;"><b>the deadline to submit your own comments is November 30, 2015</b>.</span>). There I found a great deal more information and many questions posed that I hadn't thought of. After reading and reading, I have decided that I have a few thoughts on all this that don't really lend themselves to a list per se, just categories of concern. I'm sure everyone knows my stand as an opponent of short term rentals, but if they are to be permitted and regulated there are some things that must be considered. <br />
<br />
<b>LISTING DATA</b><br />
First and foremost, AirBnb's tactic has been to force municipalities to subpoena their listing data.<span style="color: red;"> <b>New Orleans has to require that the data from all the various listing sites be turned over before any permits are issued.</b></span> There is no other way to know the actual number of short term rentals, number of rooms, addresses, names of the people listing the rentals. Without that information, many of the other issues surrounding STR become difficult if not impossible to sort out. <b><span style="color: red;">Along with the acquisition of that data, the City must insist that a license/permit number be required by the listing entity before a listing is accepted by their site.</span></b> No permit/license, no listing. If a non-permitted listing is found, both the site and the person listing the property should be fined substantially. (That data will also help in the tax collection issues that everyone is concerned about and that most of the pro-short term rental folks say they're willing to pay.)<br />
<br />
<b>OWNER OCCUPIED (HOMESTEAD)/ABSENTEE/CORPORATE LISTERS</b><br />
The ANP short term rental advocacy group wants blanket permission for all of the above categories of short term rentals. If permits are to be issued, the City should only allow Owner Occupied/Homestead Exemption properties to be permitted/licensed. That will eliminate absentee landlord problems and remove corporate listers completely. There are other issues that are troubling even with this scenario.<br />
<br />
-Can an entire unit (like half a double) be listed or only an extra room in the owner occupied dwelling? There are currently too many “whole unit” short term rentals being listed (illegally).<br />
<br />
-Some have suggested that the Homestead Exemption be pulled if an owner is short term renting, turning the property into a de facto commercial enterprise. I have to disagree with this approach as that will open the door for absentee and corporate entry into the market.<br />
<br />
-Allowing only owner occupied/homestead exemption properties to be listed also removes the incentive for absentee/non-resident/corporate purchase of a property solely for its conversion to a short term rental property. (Absentee ownership should also apply to a person who lives in one house and STR's the house they bought next door. Owner occupied should be defined as living on the premises that is listed for STR.)<br />
<br />
-A Homestead owner at least lives here and votes here. Yes. That matters to me.<br />
<br />
<b>SAFETY and LEGAL COMPLIANCE ISSUES</b><br />
-The Louisiana State Fire Marshall has come out against STR's as most are non-compliant with fire safety regulations. Installation of sprinklers and emergency exit markers should be required, as well as any other safety requirements that currently legal Bed and Breakfasts must comply with.<br />
<br />
-Compliance with all Anti-Discrimination and Americans with Disabilities Act laws pertaining to commercial lodging businesses should also be part of the permit/license requirements. <b><span style="color: red;">Any law pertaining to the above issues that a legal Bed and Breakfast already has to comply with should be applied to STR's.</span></b><br />
<br />
-Will the STR be billed by Entergy or their insurance carrier at commercial or residential rates? If it's permitted/licensed as an STR, it is then a commercial entity and should be billed as such. (Currently LEGAL Bed and Breakfasts already pay these rates.)<br />
<br />
-Standard Homeowners Insurance does not cover damage or injury that is a result of a commercial enterprise, I'm told. In order to get permit/license, proof of appropriate insurance should be provided and required, just as it is for car registration.<br />
<br />
<b>PERMITS/LICENSING</b><br />
The lawyer for the ANP suggests that 20 rooms per block sounds reasonable to him. That is an enormous number of rooms. There are other problems connected with that suggestion.<br />
<br />
-<b><span style="color: red;">Permits/Licenses should be considered under the Conditional Use rules requiring notification of adjoining property owners.</span></b><span style="color: red;"> </span>Doing it this way can potentially weed out bad actors up front as their neighbors will let you know if they have already had problems.<br />
<br />
-Is an entire unit (like half of a double) or just an extra room in the owner occupied house being short term rented?<br />
<br />
-Is the property listed as “suitable for special events?” (On AirBnb there is a box that can be clicked when listing the property for this. This allows the property to be rented for bachelor/bachelorette parties, etc.) If so that means other fire/safety/insurance issues have to be dealt with just as they would be for any venue rented for a special event. This could be a problem. For example, the Trash Palace can no longer be the venue for the KdV ball as the attendee numbers exceed their permitted limits. The same criteria should be used for any STR listed as "suitable for special events."<br />
<br />
-How many rooms are being STR'd on the property?<br />
<br />
-What is the maximum number of occupants allowed per room? (That has to be a consideration. There must be a limit not only on the number of rooms, but the number of occupants per room.)<br />
<br />
-How many permit/licenses will be allowed per block?<b><span style="color: blue;"> </span><span style="color: red;">(BLOCK and BLOCK FACE must be discussed and the language clearly stated before a maximum number is determined.)</span></b> Right now I know of one block face in the Marigny that has five STR's. That is too many per block face or even per block. As the neighborhood fabric is frayed and parking issues become rampant, which is already happening in some areas, this will be a very important limit.<br />
<br />
-Stacy Head said she sees no problem with someone renting out their “back house.” On the Marigny block face mentioned above, one person erected a pre-fab large tool shed-like building that is being STR'd, and the person next door refurbished an ancient extant shed to STR. Will it suddenly be permissible for everyone to erect a structure in their backyard to STR? Will building permits be required? Can everyone on the block do it?<br />
<br />
-Perhaps we should consider tying the number of permissible STR's to the number of long term affordable rentals in the same neighborhood, like a two to one ratio: two affordable long term rentals to one STR Homestead.<br />
<br />
-Given the number of STR's already in existence, if we whittle it down to only owner occupied/homestead exempt dwellings, who gets the permit? The person who files the Conditional Use papers/insurance/fire inspection first? The person who has been doing it longest? A lottery (much like we do for artists at Jackson Square)? If there are already five on one block face, and it is limited to one per block face, who has to shut down their current operation? They've all been illegal up to this point. Whatever is decided on this has to be ironclad and tough.<br />
<br />
-Permit/License should be granted for one year only with the ability to renew if they are in compliance with regulations and there have been no complaints filed.<br />
<br />
-Just as there are only a certain number of CPNC's (what a taxi needs to be legal) or artist vendor licenses, there should be a limited number of STR licenses available city wide. There can be a waiting list for the following year. If someone loses their permit due to continued violations or complaints, the next person on the list can take his/her shot and go through the permitting/licensing process.<br />
<br />
<b>FEES/FINES/ENFORCEMENT</b><br />
-Fees for the permit/license must be substantial. They must be large enough to be taken seriously.<br />
<br />
-If an illegal STR is found, there should be substantial fines. Again, large enough to be taken seriously, limiting the number of violations that can be handled with a fine before more serious action is taken. We are able to stop construction on a a site (I've seen Stop Work orders on buildings in town). If we can do that we can do something similar to unpermitted/unlicensed STR's.<br />
<br />
-Fees should be graduated scale: a whole unit would be highest fee, and two STR rooms in one house would be a higher fee than one.<br />
<br />
-<span style="color: red;"><b>Fees and fines should be used solely for the enforcement of the regulations on STR's.</b></span><br />
<br />
-I saw one comment suggesting seizure of the property of a violator. I'm not in favor of property seizures in general, but enforcement of regulations, enforcement with teeth, is critical. Something like the “blight” fines that accrued daily might be one way to go.<br />
<br />
-Taxes must be exactly the same as they are for hotel/motel/B&B's.<br />
<br />
-There must be safety and compliance inspections on a regular basis.<br />
<br />
-There must be a system for neighbor complaints to be acknowledged, addressed and acted upon.<br />
<br />
-There must be a posted sign with a contact number in case of complaints or other STR issue.<br />
<br />
<b>TENANTS RIGHTS/TENANTS SUB-LEASING</b><br />
-<span style="color: red;"><b>It has to be made illegal to evict a long term tenant to convert a unit to STR.</b></span> It happens. That can't be allowed to continue.<br />
<br />
-Tenants who pose as actual renters, who then immediately list their new apartment as a STR should be subject to immediate lease termination. It happens a lot. <br />
<br />
This problem comes from both ends of the rental question. People have been evicted by their landlords, with leases broken, as the landlord thinks he can make more turning the unit into an STR. I know at least half a dozen people in the last couple years that that has happened to. City wide the number must be pretty large if I know that many from just among my friends. I've also seen landlords who found out that that nice guy who rented Apartment B, listed it and turned it into an STR the afternoon he got the keys. There are several people in town who posed as long term tenants in multiple units, then listed those same units as Short Term Rentals turning themselves into professional STR providers. If a landlord knows that's what a tenant plans to do then they're both at fault, but often the landlord doesn't know. <b><span style="color: red;">We need some discussions in this city about a more balanced approach regarding the rights of tenants and landlords as we are a city with a large number of renters whose rights and issues have been overlooked for a very long time.</span></b><br />
<br />
Having spent the last month reading comments, I will not attempt to cover all the ground that so many others have gone over much better than I can. In comment section 1, p.95, a man named Jay Seastrunk has a lot of interesting comments regarding Master Plan specifics and safety/bldg issues. He mentions the possibility of a homeowner with a raised home, building multiple bedrooms under his raised home, each with its own exit door and wonders if something like that, which would be essentially a motel under the pilings, would be legal. That could happen even with the Owner occupy/Homestead regulation scenario.<br />
<br />
I wish I'd written down all the page numbers of great comments. I didn't. I know Mr. and Mrs. James Morrison, Jr. are in that first comment section and their well reasoned and very detailed 5 pg comment has lots to say about zoning with regard to single family, two family, multi-family homes. I would urge you to find that one and read it.<br />
<br />
Either comment section 1 or comment section 4, look for Dr. Emile Brinkmann, PhD. Dr. Brinkmann was the Chief Economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association, and is considered an expert on residential real estate issues. He feels that a unit removed from the rental market circumvents the Fair Housing Laws. He also talks about zoning issues, distortion of home prices and rental rates, and says that if the homeowner HAS a mortgage and decides to STR, he may be committing Mortgage Fraud unless he explicitly stated that he was going to operate a short term rental on the mortgaged property. It's a lengthy and very informative document, in depth with some recommendations. Again, I urge you to track it down and read it. It's worth it.<br />
<br />
Also important are the comments from the Hotel folks and PIANO, the LEGAL Bed and Breakfast group. As PIANO points out, they had to dot all the i's and cross all the t's in order to open their business. If we're going to allow and regulate STR, we are in fact allowing the property owner to run a business in a residential area. They should at least have to play by the same rules, not just pay the same taxes and think it's a fair game.<br />
<br />
After a month of reading all of this, I am more convinced than ever that<b><span style="color: blue;"> </span><span style="color: red;">IF we allow this into the city, the data from the listing corporations is crucial as is the limitation of permit/licensing to owner occupied dwellings.</span></b> Otherwise we'll be overrun with STR's owned by people who don't vote here, use our city as a piggy bank, and who don't care about neighborhoods or displaced locals. I'd like to ban STR outright, but if we have to compromise on this, then at least let's make it tougher to do and of greater benefit to us.<br />
<br />
For anyone who thinks this is only a downtown problem, one woman who commented at nola.gov lives on Dominican Street. She says as of LAST summer, she had counted 18 AirB's, <u>excluding</u> VRBO/Homeaway/Craigslist, etc. She and her husband have lived in that house for a very long time. She feels surrounded, without neighbors, and says that two elementary schools in her area are also virtually surrounded. This isn't what we want for our neighborhoods, so let's really think about this. My questions are the tip of the iceberg. <br />
<br />
Again, go read what much smarter people than me have written about this and watch out for the smoke and mirrors of the slick PR types putting out info for folks like ANP.<br />
<br />Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-36919713144264993262015-10-07T20:55:00.000-05:002015-10-07T20:55:18.182-05:00STR/AirBnB: Pay No Attention to that Corporation Behind the CurtainI've been reading reports, proposals and talking to people for and against short term rentals all week. I've been paying attention to this phenomenon for longer than that but our city had a hearing recently and I watched every minute: which by the way was about all the time they gave each citizen commenter to make a comment. I think the actual limit was 4 minutes. Definitely not enough for many to make a point pro or con.<br />
<br />
I had a long conversation with someone I know and respect who is on the other side of this issue. I understood the issues and arguments which the friend presented clearly and fairly. I empathized, but still respectfully must disagree.<br />
<br />
I went from that conversation into reading a report that had been mentioned a couple times during the meeting at City Hall. While this report was written to lay out the issues Los Angeles is having with the AirBnb/STR model, many of the issues they're having are pertinent to us here in New Orleans. I am putting this link in plain view so you don't have to guess which hyperlink takes you to it: <a href="http://www.laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AirBnB-Final.pdf">http://www.laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AirBnB-Final.pdf</a><br />
<br />
As I read reports and articles, I started putting together a list of questions I'd like answered before any kind of ordinance or compromise is reached. I'll be putting those questions in a post to follow this one so that this one doesn't get unwieldy. This post deals with the way in which AirBnb enters a market and subsequently deals with that market. Frankly it's brilliant strategy, albeit one with which I fundamentally disagree.<br />
<br />
<b>Entering a Market</b><br />
<br />
There are a couple of STR companies out there. The quotes and strategy sections are aimed at AirBnB, but it appears that the others like VRBO or Homeaway, kind of come in on the coattails of AirB's entry strategy.<br />
<br />
First we need to look at the AirB mythology: One of the founders was renting an apartment in San Francisco, there was a conference coming to town that some people he knew were going to attend, they couldn't find hotel rooms as the hotels were booked up, so he put an air mattress in his room and so the company, the concept and the myth were created. The myth of the airbed in a shared room, or even a spare room, is no longer the reality in most of the AirB listings, nor is it desirable from the company's point of view. It is, however, a nice bootstrap entrepreneurial story and it's the basis of the warm and fuzzy “everyman” corporate persona they cultivate. When they enter a market it isn't with bells and whistles. They enter it with your neighbors' faces.<br />
<br />
From the report: “This generally involves packing a room with dozens of hosts. Armed with compelling stories, these hosts detail the ways in which renting out their spare rooms has enriched their lives and saved them from economic ruin. The hosts seem motivated by a combination of financial self interest and a sincere belief that they compose a beleaguered community. This gives AirBnB a group of personal, heartfelt and therefore effective spokespeople that most corporations can only dream of.”<br />
<br />
Stage one, our neighbors' faces, which is exactly what we saw at the City Hall meeting the other night. It's effective. That is followed by a second stage, which was also seen the other night when we saw a well organized and funded group, and a couple of attorneys connected with that group, ceding time to each other for comments. Even that group is part of the playbook, again from the report: “(Their) philosophy is evident in much of AirBnB’s marketing, from its founding myth about the air mattress to its use of hosts as spokespeople. To build up this base, AirBnB has hired political field operatives in addition to contracting with traditional PR firms. A simple LinkedIn search shows that AirBnB’s preference has been for hiring staffers with experience managing political campaigns.” (This whole philosophy stems from a book titled <i>The Culting of Brands: How to Turn Customers into True Believers</i> written by Doug Atkin, who is also AirB's “Global Head of Community”--another example of a warm and fuzzy corporate persona—sounds so much better than VP in Charge of Client Base Growth or something.)<br />
<br />
So at City Hall we saw the playbook in action: some of our neighbors and friends, and a local STR professional PR campaign making comments at the mic. Our neighbors were impassioned and in some cases emotional. The organized PR group sounded pragmatic, and commented as though they were presenting “suggestions” about something that was already a done deal with mere details to be worked out down the road.<br />
<br />
The brilliance of this model is that none of us wants to be seen as unfriendly or unfair. We're all struggling, so our thinking goes, and we don't want to lose friendships that matter to us. Those of us opposed to STR are seen as jealous or petty, unable or unwilling to understand the “real” issues. We're cast as some sort of socialist property taking mob who incessantly meddle, involving ourselves in their private business. It silences some of us.<br />
<br />
<b>Taking Advantage of Momentum in the New Market</b><br />
<br />
That model also casts the “hosts” as a benevolent bunch who are just trying to make ends meet. It may be true for some, though not the majority. That is the fallacy. Behind every host, every short term “tenant”, is the corporation. A very large, very profitable corporation that comes to a market, encourages people to undertake an activity that is illegal in that market, leaves those people to be the face of it, while it rakes in eye popping profits taking a cut from both the host and the “tenant.” AirBnB's IPO in 2014 was analyzed in all major economic/business journals in terms of stock value and projected profits. They boasted 1.5 million listings in some of the reports, but we are fooled into looking at our neighbors, our market, our city coffers and limit our looking to those places, fight it out among ourselves ignoring the giant treasure chest in the corporate sky, profits that help none of the above mentioned groups, only the shareholders and the corporation who hides behind their “hosts” and “tenants.”<br />
<br />
When all is said and done, the hosts are on their own. The markets they enter have to figure out how to deal with it as the housing market is affected, as neighborhoods become frayed, as jobs are lost in the legal hospitality sector. AirB and its ilk bear no responsibility for safety, insurance, disputes, thefts, destruction of property (except in very limited and hard to prove instances), or injury. Hosts are subcontractors, any cleaning crew the hosts might employ are subcontractors. The corporation pays no permitting fees, no licensing fees, no taxes, nor do they routinely comply with the laws regarding handicapped access. It's not their problem bro. Caveat emptor you hosts and travelers. Whatever you encounter is not our problem, besides we already got our cut off the top.<br />
<br />
In the Los Angeles study it is noted that some of the negative impact of this STR model hasn't really been factored into the discussion: “UCLA Anderson School of Business study found that the high cost of housing has a generated a statistically significant drag on job creation in Los Angeles. Fewer rental units, a drag on job creation, a reduction in tax revenues and a qualitative assessment of AirBnB’s effects in neighborhoods are key elements that must be considered before a accurate judgment of the company’s impact can be rendered.”<br />
<br />
<b>Having that Market over a Barrel</b><br />
<br />
That isn't really being done. Instead cities have been overrun and the STR problem becomes a crisis before any kind of in depth study or discussion is had. City Councils and zoning departments find themselves already behind the curve playing catch up or proposing some kind of patchwork “solution” or “compromise” that doesn't work or is unenforceable before the ink is even dry on the ordinance.<br />
<br />
For its part, AirB waits for critical mass, then? From the report: “AirBnB often approaches cities with the promise of remitting a monthly fee equal to the TOT in exchange for the passage of regulations that legitimize their business model. The rationale behind this offer is that cities will be adding new revenue to municipal coffers. However, this revenue is mostly reallocated from hotels which would have remitted these taxes anyway.” (TOT is the Transient Occupancy Tax in Los Angeles. I'm sure New Orleans has something akin to it.)<br />
<br />
At that point, the corporation sees that market as a done deal and if pushed to provide actual numbers of listings in the market area, or the number of hosts who are homesharing vs turning entire units into de facto hotels, they demure until a city forces the issue with subpoenas. They obfuscate, routinely offer numbers that are often half of the real numbers, and force a municipality to spend their dime to get the real data.<br />
<br />
I urge you to read the report in the link above. I can't possibly toss all the numbers out for you, besides, why reinvent the wheel when so much of what's in that report is pertinent to us. It also does a great job explaining the safety issues, job displacement, housing crunches, rising rents, the tax dollars lost (then sort of found then spent on subpoenas and enforcement), and many things I hadn't considered but that need to be.<br />
<br />
The AirBnB “business model” is cynical, effective and highly profitable for them. One doesn't see logo emblazoned tshirts and tote bags, nor are the hosts treated like franchise owners and supplied with AirB stationery and pens. The hosts are on their own. The travelers renting from them are on their own. The markets they enter are on their own. The neighborhoods they fracture are on their own. Neighbors and friends, City Councils and zoning commissions, will get no help from them in terms of dealing with their model.<br />
<br />
A local tour guide told me he'd been doing an impromptu survey: after asking where the tourist is from he asks them where they're staying. If they are staying in an STR, they look down and almost whisper. Many hosts try hard to do the same. One I know told her guests to tell anyone who asked that they were old friends from college.<br />
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Whisper. Pay no attention to the corporation behind the curtain, pulling levers and forcing municipalities to deal with them on their terms only and after the fact. They have nothing to do with all this. It's on you, whether you like it or not. Just look at those faces. They are your neighbors.<br />
<br />
(I'm still compiling my list of questions that I think need to be answered or at the very least addressed. I'll have that posted in the next day or two.)Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-8093936184446232562015-10-05T14:54:00.000-05:002015-10-05T14:46:59.923-05:00Unsolicited Advice to the Northeast in the Aftermath--Now Relevant to South Carolina's Flood VictimsIt was suggested I re-post this for those of you struggling in the aftermath of the horrendous flooding in South Carolina. I can barely look at the news photos. Too gut wrenching, but I am thinking about you, and all you'll be dealing with going forward. This post was originally written to the Hurricane Sandy folks, who by the way, are still very much struggling in many areas. Although the Springsteen lyrics aren't geographically tied to you in South Carolina, the sentiments below them do. Please know that those of us here in New Orleans understand, and we hope that our experience can help you as you make your way through this tragic time.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">“Tonight I'm gonna take that ride</div><div style="text-align: center;">Across the river to the jersey side</div><div style="text-align: center;">Take my baby to the carnival</div><div style="text-align: center;">And I'll take her on all the rides</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">`cause down the shore everything's all right”</div><div style="text-align: center;">Song by Tom Waits<br />
Heard in the head of a Jersey Girl in the voice of<br />
Bruce Springsteen, Jersey Girl</div><br />
No. It's not all right and you probably can't get across the river right now anyway.<br />
<br />
My high school years in Bergen County are peppered with memories not of classrooms and despotic Vice Principals, but of subway rides into Manhattan, afternoon rides on the Staten Island Ferry (cheap fun for a truant), and hustling rides ten to a car down the Garden State Parkway to Asbury Park and Seaside Heights, which were never called by name, only referred to as “The Shore.” I picked splinters out of my feet after walking the now destroyed boardwalk in barefeet like an idiot. I was kissed sweetly in the sand that has now buried cars and shifted houses off their foundations. I rode the rollercoaster that now sits in the Atlantic. At least I think that's the one I rode after being dared.<br />
<br />
My last decade has been shaped by the Federal Flood, otherwise known as Hurricane Katrina. The landscape around me has changed since then in both good and bad ways. My interior landscape is forever changed by that experience.<br />
<br />
I heard Seaside Heights' Mayor Bill Akers on CNN this morning. He said that when he hears what's going on in other areas his heart goes out to them. His voice broke when he said he was trying to keep emotion out of it. For now. I was on my dry couch in New Orleans in tears.<br />
<br />
We here in New Orleans watched the NASA shots of Sandy headed your way. She was huge, well organized, aimed at you and we knew how that felt. She was perfect, as Katrina was, actually beautiful when viewed from the safety of a distant satellite lens. We saw the targets on your backs and understood, possibly as no other group of people can.<br />
<br />
Initially there was some bitter grousing about our having had to defend our City's right to exist and be rebuilt, something you might not have to do. We weathered the nasty comments about our being idiots living below sea level, and even nastier comments about tax payer money being wasted on morons and ingrates and freeloaders. These comments were ubiquitous after Katrina, but we wouldn't wish what you're dealing with on anyone because we've been there.<br />
<br />
We endured extreme heat, while you folks have to deal with unbelievable cold, as the power went out and stayed out. We are also a city in which some people don't have cars, so we understand the New Yorkers who are utterly stranded as the Subway tunnels have turned into something better navigated by gondolas than train cars. We know as we see aerial views of Asbury Park, Seaside Heights, Atlantic City, and all the coastal towns that what we're seeing in no way shows us the length and breadth and depth of the devastation. We know you aren't overstating it when you say it looks like a war zone. We understand the loss of everything you own. We know the tears you'll shed as your kids' yearbooks and baby pictures are gone forever. We understand your toughness, your determination to rebuild, your compassion for your neighbors and your statements about your family being fine and your losses were “only stuff.” <br />
<br />
We get it.<br />
<br />
Now for the unsolicited advice:<br />
<br />
Expect unexpected consequences. One or more of your leaders will let you down. Right now the adrenalin is flowing and you're all in shock, as are your leaders, who really seem to be doing a great job. It's down the road when the issue becomes money and contractors and the actual rebuilding that you'll be let down by someone. Be prepared to deal with the anger.<br />
<br />
Have patience. Your power will come on when it comes on, and all the ranting and raving in the world cannot change that, nor can you expect a timetable from your utility companies. Just two months ago we went through Isaac and the utility issues were exasperating. I say this to you as someone who sat on the porch waiting for bucket trucks, or at least information, in the aftermath of several hurricanes now. Don't waste your energy (no pun intended) calling them or expecting one of them to say Thursday at 9AM. It won't happen. Cuddle up and keep each other warm. Oh, and expect your utility rates to jump as the utility companies go to your local civic leaders and ask who's going to pay for all this repair. It will never come out of the utility company's profits, it will come out of your wallet. That I can guarantee.<br />
<br />
Try not to slug your Insurance Adjuster. As I watched the storm coming in the other night, there was footage of a building in Chelsea. The entire facade had fallen down, and this was before Sandy's actual landfall. What I heard, in terms of reasons for the facade falling, was familiar: coulda been rain, coulda been shoddy workmanship, coulda been wind, coulda been anything: and so the parsing began. What happened here, and what will no doubt happen there, is that whatever you're covered for, it will be the OTHER reason that caused the damage. If you're covered for wind, it will be deemed water damage or vice versa. Don't count on your insurance carrier to be compassionate. They won't be. In fact you may find your rates hiked, your policy canceled, your payout to be a pittance that wouldn't even cover one month's car payment. Expect that coverage in your area will be curtailed with some companies refusing to write a policy at all. No amount of righteous outrage about the premiums you've paid for years will alter any of this. Your carrier will go on the news, make statements about wanting to help, tell you that you're in good hands, then send you a letter saying they're dropping you at the same time that they issue their quarterly report on profits. Expect it.<br />
<br />
Advocate for your Area. Don't let the officials make all the decisions as the rebuilding process gets started. Get involved, start neighborhood associations, make yourself heard, fight for your little spot on this planet. If you don't, monied interests who view disaster as a profit making opportunity, will show up and barrel some ordinance through your City Council; you'll be really upset after the fact. Get in front of this. You've got a little time. First you have to clean up, but remember what I'm saying as the process moves forward. Without your voice, your advocacy, some things will be proposed and moved into your reality so fast your heads will swim, and they won't always be things you would like to have happen. Governor Christie said today that for a guy his age, the iconic parts of the Shore will never be the same. They're gone. He's right. Just don't let people, especially people who aren't from there, determine what will be put in place, no matter what city, town or borough you live in. Ask us about the “iconic” French Market some time when you get a chance, and that's just one little thing. Your sense of community is what will see you through. Without it you'll be steamrolled by developers with wads of cash and connections. Carpetbaggers don't just come to the South.<br />
<br />
Allow yourself time to cry. And cry. Then cry some more. You'll be crying unexpectedly for a long time. Ask us. We still cry over the Flood seven years ago, and are crying as we see your devastation because those pictures dredge up visions burned into our souls that we manage not to notice on good days and can't escape on bad days. You'll find yourselves three years from now looking for something familiar, something you know you had, then get slugged in the solar plexus as you remember that it was in a box in your basement when Sandy slammed through. Give yourself permission to grieve the loss of the little things that marked your journey through life. While they don't matter much in the overall scheme of things, they do matter to you, a great deal. Don't minimize their importance in your determination to stay strong. That last picture of your Dad will haunt you if you don't allow yourself to mourn it's simple paper loss.<br />
<br />
Don't be afraid to ask for help, you'll need it. The mental health issues related to this will not show up in force for a couple of months. Some won't show themselves until well after the rebuilding has begun. You are in for months and months of stress, and being a hearty lot, you'll manage. You'll cope. Then you'll find yourselves as we did, with a group of friends, and every 15 minutes one or the other of you will burst into tears. Don't berate yourselves over this. Help the other guy through the sobbing until it's your turn and they'll help you and understand and won't call you a pussy.<br />
<br />
Watch your elderly family members. They will quietly weather this, but many of them will internalize it. The deaths of elderly people after Katrina skyrocketed. I am not trying to scare you. I'm just telling you what we experienced and it was not something we expected. Many of us didn't notice that the old man down the street was struggling because everything he ever knew was gone, never to return. We didn't always notice when the old lady around the way gave up, and gave in to her broken heart. It was sobering and scary and we carried guilt for being so concerned about rebuilding that we missed signs. These are the things your leaders or the media won't necessarily tell you. We've lived it. We're hoping you can avoid some of it by knowing ahead of time.<br />
<br />
Your little ones will be scared, deeply and for a long time. They'll need a lot of help and attention. Your usually mellow child might suddenly bolt under the bed at the sound of the wind. As scary as this was and is for you, for them it's as though a big malevolent foot stomped their sandcastle of security. They're too young to understand, too young to process some of it, too young sometimes to vocalize their fears, and they'll try to be strong for you as you are trying to be for them. Make sure that your schools have some kind of program in place to deal with the trauma. If they don't have one, demand it.<br />
<br />
Retain your sense of humor. Gallows humor will get you through a lot of things. Of course, here in New Orleans, gallows humor is our stock in trade, but I know you've got a pretty good streak in you too. Use it. You'll need it and will find it very helpful as you dig out.<br />
<br />
Accept what people give you. Don't let your pride get in the way. We learned that very quickly as packages with cash tucked into them came to us from friends and strangers all over the country. For some of you the cash will be important as your paychecks won't be coming for a while, if your job still exists. Our initial response was, yup, pride. We don't need that, we're fine, we thought. We learned humility fast and we learned to simply say thank you and accept the help. The folks who sent it wanted to help, really wanted to help. They didn't want to give to an organization, they wanted to help us hand to hand, and they knew that if we knew of a place or person nearby who needed the help they sent more than we did, which was often the case, that we'd make sure it got to those people. You will be touched and humbled by the generosity of people and that's something else you can lean on during this trying period.<br />
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Be prepared for assholes. There will be those who make outrageous assertions about your character or your home from behind a screen as they sit comfortably a thousand miles away. They will say it's God's wrath for having gay people among you. They will say you're idiots for living at sea level. They'll make all manner of racist comments. They'll say that rebuilding boardwalks and homes on the shore or the barrier islands is wasteful folly. They'll call you freeloaders, opportunists, and worse. For every bit of great kindness you receive, there will be an equal amount of venomous hatred. Ignore them if you can or defend if you must. Understand that idiots will come out of the woodwork as fast as the volunteers who show up to help you. They are hateful cowards. Say what you must to them, unless ignoring them is easier on your psyche.<br />
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As Thanksgiving is just around the corner, I am reminded of the first Thanksgiving after Katrina. A small group of us got together for dinner at one of the few open restaurants. (Power, by the way, still wasn't on in many areas of the city.) One of our number asked quietly if we'd mind if he read something. We all said no, of course we didn't mind. He had searched for days for this passage from “Ulysses” by Tennyson:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'</div><div style="text-align: center;">We are not now that strength which in old days</div><div style="text-align: center;">Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;</div><div style="text-align: center;">One equal temper of heroic hearts,</div><div style="text-align: center;">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will</div><div style="text-align: center;">To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”</div><br />
Our hearts are with you, and our tears are tears of understanding and memory. I am in hopes that the writing of this will arm you for the battle ahead as what we learned has to have some positive use. I cannot accept that it was all for naught.Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com126tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-88754984698486047792015-07-23T22:32:00.000-05:002015-07-23T22:56:49.636-05:00Sold Out: More AirBnB ConcernsMany years ago, a friend and I stood forlornly outside Madison Square Garden as David Bowie went on stage inside. We had been unable to find anyone with extra tickets. The show was sold out. That was too bad for us. Many years later, I remember considering a visit to New Orleans for Mardi Gras only to be told by someone in the know that I'd have to make hotel reservations a year ahead of time if I really wanted to do that. The hotel rooms would be sold out. Too bad for me. As a result I didn't make it to Mardi Gras until New Orleans became my home. My (affordable) rental lease guaranteed that reservation for any damn day I wanted.<br />
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Fast forward and it seems that many locals are standing forlornly outside rentable units being told it's too bad for them, they're sold out, the keys having gone to anyone BUT a local long term working renter. One article I saw last week quoted a local resident saying that come Monday morning her neighborhood was a ghost town: no one walking, no one on a stoop, no one around on her way down the block although it had been full of folks over the weekend. Many New Orleanians are watching their neighborhoods turn to short term rental havens (oh SO authentic!) filled with de facto hotels, no actual neighbors, ever rising rents and ever shorter supply and they're sick of it.<br />
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The folks in Barcelona and Copenhagen seem to be in the same boat but they're fighting back. <a href="http://skift.com/2015/06/05/barcelonas-mayor-has-had-it-with-all-the-tourists/">Barcelona</a> statistics seem to show that about 60% of the tourist lodgings in that city are now short term AirBnb/VRBO, etc as opposed to what most reasonable folks think of when they think of the word “hotel.” In parts of Barcelona the same issues are arising: rising rents, impossible to raise a family with the rising prices, too many tourists looking for authenticity, rogue hotels all over the place with local residents quickly being displaced. Last year many <a href="https://www.vice.com/read/barcelona-tourism-backlash-822">Barcelona citizens took to the streets</a> over this issue. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/opinion/sunday/the-revolt-against-tourism.html">Copenhagen has had it with tourists</a> taking over their city as well, and the Danes have sensibly forbidden the sale of seacoast vacation cottages to foreigners. Both cities feel like their residents are being over run and run out by tourists. In one article on Barcelona someone being interviewed spoke of the “theme park” atmosphere, a statement that can be heard on any stoop in New Orleans (or for that matter, seen as a Krewe du Vieux theme).<br />
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In a conversation last week someone visiting, and thoroughly enjoying themselves glad to say, said they'd LOVE to buy a place down here “for when they come to visit.” It was a shame because I'd enjoyed our conversation until that point, then out of my mouth came, “Well, we've got a lot of that here. Empty units that are only actually lived in 6 weeks out of the year tops.” Sensing that my mood had darkened a bit, she said, “I'd rent it out when I wasn't here so it wouldn't be EMPTY” <---said very defensively. “To a local who needs a place to live? So what, you'd cable ahead and let them know when you were going to grace us with a visit and they could go, I dunno, camping til you leave?” (Yeah. I know. Rude. Further, she didn't pick up on my use of the arcane “cable” as apparently she hadn't seen enough old movies filled with wealthy folks who cable. Whatever. I was sort of sorry. Until . . .) “No. Of course not. I'd short term rent it so I could guarantee that it would be vacant when I came to visit. I'd NEVER put a local out of a place to live!” <---This said still defensively but brightly as though I was accusing her of being a horridly insensitive landlord, which naturally she wouldn't be. “I see,” I said, “so you'd just permanently put the local out of a place to live.” She stared at me like I had three heads. It had clearly never occurred to her that this was the actual reality. I bought her a drink to smooth the waters but later realized I had only fed the beast with my charm, manners and a change of topic. (“So, how about that Trump!???!”) I thought later that maybe we need to become ruder.
A friend, knowing I carry on about this a lot, sent me a link. (<a href="http://www.padmapper.com/">This LINK</a>)I followed her directions about clicking and unclicking and was shocked but a tad vindicated. I put in the zipcode box 70117, then moved the map so that most of the French Quarter, Marigny, St. Roch, Bywater and the Lower 9 neighborhoods were visible. I was especially looking in the three areas I'd previously lived. I clicked “Sublets” and unclicked the others. Took a screenshot.</---said><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eBLR4UWsBwY/VbGwv91C_dI/AAAAAAAAASE/e4k-nyWiM6E/s1600/IMG_6363%2B%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eBLR4UWsBwY/VbGwv91C_dI/AAAAAAAAASE/e4k-nyWiM6E/s400/IMG_6363%2B%25281%2529.JPG" /></a></div><br />
I then reversed it, leaving the zipcode field the same, I clicked “Full Lease” and unclicked the others. Took another screenshot. Then heard a loud OH MY GOD come out of my mouth. Take a look.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ju-5epEr248/VbGw7JuER-I/AAAAAAAAASM/wTAPPMDOg60/s1600/IMG_6364.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ju-5epEr248/VbGw7JuER-I/AAAAAAAAASM/wTAPPMDOg60/s400/IMG_6364.JPG" /></a></div><br />
I counted from the mid-point of the Quarter (ignoring the extra sublets that showed up in the Upper Quarter) both times, using the same starting points. Including only those areas that were riverside of I-10 downtown. You can see for yourself. Full Lease count was 12. Sublet count was 35. Nearly 3-1. That should scare the pants off of us.<br />
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Councilperson <a href="http://theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/12761876-148/plan-would-allow-short-term-rentals">Stacy Head has some suggestions</a>. She'd legalize short term if the owner lived on the premises with some provisos. She seems unaware (benefit of the doubt) that a number of people listing these short term rentals are doing it as a job: posing as a “renter”, signing the lease, promptly turning it into a short term rental with some of these folks having half a dozen of them. (I heard today from someone who deals with rentals a lot that he had rented out a place, the guy looked great on paper and in person, he showed up the next day with an extra key and the place was already tricked out for a bachelorette party scheduled the next day!) Another part of her proposal that baffles me is this:<br />
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<blockquote>Should her initial proposal get approved, Head said, she is looking into the more complex issue of whether short-term rentals could be used as a tool to get investors to clean up blighted properties and bring them back into commerce.<br />
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One solution to the 10,000 blighted properties in the city could involve allowing people who purchase them and fix them up to fully rent them out to short-term tenants for several years, giving the neighborhoods they are in a chance to stabilize to the point where longer-term rentals are possible, Head said.<br />
And that, in turn, could lead to a situation where it might be less of an issue to ease the restrictions on short-term rentals elsewhere in the city.<br />
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“There are so many blighted properties that if all of our efforts to get them into commerce were successful, it’s possible there would be a place for non-owner-occupied short-term rentals,” she said.</blockquote><br />
I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Let's let people buy blighted properties, fix them up, run them as short term rentals for “several years” (How many years? License them as hotels? Pay hotel taxes? YEARS??) and claims that somehow a zillion people coming and going in that neighborhood for “several years” will “stabilize” the neighborhood. Huh? She follows that up with “that, in turn, could lead to a situation” whereby the city could “ease the restrictions” elsewhere in the city? Sounds like she wants the entire place to be full on the weekends and empty during the week while we all get forced out to Metairie or, I dunno, Dubuque. None of the above makes sense to me, but it would make governance easier with none of us pesky local residents bringing our complaints about the cost of solar trash cans, parking issues, zoning, music or <gulp> crime to the door of the Council or Mayor's office.<br />
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This week there were a couple of interesting pieces about who was left behind after the Federal Flood, how the demolition of public housing impacted the local citizenry, and the problems with Section 8 housing (not the least being there isn't enough). Why not flip that blight scenario on its head. Let those 10K blighted buildings get purchased for a song, get SBA or someone on board to help with the rehab of the house, then require that it be rented as a Section 8 unit for “several years” and require absolute compliance with the strictest interpretation of the Fair Housing laws. Or maybe consider what some other cities are doing using community land trusts (<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/affordable-housing-always/397637/">great article in the Atlantic about that</a>) in which low income folks buy the houses but the land stays in the hands of a non-profit. (It has worked well in Albquerque in a section of town that is wedged between Old Town and very high end homes.) Get some lenders on board because evidently one the hardest issues facing this model is banks unable to figure out how to structure the mortgages.<br />
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We can't give away our city's housing to short term rental advocates. We also can't turn back the clock on tourism completely, but is there really a problem with saying, “Hey, we've gone beyond our capacity to put roofs over all the tourists heads this weekend. Our ACTUAL, licensed, insured hotels are booked up. Sorry we're sold out. Come next week instead.” Don't like that idea? Prefer to sell out to the short term rental folks? Okay. But you won't like it when your waitresses, bartenders, maids and valets join the rest of us in the streets with signs and bullhorns protesting our inability to find affordable rental housing. That will really harsh the buzz of the tourists upon whose wallets we depend.<br />
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What can't happen is the continuation of the status quo where every neighborhood is a an unlicensed hospitality zone and too many of the local workers have no affordable housing options. We know we need tourism dollars, but you folks on the Council need us, and not just to work. A friend sent me a photo this week. A photo of all of you with the caption: Tourists don't vote in Orleans Parish. Out of town landlords also don't vote in Orleans Parish. The CEO's of AirBnb and the others, also don't vote in Orleans Parish. We do. Us. Down here. The ones paying more than half our salaries in rent year in and year out as opposed to one weekend a year every other year. We're scared. We're pissed. And we know how to make signs and use a bullhorn.</gulp>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-12431235505490877252015-06-12T22:51:00.002-05:002015-06-12T23:19:58.246-05:00AirBnB: Short Term Rentals, A Different Kind of BlightWell, looks like the folks in San Francisco are upset with AirBnB and their City Council. The council voted to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/shinal/2015/06/10/airbnb-san-francisco-supervisors/28740113/">table a bill</a> regarding home sharing, much to the chagrin of many residents who have in any case, decided to take matters into their own hands via referendum. In NYC landlord's are doing <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/209737/how-dump-tenants-and-make-fortune">all they can to kick everyone in rent controlled apartments out</a> using some pretty shabby methods.<br />
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Meanwhile, here in New Orleans things are seemingly out of control in terms of AirBnb and the loss of affordable housing, and it happened almost over night. I have friends in the Marigny who tell me our former local watering hole now has virtually no regulars anymore, or at least not ones I'd recognize. They've moved across the street and elsewhere. One friend said, “I don't have the right clothes and my (gauged) jewelry scares them.” I'm guessing there are fewer gossamer winged girls in green wigs and tall bikes parked on the corner of Franklin and Royal now too.<br />
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I lived two blocks from Esplanade in the Marigny for about three years, an area I loved. It was perfect proximity to every place I needed to be or wanted to go. The rent was high even then, the yard was huge and high maintenance but the block was pretty close knit. Everyone said hello, or helped with the feral cat trapping and releasing, or mourned when one of the old timers passed on. We weathered Gustav there, playing blackjack at Buffa's after the storm passed while all the food in their freezer and everyone else's was cooked and eaten. In 2009 a friend asked if we wanted to move into a house he had just inherited. It was much deeper in the Marigny, nearly to Bywater. “It's across Elysian Fields for crying out loud!” I said, and anyone who knows me well is nodding right now. It was smaller, had a less maintenance heavy yard, and it was nearly $400 cheaper per month. Well, sorta. We had to now pay a water bill, but whatever. I didn't want to move but move we did. I asked him why he was living in Da Parish instead of this cute little house? “Because there are too many black people here,” came the answer. I was frankly shocked but I wrote the check. <br />
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Once moved in it was tough for a while. I missed my neighbors. I missed my perfect central proximity. I missed hearing the Mac35 band practicing as I could at my old house, but learned to love the sound of the trains. I made friends with the place and the people on the block pretty quickly. Sure, it took ten more minutes to get to Lafayette Square for the Wednesday music, but not a real problem. My hips had a bit more cartilage then. We spent Hurricane Isaac there, getting word of a swim party a block up and cold beer at the Lost Love Lounge while we waited for Entergy. As a Krewe du Vieux member, the closeness to the Den was great if I had to stagger home after a fundraiser. My home bar changed from Buffa's to Mimi's, and although I felt underdressed and over-aged there at first, I met the regulars and became a known quantity—if I left my card they'd just add their tip and wait for me to show up because they knew I would. It became our sub-krewe's second home as the upstairs gave us privacy to act like idiots at the pre-parade party, munching pizza and chicken, drinking whatever crazy ass brew the manager who loved us made in gigantic quantities, and tossing glitter all over each other before we had to line up. Book signings, memorial services, celebrations, “haven't seen you in forEVER” gatherings, sad days, happy days, all the basic parts of life seemed to happen on our porch, inside Mimi's, on a wobbly chair at Flora Coffeehouse. Just sitting there for an hour would bring someone you knew to holler at, and more than likely they'd lock up their bike and sit down for a while to catch up. We showed pictures of our dogs to each other, bitched about the prices at the local store, passed on gossip, and gathered there at 8AM on Mardi Gras morning to roll out with St. Ann. The neighborhood was comfortable. It was home with a capital H.<br />
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Every year the rent rose, eventually coming only $50 bucks from the rent I'd been convinced to move there to escape. Homeowners taxes had gone up for sure. Insurance rates had been rising. Everyone I knew was hanging tight as their rents rose little by little. Then in January 2014 the friend who owned the house dropped a bombshell: His new girlfriend hated Da Parish, thought the Marigny was chic, and we had to go. He was in love and they were moving in. I missed the “love” part as I couldn't hear it through the white noise of panic and dread. The lease was technically up, and had reverted to month to month. Nothing could be done, so after the tears abated, the search began in earnest. The realities of a new deposit and first month's rent while paying rent at home was daunting. It couldn't have been done without a friend's help. Feelers were put out on Facebook, friends were asked to keep an eye out (and so very many of them did my email box was chock full of possible leads), “for rent” signs on houses were checked out. I scoured Craigslist while simultaneously packing. Mardi Gras came early that year, complicating the logistics. The sense of anger and betrayal seemed to hang like a fog over all of it. Of course he owned the place, of course he had the right, but the rent had always been paid on time, maintenance had been done so as not to bother him with little stuff, great landscapers were called after Isaac to save a tree paid for out of pocket because it was the right thing to do and it was home. Swallowing hard, the search for a new roof overhead was on. I actively avoided the sense of uprootedness. I'd deal with that later.<br />
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The “looking” sucked. I don't have to tell any of you. You've all been there. Too late for this one, reject that one, oh my god this one has a hole in the floor and they want how much? No dogs? No cats? We're screwed?<br />
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Just then an old friend called, who had rented our earlier Marigny house to us. The one we had forsaken for cheaper rent. “Meet me in the Quarter at 8AM.” What? Morning drinking? “No. I have the perfect place for you.” He did. After skittering across town on frosty streets the day the city froze the key was turned in the gate and there it was. At $50 less than what we were now paying for the “cheaper place” we called home, the papers were signed on the spot. I thought I'd dreamed it. The nightmare that is moving ensued, the logistics of moving to the Quarter around Mardi Gras were surmounted, amazing friends pitched in at every turn. One day I walked out of the gate and a tourist asked if I lived here, I thought she meant New Orleans, she meant in the Quarter, I wasn't sure how to answer her. No one with any sense looks for a place in the Quarter, but here I was, a total long time Marigny dweller being looked at as a lucky bitch who came out that gorgeous gate. I couldn't deny it. I was lucky. Very very lucky.<br />
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It was an adjustment for sure, but here I am 15-16 months out while the neighbors on my old block are now knee deep in AirBnB's. (Or Homeaway/VRBO/Craigslist, whatever vacation rental sites there are out there for short term rentals.) A sea change on one block, actually one block of one street, in that short length of time.<br />
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I was slow on the uptake. When I first moved to the other side of the world, I mean, the Marigny, the neighbors had their niece staying in the small shed like building out back. It was in a lovely yard, the shed had been nicely furnished, and she said she had left her home elsewhere, moved here to her uncle's house and was doing some housekeeping for him and his partner til she found a job. We'd talk a little as I pulled the stubborn vines that had overgrown the fence for years, and she swept her uncle's stoop. We'd exchange pleasantries and comment on the weather, we'd yell at our respective dogs to quit barking at the mailman. After a few months she was gone. Last time I saw her she told me she had found that job and moved. After that I noticed a different car in the driveway, a different guy coming out of the back apartment. A little more building and tweaking of the backyard. A week later another guy, another terse “I'm a friend of ____ here on business” as he headed out the gate at a fast determined clip. One warm night, I had brought a beer home from Mimi's, plopped down on my stoop and a beautiful woman swathed in multi-colored scarves with an unidentifiable accent sort of floated by with a soft soprano hello as she disappeared toward the backyard. An SUV would suddenly appear in the front yard driveway overnight and disappear just as suddenly. It was months before I figured out what was going on. Mostly it was unobtrusive and the rest of our friends on the block were still hanging on their stoop, our stoop or watching the game with us in the living room, so nothing seemed really amiss. The neighbors with the merry go round friends coming to stay were amiable and cordial but aloof from the regular shenanigans of the rest of us.<br />
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On the upriver side of the street there were two renters, including us I think, but the other homes were owner occupied, although one was occupied only intermittently during Mardi Gras or a Fest. On the other side of the street there were more renters as the buildings were multi-unit dwellings. One of the largest of them had, however, been purchased and apparently had been in Architectural Digest or something. It was supposedly a large loft but most of what I knew was conjecture as that owner/occupant also wasn't swilling Jameson's in our living room yelling obscenities at referees during football season. <br />
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That one street, on one side of the block, now has 5 AirBnB's, three of them in a row, the entire middle part of that block, and two on the other side of the street. Five. That's only one side of one four sided block. According to the completely unreliable AirBnB maps (I'll explain about their unreliablility in a bit.) if you follow that block one block toward the river, there are three more, go one block toward the lake and there are at least 5 more (counting both up and downriver sides of the street). That gives that three block section of ONE street a total of 13 AirBnB's, and that's at a minimum. (In fact, rumor has it that the ratty old shed at our old home is now an “elegant renovated cottage”: renovated and listed within a year.)<br />
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I am only using AirBnB's map for these numbers. Some of the short term rentals are listed on multiple sites, like VRBO, Homeaway (which I believe is some sort of offshoot of VRBO), vacationhomerentals.com, and Craigslist along with listing it on AirBnB, although I'm sure that that isn't a complete list of short term rental sites. Another trick I've noticed is some people (people I know are definitely short term renting) obfuscate their actual street location to keep neighbors from finding their listings. Once you click on a listing, you might get a street name, and a vague circle on the map in terms of general location, but most of them keep their actual street address off any public listings. Some would be pretty easy to find if they show an exterior shot of the house, others only show the interior of the space to be rented, and some are converted sheds or add ons that wouldn't necessarily be seen from the street. For all of these reasons, the AirBnB home map is unreliable as a definitive tool for counting the number of these rentals per block. The numbers are most certainly greater than what can be found on AirBnB's site alone.<br />
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Back to my old block, there are five confirmed on a one block section of one street. (These are confirmed by neighbors still in the neighborhood if not on that block.) If we start multiplying that by all four sides of a block, the numbers are certainly much higher than I would have thought. After seeing that, I decided to go look at the area of our first Marigny rental which was about two blocks off of Esplanade.<br />
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Again, understanding that some of these are listed so as to obfuscate their actual locations, my old block seems to only have two, although if you headed toward the river and turned right or left, you'd find two more in short order, one in each direction. Go down further into the Marigny Triangle and you'll see a sea of red placards with prices on them, the deeper you go the more they proliferate. Here's a shot of 16 of them between Esplanade and Touro, just barely above Burgundy and just below Dauphine. The further toward the river you go, the denser it gets, then start heading toward Elysian Fields. They appear like poppies in the field on the way to Oz.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aKeZHY1NwUA/VXukYG9ml5I/AAAAAAAAARc/ixWbZgX9nIo/s1600/AirBnB%2BMarigny1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aKeZHY1NwUA/VXukYG9ml5I/AAAAAAAAARc/ixWbZgX9nIo/s400/AirBnB%2BMarigny1.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Are all these short term rental people homeowners? Possibly, but probably not. For some folks it's a business. I learned that when I moved into the Quarter.<br />
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When I walked through that iron gate on that cold day in February 2014 there were actually two places for rent in this building: one inside the building and one detached way back in the courtyard. I live in the detached building. The one inside the building was smaller, but gorgeous and definitely still in the realm of affordable (not pre-K affordable but post-K affordable, all things being relative.) My idea of affordable housing is “can my bartender afford it?” If the answer is yes, even if it's with a room mate, it falls into the affordable category. I'd prefer the no room mate scenario, but I am a realist. After moving in, I was out one night checking out the local watering hole. On my way back home I noticed a young woman, excited eyes, map in hand, suitcase on wheels, peering up at the building's gated front door and row of doorbells. I helpfully asked her if she needed directions, she suddenly looked wary and said she was “staying with a friend” in the building. I said ok and went in the side gate. Minutes later I heard her walk through the front door of the building (it echoes) and she disappeared inside the first apartment.<br />
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As time went on, this happened more frequently: some person or persons would appear outside the building, look bemused and confused, sometimes making a call, having a short conversation, then entering the building. One day the communal trash was overflowing with hand grenade containers and other party down stuff. Another day the trash had a chair sitting in front of it that clearly had had a difficult evening. One afternoon a young man, sitting in the courtyard with four other young folks, all nice kids, was overheard saying to one of his companions, “I'm not sure when she's coming with the other key.” I went down and asked them who they were. They told me they were “______'s friends from college.” Well I'd met _____ and it had probably been a while since she'd been in college. The kids were all staying there for spring break and had been told to tell anyone that asked the college friend story. This went on for months, not every week, not every weekend, but a lot. The building is keyed so that one key opens both gates. Are they returning these keys, I wondered? Are they out there floating around?<br />
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Then came the locked in Ecuadorian housekeepers. At least I think that's where they said they were from. One was inside the building and the apartment with enough supplies to clean a hospital ward, while the other was locked outside on the sidewalk. Neither had a key to the gate, the interior door, or the door to the apartment itself. I asked how they had gotten in. One answered in broken English that the “Mister ____” had let them in and was supposed to be coming back at some point. I asked if they knew where Mister ____ was and they pointed vaguely in the direction of the bar. (As far as I knew, there WAS no “Mister” living there.) I went over and asked the barkeep if he knew who I was talking about as the bartender knows me. No he didn't. The two women would have been locked up, one in one out, until someone happened along to spring them, in this case I did.<br />
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Finally I started searching. Was this really what I thought or was I wrong? If it was being used as a short term rental, what should I do about it? First I had to prove to myself that I wasn't going to be upsetting a person's life based on conjecture, not to mention when you live in close quarters, folks need to get along so I wasn't going to start accusing anyone of anything.<br />
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I started with the address. No dice. The obfuscation I mentioned happening in the Marigny was happening here. I did find tons of AirBnB listings within a two block area of my house. One of the biggest eye openers was that in my search for confirmation of what was going on in my building, I found a few people who had multiple listings. One guy has four “entire house/apt” listings in a six block area. What I learned is that these folks go in as prospective tenants, rent the unit, sign the lease, pay the deposits, then trick them out and promptly list them on AirBnb. Another guy I found had six units he was listing. (BTW these are NOT your standard apartment management companies, these are individuals posing as renters, taking stock off the market.) There was an incredibly expensive place for rent in the huge building next door, and the woman who manages that one told me that even with the rent for the unit at $2000 (how much you say?), someone asked to rent it telling her up front that he meant to turn it into a short term rental. She said absolutely not and was frankly flabbergasted, but then I told her about some of the folks I'd found with multiple units. She's been managing buildings in the Quarter for years and had no idea people were signing multiple leases in order to turn a profit on the units. She, of course, knew about AirBnB and the issues around that, but she was as astonished as I was that people were making a career out of it. <br />
<br />
So I keep looking. I find it. Yep. She's doing AirBnB. She's a nice young woman. She's talented. She has a young kid and a dog. She's creative. I find that she has two listings, one in the most unexpected place, somewhere out in the Carrollton area, but inside, not on Carrollton but close to the streetcar line (something she pointed out in her listing). On a “General” Somebody street. (That listing has lately disappeared so I don't know if she's living in that one or gave that one up.) So clearly she's doing this as an income generator. I get it. We're so not rich. We go from week to week, Entergy bill to Entergy bill, like everyone else. I'm not interested in screwing someone over. However, this is my security at issue. This is the other tenants' security at issue. This is a NEIGHBOR issue. Who the hell is your neighbor? The person you think it is or the person your neighbor is renting to—for two or four days?<br />
<br />
I grew up in the late 60's early 70's. I don't “narc” on someone. I have issues with ratting someone out. If you grew up with J. Edgar Hoover as the guy who kept the files, you are careful about possibly screwing up someone's life. You have no idea how deep this reluctance is if you haven't grown up with it. But I found the damn listing, in our building, keys being sent out via mail, great reviews, people are having a great time, doing laundry on the landlord's dime since he pays the water bill. The rest of us live in what is a pretty secure place, without these strangers coming in and out of the building. I was angry, and I resented being put in this position. I tend toward live and let live. Others in the building were concerned too, but the concern was whispered.<br />
<br />
I took a screenshot of the listing. Our neighbors have lived here for 30 years. (When we moved in there was a woman who'd lived here 17 years. THAT is security!) They had been concerned as we were. I took the print out of the listing to them for confirmation. What was interesting was their/our response. Do we tell the landlord because it sucks and we're not comfortable? What if something happens over there? She's got it listed as great for a “special event.” So what? Her AirBnB “verified” person throws a party that turns into an orgy and next thing we know we got cops swarming the place looking for Fatty Arbuckle? My neighbor says don't say anything, he might raise our rent. His partner says what if something happens there and the owner decides that after he, his insurance and the tenant are sued, it's not worth it for him to keep the place and we all get moved out when he sells it to eliminate the problem or pay the costs? Won't his homeowner's be hit in the lawsuit? Could be and that might be a reason to just bail. Want a vodka and cran asks the neighbor? Yes please? We drink our drinks slowly, clink our ice cubes and stare at the table. Silence. Finally one of us starts the cycle over again: So what do we do? Tell the landlord? Repeat above issues. Not tell the landlord? What if he says “Why the hell didn't you TELL me?” Well the why is that we aren't sure how he'd respond, and that worries us. One landlord in NYC was blown out of court over this very issue. <br />
<br />
But we're not NYC and we're not San Francisco. Both have rent control and tenant's rights guardians. Louisiana is very much a landlord preferred system. Well in that case it should bode well for this person to be evicted for breach of lease (although we all said we'd feel lousy putting a single mom on the streets, that sentiment was shortly quashed by noting that she's not living there actually, she's renting it out whenever she wants so she must have another place to be). On the other hand, is the landlord okay with her doing this because, hey, he gets his rent every month with no issues? We're all paying our rent with no issues and NOT short term leasing our place.<br />
<br />
So now we start discussing multiple issues related to AirBnb/short term rentals generally. <br />
<br />
1. You own the damn place and can do with it what you want.<br />
That said, you should have to register it, pay taxes on the short term/hotel level and keep a homeowner's policy at a certain level to cover any problems that could arise. (Meth dealer cooks in your place, prostitutes decide to use your place as the assignation venue, etc. Yeah, it's all already happened in NYC.) Nevermind you don't seem to care about the fabric of your neighborhood. Rent that place to a waitress who needs a place to be!<br />
2. If you're a renter, you have a lease. In NYC a judge basically said that the lease didn't matter so the <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/06/18/judge-nixes-illegal-airbnb-subletters-eviction/">landlord couldn't evict</a>. It was a bit more complicated that that statement makes it sound, as the link shows, but still the landlord was out of luck. (I think the judge was wrong, and my guess is that LA judges wouldn't see it that way, however, if they did, what precedent does that set?) In San Francisco I think it was, one landlord tried to get an “AirBnB host” tenant's short term lessee out of the apartment because he wouldn't leave. That landlord lost because the law was that if someone <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-squatter-is-officially-kicked-out-2014-8">rented a place, (even if not FROM the landlord) for 30 days</a>, a de facto month to month lease was considered in force.<br />
3. One AirBnB court case involved a woman who owned a co-op and her roommates were renting it out if she went out of town for business. Something went awry. It was decided by AirBnB that no issue arising from a third party mattered one whit. You read that right, the owner of the co-op whose name was on the paperwork was deemed a third party. Seriously???<br />
<br />
The HUGE concern in our courtyard discussion is that the landlord is rich enough to not give damn about any of this. That if it becomes too much of a burden he'll just sell the building or sell it off as condo's. Most, if not all of us, living here could not afford to buy our units.<br />
<br />
Another scenario regarding the issue of Homeowner's Insurance: Our “we'll save $400 a month” landlord had his taxes and homeowner's raised. I checked the Assessor's Office. He was right and our rent raise was totally fair. But what happens if something happens inside an AirBnB property? Something sinister? Something bloody, illegal or just plain out to lunch-spray painting anarchy signs on the walls? Let's talk worst case scenario. Woman gets killed at AirBnB rental. Someone is arrested and charged and we watch it on TV. Family sues. Who do they sue? They shotgun it. They sue AirBnB, the “host”, the owner of the building, the homeowner's insurance carrier, and anyone else they can find. Someone will pay off. What's that gonna do for the rest of you homeowners? Raise your rates? Possible.<br />
<br />
One guy in NYC, decided to AirBnB his place. They trashed it. Now he's “blacklisted” as a tenant. What exactly are your rights as a “host” or an owner of a place being rented out via AirBnb? Where do you go for recompense? (AirBnB is notoriously unhelpful in such situations. Some of the other listing sites might be better in this regard but I doubt it.) Who's paying the bill for the spray painted graffiti and broken toilet and the whatever happened to your property? Condo associations and Co-op Councils are regularly scanning AirBnb, etc. listings to see if someone in their building is short terming. AirBnB “encourages” their hosts to carry their own insurance for damages done to their “property”--which of course is a very loose term if they don't own the unit they're renting, or damage is done to a common area like a lobby. <br />
<br />
Another issue: What about taxes? All of us have palmed a tip and not declared it. The enormous number of AirBnB's (and whatever other listing they're under) are not paying the insurance necessary, they're certainly not paying taxes for the most part (if the folks bragging to me about how much they've made doing this are to be believed). If they're going to act as hoteliers willing to put up with Led Zeppelin level destruction, then they need to be paying insurance and taxes. This entire neo-liberal, disruption idea is crazy right wing stuff minus the Bible thumping. What they really want is NO restrictions, no regulations. Disruption means nothing but let me make money and screw the rest of you. What's amazing to me is that a lot of the folks touting this “disruption” model are seen as liberals. They're not. They are Reaganites. They are neo-liberals: no regulation, complete privatization, utter free trade folks. By the way, they'd mostly deny this.<br />
<br />
In my opinion, what has to happen is some kind of regulation. <br />
<br />
If you own the place, well, I'm not happy about your screwing that waitress out of an affordable place to live, but I get it. You're greedy. You own the damn place and can do with it what you want. Okay. I might be willing to buy that IF, and only if, you are okay with registering with the City, paying the hotel taxes, and dealing with the insurance/lawsuits that may come. Good on you. Make that money. (Although I gotta tell ya one conversation I've had more than once starts with “If they can't afford the rising rents, too bad, they have to move” followed by “Do you know how high property taxes and insurance are these days? If I didn't do AirBnB I couldn't afford to keep my house!” This is said with no cognizance of the irony of those statements following one another.)<br />
<br />
If you don't own the place, then in my opinion, you have NO right at all to flout your lease and ignore your neighbors' issues on this. Screwing your neighbors and your city shouldn't be a viable career path but apparently these days it is.<br />
<br />
Landlords with renters doing this: I am not sure at all what your rights are. I am not a property owner in this state. I know that LA tends to lean toward your rights vs. my rights as a tenant. (That is an entirely different issue and one I'd like to discuss one day, as I am a firm believer in some sort of Tenant's Rights agreement.). But if your tenants are afraid to come to you regarding this AirBnB issue, that should tell you something: wow, they're scared of what I might do that might displace them.<br />
<br />
The entire destruction of a neighborhood fabric is something that should be considered, but I doubt it will be. A neighborhood implies “neighbors.” Those are the people who know your car, know your dog, maybe take care of the cat or the plants for a weekend. The folks down the block who worry if they don't see you for a week. An ever changing populace of short term renters do not qualify as neighbors, and if the neighborhood becomes one giant “authentic” tourist destination, it's no longer a neighborhood nor is it authentic. <br />
<br />
If the Mayor and the City Council have any gumption at all, they'll take this bull by the horns before there's a scandalous court case that makes national news, and look toward the well being and best interests of the working folks who are serving the tourists their drinks, turning down their sheets, driving them to and fro and generally making this place a place that is still inviting the tourist dollars we depend on. I hope they don't let the short term rental “hosts” cede our neighborhoods to those tourists. The City needs to take a stand against the taking of viable housing stock off the market for a quick buck while the people who live and work in this city find it more and more difficult to find an affordable place to live.<br />
Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-51750811394642485422015-06-03T18:41:00.001-05:002015-06-03T18:50:51.717-05:00Another Day, Another LetterDear Mayor Landrieu and City Council Members,<br />
<br />
You're no doubt sick of hearing from me by now, nonetheless there are some things I want to tell you about. <br />
<br />
Over the last few weeks I've talked with a lot of people: customers, workers, owners of bars in New Orleans downtown area. It hasn't been a regular beat reporter kind of thing, just talking. I see the lawsuit against the smoking ban has failed. The nola.com comment section is, of course, completely divided along the usual lines. There were also two other articles today about the fallout of the smoking ban, and interestingly they correlate with what I've been hearing. (I'll link to them and have more to say about them later.)<br />
<br />
Full disclosure: I'm a smoker.<br />
<br />
Second full disclosure: I didn't necessarily bring the topic up in the conversations I've had over the last couple weeks. In fact, the smoking ban and its impact often came into the conversation because of something else they'd said.<br />
<br />
What I did notice that was disconcerting was a sense of fear in the conversations. Yes, really, fear. Many of the people who were talking to me knew I occasionally spout my mouth off online, others didn't but I told them I write publicly now and then. All, regardless of whether they were customers, workers or owners, asked me not to quote them by name, not to identify the bar, not to identify them. Many literally looked over their shoulders. It was damn strange. One said when I asked her why she was looking around like a cornered rabbit said, “You never know who's going to report you to whom. We're becoming a city of snitches.” I was fascinated by that comment but found as I went along that no one wanted to be identified. You'd think they were talking about a multiple kilo cocaine transaction, not a cigarette in a bar. Seriously, it was weird.<br />
<br />
I figure I'll at least pass along what these folks, New Orleanians all, smokers and non-smokers, have told me.<br />
<br />
One bartender told me he felt the ban was defacto discriminatory in that any business that has no possibility of having an outside area is necessarily behind the 8 ball. I mentioned this in some of my last letters to you. Places like Cosimo's, Buffa's, St. Roch or even the ever popular Tropical Isle locations have no outdoor options. I asked the bartender about benches or tables outside, I was told that that's illegal without a permit, which is rarely granted as sidewalks are a public right of way. I am not an expert on that, so I'll have to look it up, but he is right about the discrimination leveled against places without an outdoor patio area—business will probably migrate to places that have that option leaving some of the smaller neighborhood bars out of luck, and that doesn't seem quite fair. Another bartender happened upon our conversation and told us that when a smoking ban went through for restaurants, one restaurant north of the lake took almost the entire roof off the building so the place was a large covered patio with a very small “indoor” section. We all agreed that that wouldn't be possible in an historic district. <br />
<br />
(I did notice a bench and a couple of ashtrays chained to a building next to a bar on a recent walk. I suppose that is a possibility, if permitted, for the tinier bars, but it doesn't remove the noise factor. In fact, next to another bar was a stoop with a hand lettered sign saying: “This is a residence. Do not sit.” Clearly the local residents are not crazy about the folks standing outside, and that will get worse I fear.)<br />
<br />
A woman who is both a bar worker and a patron mentioned something I hadn't thought of. She works at a hotel bar, so no smoking allowed. She hangs out after work at a local dive that was popular with service industry workers and allowed smoking. She said she'd head there after her shift, which ended late at night, early morning, for a couple of drinks, a smoke and some gossip after work. She said she does it less often now. I expected her to say it was due to the smoking ban INSIDE. She said, no. It was because she felt she had to run a gauntlet of men who were smoking outside in order to get inside. I asked wouldn't those men have been in the bar anyway? She said yes, but there is a big difference between walking into a bar among seated men and having to walk through two lines of them as they part to allow her entrance. For her it was uncomfortable. After she mentioned it I asked a few other women in the same boat. They agreed but hadn't spoken about it for fear of judgment. Interesting on a lot of levels but I digress.<br />
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An owner asked me what his 110 lb female bartender is supposed to do if a guy his size, about 6'3” 225 lbs says no when she asks him to put it out or leave? He said he told her not to get in any arguments over it as she could get hurt. (In fact, in an article <a href="http://www.wdsu.com/news/court-bars-brawl-over-smoking-ban/33367384?absolute=true">found today,</a> this has already been a problem for one bartender in the Quarter. Please spare me the "smokers shouldn't have beaten him up" comments. OF COURSE NOT. It's not because they smoked that they were belligerent bullies, it's because they were belligerent bullies period.) He also fears the “snitch mentality,” a term I heard more than once. If someone has a beef against a bar, an ex-employer, a current employee or a customer, they can just call in a smoking ban complaint and cause problems for that owner. I asked if he thought that was improbable. He laughed and said, no, it should be expected and specifically cited anonymous photos that from all reports can be uploaded to the 311 site. (I am not sure about this, but it's a pervasive belief among barworkers.) Another owner told me that some minor fights had erupted outside the bar that normally would have been stopped inside the bar with a simple, “Settle down or leave!” Now, he asked , am I supposed to have my bartenders police the outside to make sure that doesn't happen? <br />
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There are also fears of criminal violence like thefts, muggings and worse happening to the smokers congregated outside. Once again, before you commenters start blaming the smokers for smoking and thus being outside, please use your common sense. Of course we know that the guys who committed the crime shouldn't have committed the crime, should be caught, and should be taken to court. Of course. Please, take a step off your nicotine free high horse and commend the folks for NOT pitching a fit inside the bar, for GOING outside like YOU wanted them to, then understand that they didn't get robbed or beat up because they smoked, they got robbed because they were easy pickings. For the record, there are many non-smokers who stand outside with their smoking friends because otherwise they'd be in the bar alone. They too could have been robbed in this kind of incident <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/nopd_investigates_gunpoint_rob.html#incart_most-commented_politics_article">as I'm pretty sure the gunman didn't ask if they were all smokers standing there.</a> One bar owner said he worries about an incident like this causing harm to his customers, lawsuits for his bar, a trip to the liquor license board followed by neighbor complaints and the guy with the gun will still be out there casing street smokers.<br />
<br />
As of yet, I haven't heard of a bartender losing his/her job due to lowered revenues. I have encountered two who are now looking for second jobs to make ends meet. Their tips are half what they used to be. One is contemplating getting a roommate to pay the rent that used to be affordable himself, while another says she's just barely paying her bills and is actively looking for that second job. Not a different job, an additional job. She says the regulars who stayed and tipped aren't coming in or staying as long when they do and the tips are showing it.<br />
<br />
I heard the strip clubs are suffering as well. Regardless of your views on strip clubs, they are viable businesses. I spoke with two people in the last two weeks, one a dancer, one an administrator. The dancer said that another dancer had been fired for standing outside having a smoke. I asked if the dancer would have been able to smoke while working prior to the ban. Yes, she said. She would have done her set, then gone over to the bar for a drink and a smoke, then been available to work the floor. She was outside after her set. She's looking for a job now. The administrator said that business was way down in four clubs that he worked with. I asked if it was due to the summer slow season. No, came the answer. “Young guys want the girls, the booze, the cigars, the whole thing, like in the movies. They're not spending as much time or money. The bachelor party guys love all that. I figure they'll move their party to a private house or a cigar bar, order up a stripper from Craigslist and buy their booze at Walmart.”<br />
<br />
As I said earlier, the comments at nola.com are the standard issue: SCREW YOU, you idiot smoker! SCREW YOU, you non-smoker! SCREW YOU, New Orleans, I'll go to Jefferson Parish. This last one shouldn't be completely ignored. While nearby parishes might think we're all going to hell here in New Orleans, they'll happily take our money straight into their cash registers, their poker machines, their pool tables, their jukeboxes and their pockets as tips. Of course this whole smoking ban thing might just be a huge attempt to increase DUI bookings and fines. Naturally that was not meant seriously, but what will become serious at some point is that DUI will go up as people head off to bars and casinos unreachable by foot, bicycle or cab and instead hit the I-10 on their blurry way home.<br />
<br />
Many smoking customers I talked to said they'd be willing to switch to e-cigs, not all, but a lot more than I expected. But alas, they've been banned. The “private club” idea was mentioned repeatedly, but alas, that's forbidden, which I find bizarre as the term “private club” means a customer necessarily knows what to expect before paying the membership fee. What I heard most from the owners, besides “please don't name my bar”, was the question of a referendum, an actual vote by the citizenry as opposed to an edict from above. When I asked if they'd be willing to pay yet another permit fee if a referendum allowing that was to pass, they were split. Many bar owners feel they already pay enough in fees and permits, others said they'd be willing to pay for a smoking permit if it would keep them in business.<br />
<br />
What all of them said, the customers, workers and owners, was that they felt this had just been handled like a royal decree, and they resented that. The weird not quite fear I kept noticing was like they were waiting for a hammer to drop, a letter of marque yanking their hard earned liquor license, killing their businesses with them having no recourse. It's the no recourse that rankles. Is there really no kind of compromise possible?<br />
<br />
As for me, I'll keep listening. Although maybe not for long as the noise issue will rear its head again and unfortunately be exacerbated by the sound of talking, zippos and clinking ice cubes outside someone's window.<br />
<br />
Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-38382288379672227202015-01-26T21:57:00.001-06:002015-01-27T16:01:33.226-06:00An Open Letter to Mayor Landrieu: Veto the Smoking Ban as Written<br />
Open Letter to Mayor Landrieu<br />
<br />
Dear Sir:<br />
I am writing to urge you to veto the smoking ban passed by the City Council last week. In its present form it can only hurt small businesses and the very employees the Council claims it wants to protect. Notably Councilpersons Ramsey and Gray wanted more information on the economic impact of this kind of legislation in a city such as ours. I am hopeful that they, along with the other Council members, consider carefully what ramifications the smoking ban as written could bring,.<br />
<br />
I read the live blogs and the articles covering this in the Times Picayune. I read all 1000+ comments. One kept sticking out to me, and apparently others who commented on it. Richard Rainey, of the Times Picayune, posted: “Bar owners asked the council quietly for a citywide ban because that way bars that want to be smoke-free won't lose customers to smoking bars, Guidry said.” That statement belies the unicorns and rainbows mantra that if all bars go non-smoking the non-smokers will magically take the places of smoking regulars. Clearly the bar owners who “quietly” asked for that unilateral approach knew this to be untrue and cynically asked off the record for something they knew was not a “level playing field” tactic to be implemented. That was patently unfair and frankly a little sleazy.<br />
<br />
This is not just about smoking v smoke free. This will be about the loss of a lot of small businesses and jobs.<br />
<br />
The new CZO will be coming up for discussion this spring. Some bars, like Mimi's, Jimmy's, St. Roch Tavern, Buffa's and others, will again find themselves involved in the discussion of music (music having been last year defined as “noise”). Many of them have already invested in sound proofing, security guards, complied with closing times and no go cups in order to assuage the neighbors' complaints. (By the way, Buffa's has a non-smoking back room and Mimi's has anon-smoking upstairs, but not all of these places have that space/ability.) After having spent in some cases thousands of dollars in attorney fees and renovations to comply, they turned to staff and security to encourage people to return to the inside of the establishment. (This is particularly the case with both Mimi's and St. Roch.) Now they will be asked to send their customers outside to comply with the smoking ban, and the circle will go around again with noise complaints. The owner of Cosimo's is also concerned with the neighbor/noise issue. I fear this issue will only be exacerbated by now asking those bars to send their customers outside.<br />
<br />
(It has also been pointed out to me by some owners that they will have to ask for retention of all drivers' licenses upon the customer ordering a drink as it would be entirely too easy for them to order a drink, say they're heading out for a smoke, and never return. It's the little things like this that some folks aren't thinking about.)<br />
<br />
Cosimo's owner stated that the vast majority (85-90%) of his customers are in fact smokers. There are other service industry bars that are filled with workers from non-smoking restaurants that come in after their shifts to have a drink and a smoke before heading home. (These are the same folks, by the way, who are serving in restaurants, working in hotels, dealing in casinos to locals and the tourists that our city pays a great deal to draw every year.) Have you ever seen Johnny White's or other service industry bars after a shift changes? Can you imagine the neighbor complaints with groups of people standing outside at midnight-2AM? This is very much not a level playing field as not all bars are able to suddenly create a patio/courtyard. It's also not a level playing field in terms of creation of private clubs, as “in a nod to tradition” Carnival krewe balls will be exempt, but a private club would not be. <br />
<br />
The inclusion of electronic cigarettes in the ban will also greatly affect some of the new businesses that cater to the users of these items. New small businesses known as vape shops are just starting to see their businesses grow. The inclusion of e-cigs in this ban will most likely stall those businesses as well., <br />
<br />
In a British Beer and Pub Association survey done in 2011, the number of pub closures was staggering. (There are similar numbers in Ireland, Scotland and Wales following bans there.)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xnPXh7S6EhU/VMcRCrzeUuI/AAAAAAAAAQU/ZS62xvUrhVQ/s1600/pubclosures-smokingban.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xnPXh7S6EhU/VMcRCrzeUuI/AAAAAAAAAQU/ZS62xvUrhVQ/s1600/pubclosures-smokingban.jpg" /></a></div><br />
In an opinion piece written for The Guardian in 2011, the author calls the opinions of people decrying the loss of pubs in England “nostalgia,” and posits that: “It's hard to compete when people's idea of a good Saturday night has now shifted to involve a couple of friends, a bottle of wine and The X Factor. It also removes most of the negative side-effects associated with pubs – drink-driving, antisocial behaviour and aggression are far less likely to manifest themselves when you've spent the evening in your own front room.” The author goes on to say that taxes on liquor have gone up in supermarkets and that there was an influx of “chain pubs” that entered the market on the heels of the old school pubs' closing. After saying that all of that wasn't so bad, the author concedes that: “The real tragedy of pub closures is the number of people losing their jobs. Fourteen pubs closing each week equals devastating effects for families around the country, already hit hard by the recession.” That was 2011 and the pubs continue to close.<br />
<br />
Is the economy of our city so good that we can afford to lose tax money from the bars and their customers if they follow the trends seen elsewhere. (For the record, after having spoken with friends in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, all say that a. if you have enough money, your smoking will be ignored by the proprietor hoping you'll spend it in their establishment, and b. that some establishments have just ignored the ban completely and willingly pay the fine if caught.) By the way, if the fines are a new idea for raising revenues, then allow the fines to be paid by the bar's customers and leave the liquor license out of it.<br />
<br />
Are we in such good shape that we can afford to put our local bartenders out of work, or put them in a position where their job and tips can't pay the ever increasing rents in New Orleans? While busily talking about worker protection, the Council seems to have overlooked the issue of the wages that are needed to keep body and soul together.<br />
<br />
The Casino issue is one that should give us all pause with regard to this ban. The money Harrah's brings in to New Orleans in terms of taxation, ancillary spending and employment is enormous and to cavalierly say that people will show up in droves to take the smokers place and/or not choose to go to casinos in nearby locales is disingenuous.<br />
<br />
A friend whose circumspect views and common sense I generally agree with said on social media earlier this week that he felt the default should be non-smoking with a permit issued for smoking. While I usually agree with him, in this instance I think the owners of bars already have enough permitting issues to wade through. That said, if that is the only way for some of them to stay in business, as long as the permit wasn't exorbitant and punitive, perhaps that would be a way to go. I still disagree with the idea, but at least the owner would be given a choice: the owner who has built and nurtured that business sometimes for decades; the owner who hires people to work there; the owner who knows his/her clientele.<br />
<br />
I find the exclusion of cigarettes from cigar bars to be just plain idiotic. The exclusion of e-cigs entirely, I also find idiotic. I remain unclear on whether or not a pipe can be legally smoked in a bar as it appears that cigarettes, and only cigarettes (and the smokers who pay very high taxes for them by their own choice) are being targeted. I am also intrigued that the same people who often note the obvious failure of our government's wasteful and decades long War on Drugs are so willing to now criminalize the cigarette smoker or the business owner who knows his/her patrons' preferences.<br />
<br />
If New Orleans is going to accept the 2011 UK Op Ed writers' view that an evening at home watching X Factor with friends is a superior choice to going out, or that small bars closing so that chain bars can take their places is better than a neighborhood bar, then we as a city are truly on the wrong path.<br />
<br />
The pie in the sky “non-smokers will take their place” myth is just that. A myth. What is not a myth is that non-smoking clubs on Frenchmen are doing fine, allowing e-cigs, and they did that by choice not legislation.<br />
<br />
Full disclosure: I am a smoker, do not light up in a non-smoking bar, have patronized all but one of the bars I mentioned above. I wrote about the ones I know will have problems. I am sure that there are others throughout the city that will have the same problems if this legislation is allowed to pass as is.<br />
<br />
I hope you will veto this bill, and consider all the unintended consequences of leaving this decision as currently designed. We don't need to make these businesses suffer, put people out of work or criminalize anything else. We have enough of those issues already.<br />
<br />
Sam Jasper<br />
<br />
EDIT 1.27.15: "This terrible process started with the ban on smoking. Labour was warned that it would result in pub closures, but went ahead regardless. The people it was supposed to protect – the bar staff – have suffered catastrophic job losses as a result (though this is rarely noticed, as so many bar staff are non-unionised, cash-in-hand foreigners). Labour knew this would happen, as the state of British Columbia in Canada had introduced a similar ban a couple of years earlier and the immediate result had been bar closures and (I have been told) one third of bar jobs lost." That from <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100255698/the-smoking-ban-killed-the-british-pub-this-vandalism-is-labours-defining-legacy/">This article in the Telegraph, written last week.</a><br />
Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-62208863178209796862013-12-19T17:38:00.003-06:002013-12-19T17:38:27.053-06:00Letter to City Council re: Noise Ordinance ProposalSince I can't make it to the Council Chambers, because of course, something else was scheduled for this morning and they only JUST announced all this yesterday, I wrote a letter to the Council and hope all of you did too. Most of mine is completely quoted from the Convention and Visitor's Bureau website. Here's what I said:<br />
<br />
Dear Council Persons,<br />
I got an email just today about the hearing in Council Chambers tomorrow at 10AM. I cannot be there as I have a previous commitment, but feel that the scheduling of this hearing so quickly during the holiday season was a purposeful decision. With little advance notice given, I believe the hope is that there will be fewer opponents of this ordinance able to attend.<br />
<br />
Not only am I outraged by the perception of underhandedness in the pushing forward of this absurd ordinance, but I'm frankly baffled by it. <br />
<br />
From the Convention and Visitor's Website:<br />
<br />
"A place where centuries old architecture is the backdrop for a culture so invigorating, it'll rouse your spirit. Visit the most fun and authentic city in America, New Orleans."<br />
<br />
Under the Nightlife section, same website:<br />
". . . .nightclubs where you can dance the night away. So leave the stress of your everyday life behind, grab a go cup (in New Orleans you can take your drink with you), put on your dancing shoes and get ready to have the time of your life."<br />
<br />
Under the Frenchmen Street section, same website:<br />
<br />
"It offers an amazing variety of venues styles and music, ranging from traditional jazz to blues to reggae to rock all week long. Many venues along the strip don't even charge a cover! But in true New Orleans fashion, do give a cheer after a great trombone solo and throw a few bucks in the tip jar to show your appreciation.<br />
<br />
Frenchmen offers a lively street culture that means the fun spills out from the bars and music venues. Sketch artists and poets line the sidewalks and bluegrass and gypsy jazz pickup bands nestle into the stoops along the strip. Brass bands are commonly found on the corner of Chartres and Frenchmen, and before you know it, you'll be dancing in the streets like a local."<br />
<br />
This is the image of New Orleans we sell to the world. This is the actual New Orleans that we street dancing locals recognize as home. <br />
<br />
Under this new proposed noise regulation (and forgive me but I have real problems with the word noise used to describe both a jackhammer and a trumpet, for while they both make sounds, one is a tool while the other is an instrument of self expression), if I have musicians in my house, or "nestled" on my stoop, practicing their craft, getting ready for a show, or even a child learning to play drums or tuba or trombone (Trombone Shorty had to learn to play somewhere), I could find myself in violation of this ordinance.<br />
<br />
I am not going to go point by point through this ordinance, which by the way, appears to violate the First Amendment as I understand it. I will say, however, that if this proposal is passed, then everything we consider to be our culture, our "authentic" culture, will be in danger. We're busy marketing the very thing that this would wipe out. I don't understand that and never will.<br />
<br />
I urge you to toss this ordinance in the trash bin where it belongs and listen to the musicians whose livelihoods could be at stake, listen to the people who are trying to work with you, like MACCNO. If the sound of our city is going to be silenced by a handful of disgruntled but vocal people in various neighborhood associations, then we might as well all trundle off to Dubuque or change the name of our city to Anytown, USA because it will no longer be "authentic" nor will it be New Orleans.<br />
<br />
For the record, I live and vote in New Orleans and music is not a criminal enterprise. I'd rather see our police doing actual police work than running around ticketing a pickup band or harassing a bar owner. I am not alone. There are a lot of us watching, and your decisions will be on our minds when next we find ourselves in a voting booth.Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-81960893851942880522013-05-16T20:10:00.001-05:002013-05-16T20:30:59.527-05:00They<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last Sunday a Mother's Day Second Line was shot up here in New Orleans. The incident became national then international news. As a resident of New Orleans I was horrified and not only because I know one of the most critically injured, while another friend and her daughter missed being there simply by virtue of running late. It was a heinous, cowardly and brutally cold act pure and simple.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I watched comments sections, something I normally avoid like the plague. I looked at what my friends and others were saying in social media. One particularly astute friend said he figured in a few days the whole debate would become “gun control discussion” fodder. He wasn't wrong. Some of that has certainly come up from both sides of the argument and that's not unreasonable, but it still somehow misses an even bigger issue.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I watched news reports. I read news reports. I saw the surveillance footage and the suspect named. Something was off and I couldn't put my finger on it. Whatever it was kept me up nights trying to figure out what was bugging me. Was it the violence? Absolutely. Was it the senselessness of it? Yes. Was it concern over friends, second lines, culture and where the blame would land? Yes to all of that. But none of those things were the elusive thing, just out of reach, like something seen out of the corner of your eye that disappears when you turn your head to face it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Some people argued that this was an act of terror, some changed that up to “urban terror” while the FBI explained their definition of terrorism and finally said no, this particular act didn't fit the definition. Still something bugged me and I stayed up another night.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Finally I figured it out. It was the news coverage but not in the way that some people had already pointed out. Some noticed right away that this mass shooting, while being called a mass shooting, wasn't covered in the same way others had been. Some felt it was due to the lack of fatalities, one thing for which we can be endlessly grateful. Others felt that it was because it was New Orleans, and many made good points on that score: folks across the land do seem to revel in bashing our city. For some it seems to be a sport. Still, that wasn't it.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The elusive thing finally sat in the doorway long enough for me to see it. It was ugly and I was surprised by it, although in hindsight I probably shouldn't have been.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When Cho Seung-Hui, 23, took his guns to Virginia Tech in April, 2007 his Facebook page was gawked at until it was removed. Photos of him in body armor with guns were all over the internet. In no time at all reporters had tracked down bits of information: Korean, came here when he was 8, family in Korea noticed behavioral problems when he was little, family owned a dry cleaners and were very nice people. He had trouble in school, trouble at Virginia Tech where he was enrolled in Business courses. Cho had a long history of mental health issues that were not handled, although he evidently took Prozac for a while. I could go on. There's tons of information.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Then 3 years later, Jared Lee Loughner, 24, took his guns to a political rally shooting Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, killing several including a 9 year old girl, injuring many more. He was captured and his shaved head smirky mug shot was all over the media. Reporters found out he had dropped out of high school, then attempted college, broke up with his girlfriend, had an extreme change in his personality over the course of a couple years, allegedly took a lot of drugs. His mom worked outside the home, his father was rarely seen. Neighbors said his father was strange. His friends said Loughner was sweet then suddenly changed into a truly bizarre guy. Psychiatrists decided he was probably schizophrenic and was in need of mental health help but his problems had gone undetected. Again, tons of information out there.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">James Holmes, 25, shot up a theatre in Colorado in July, 2012. His smiling flaming red haired mug shot made him look even more bizarre than Loughner with his smirk. Within hours we learned he was a failed Ph.D student, had been to psychiatrists on campus and off, had been seen as a danger but no one knew if that had been reported to anyone. His lab partners and pretty much anyone he ever spoke to were interviewed. He came from a seemingly normal home. He was awkward. Reporters stuck microphones in everyone's face they could find that might know any little thing about the guy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The same happened with Adam Lanza, 20, in December, 2012. Awkward, weird, no mug shot but the most recent photo they found made him look like he was an alien or thought he was seeing them. Mom liked guns and was a bit of a strange woman herself, although, the reporters were quick to find out from the local bar/eatery that she frequented that everyone there thought she was sweet and thoughtful, though worried about her son's mental health. He played a lot of video games and was rarely seen. Recent reports say that he was bullied at Sandy Hook when he was little. Upper middle class kid goes sproing, or had gone sproing a long while back, no one could be sure, and he went and shot up a school full of little kids. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All four incidents were covered wall to wall 24/7. Reporters were palpitating to get any morsel of info on these guys, no matter how irrelevant, stupid, or just flat out wrong the information sometimes proved to be. The reporters looked very concerned and empathic. Most reports on air or in print were asking WHY? in big letters. Profilers and FBI guys and psychiatrists all speculated on the cause, prefacing their comments with, “I can't diagnose someone without having actually examined him, but . . . .”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For Cho, most assessments became about his difficulties as a child of immigrant parents, and mis- or undiagnosed/untreated/unacknowledged mental illness. From his writings it was found that he felt poor in relation to the other students he went to school with, he felt left out of the American dream in some existential way. He felt alienated, marginalized.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For the other three, the profiles were rife with items about either parental neglect or over-indulgence, alienation, marginalization, and the standard triad of mis- or undiagnosed/untreated/unacknowledged mental health issues.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">None of that happened with regard to Akein Scott. None of it. Not a neighbor, relative, friend, teacher, pastor or school administrator had a microphone shoved into their face with a breathless reporter asking about Akein's first 19 years. Once again we had a smiling mug shot, but a completely different reaction. No one was saying he was a crazy whacko who played too many video games and didn't like to be touched and was bullied in school and was failing in college and his parents tried hard and/or screwed up and my god why didn't someone notice a problem before he started pulling the trigger while aiming his gun at innocents. They couldn't. No one had asked those questions. Correct information, wrong information, an anecdote? Nope. Nothing. People didn't nod to each other over their beer and say, man, did you see how crazy that guy looked? Instead they saw a young black man in a white shirt and seemed to take for granted that his actions were a foregone conclusion.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am not saying that bad reporting is a good thing, but at least a show of curiousity might be. Before you say that the others killed people and Mr. Scott did not, let me stop you. When we ask 'why' in these cases we want to know why someone would find it necessary, or think it was okay, or be hard and cold enough to shoot a firearm into a soft target like a classroom, a theatre or a celebratory second line, and for the record, it was pure luck that no one was killed Sunday on Frenchmen Street. Before you say that I'm an apologist for Akein Scott, please know that I decry his actions, HIS actions, and expect due process and evidence to put him somewhere away from society.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">That does not change the fact that I find it curious that no one else seems to be curious about the why here. The comment sections are full of the word thug, a word, by the way, that I'm really sick of hearing. One commenter thinks we need to ramp up Stop and Frisk: on them, of course, they are the ones we need to stop. They. No matter if they happen to be business men or doctors. They. No one felt we should start ramping up Stop and Frisk on young white men 19-25 after the others went on the rampage, nor do I know of any aggressive Stop and Frisk program in the Korean community in this country. Another commenter says, “It's cool. They will just keep killing til they kill each other off.” Despicable. Again, no one said any such thing about young white men “shooting at their own.” No one.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A friend of mine wrote a stunning piece about the cycle of emotions he feels as a black man in this community. He talked about his anger: "As a black male in New Orleans, there's often a hint of shame because deep down I know the actions of the few reflect so negatively on the many. I feel like I should be going out and doing something to atone for what happened even though I haven't done anything. This makes the anger greater because now I'm madder these fools are making my life more complicated." You can read his entire piece <a href="http://cliffscrib.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-stages-of-coping-with-street.html">here</a>. Unfortunately there will still be some people who see this man in his driveway with friends talking about football and walk a little faster wondering if they have a gun in their waistband. They.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ka'Nard Allen, one of the ten year olds wounded Sunday, was profiled by local news outlets. Ke'Nard's father was stabbed to death, allegedly by his stepmother, after a domestic dispute in October 2012. His tenth birthday, last May, became a shooting gallery with bullets flying past balloons killing his 5 year old cousin, Breanna Allen, and wounding him. A ten year old wounded by gunfire twice in one year. Sickening. No private patrols in that neighborhood paid for by the neighborhood association. It only happens where they live, or so people think, and those that think that never ask why. They.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Law enforcement caught and locked up Akein Scott. I heard they caught his brother, another of the alleged shooters, Shawn Scott, 24. Our Mayor and Chief of Police were on the news today. Here in this house we were both cautiously glad. Why “cautiously?” Because we looked at each other and said, almost at the same time, “I hope they got the right guys. I hope they don't screw up the trial.” We don't have much faith in our Police Department's record on such things unfortunately, not the DA's office either. There are too many stories of the wrong guy being locked up because someone had it in for him and the reward money along with street revenge was too great a temptation, or the right guy getting out and killing a few more before the courts get him. I hear they had multiple ID's of him and his brother so I'm hoping they get this one right.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Meanwhile I'm still curious. I'm asking the same questions I asked when Cho/Loughner/Holmes/Lanza pointed guns at people. What went wrong? Why didn't someone notice a problem? What makes a young man that alienated, that marginalized, that cold and heartless? I see a video, it's jerky. A young black man in a white shirt and blue jeans steps out from next to a stoop near a corner, raises his hand, points the gun at people dancing in the street, suddenly the people scatter, some falling hard on the ground. He turns and runs, not looking back. That's calculated, like the others. That's planned, like the others. Young men aged 19-25 with guns, just like the others with only one obvious difference.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I'm still not seeing the interviews with neighbors and teachers. I'm seeing no FBI profilers here. I won't see them in Chicago or Detroit, St. Louis or Camden, Compton or Baltimore either as bodies fall every day. The comments sections will fill up with rants full of the word thug, others will say a good guy with a gun coulda/shoulda/woulda, another will say no more guns. No one will ask what kind of child Akein was, what kind of student he was, what did his parents do or not do. No one cares why, in fact simply asking the question will no doubt draw the ire of folks who will accuse me of looking for an excuse for him. I'm not. What he allegedly did is inexcusable. I would like to understand though, and to do that I have to ask the question. Are we afraid of the answer, because the answer isn't unique to New Orleans, is it? I'm sure it's not just one thing, one simple easily fixed thing, either. Perhaps I'm naïve in thinking we should at least try to figure this out.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Then again, some of us don't really want to change it, or think it's not possible to fix the problem. Either way, we can go back to our reality shows and ignore the reality right outside our door or over around the way. It's their destiny. It's their culture. It only happens where they live. They.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Maybe we should make sure little Ke'Nard gets counseling and support beyond the end of the news cycle. Maybe we should be asking why more often. </span> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Us.</span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nola" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">NOLA</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/new+orleans" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">New Orleans</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/we+are+not+ok" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">We Are Not OK</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/new+orleans+slate" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">New Orleans Slate</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><strong></strong>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-84176766153609892352012-10-09T17:20:00.001-05:002012-10-09T17:20:32.445-05:00An Open Letter to Mayor LandrieuDear Mayor Landrieu,<br />
I voted for you. Twice. I felt then and feel now that you really want to work with the community. I felt then and feel now that having grown up here in New Orleans, you have a deep connection to the City, its people and its culture in all the various forms that culture presents. That said, I am greatly concerned, as are many others, that some of the cultural heritage unique to this City will soon be obliterated by bad laws, pressure from monied property owners (both natives and newcomers), and the pursuit of money for the City coffers which admittedly could use some shoring up. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately it often looks as though that shoring up is being done on the backs of the regular working folks via traffic cam tickets that are a hardship on just about everyone trying to make it month to month, crazy new taxicab regulations that are a hardship on many career cab drivers, unwieldy and seemingly serendipitous permitting requirements on club owners who are the small business owner/job creators we hear about every day, more permits on the smallest of entrepreneurial business owners--the vendors at Second Lines, and on the culture bearers themselves—the musicians and artists who create the culture that draws visitors to our City every year from all over the world. Lately we've heard words like noise, crackdown, permit, and ordinance used to intimidate bands off of street corners, to cause clubs to stop live music for fear of total shut downs, and as you know, those words have been a sometimes unspoken threat to parades and Indians for a long time.<br />
<br />
There have to be other, better ways to pay for the needs of this City, ways that don't threaten an entire cultural fabric with becoming an historic footnote or an artifact in a museum; ways that don't send our club owners into bankruptcy, our musicians into the unemployment lines or worse, into the clubs of Austin.<br />
<br />
I know several men who grew up here who are about your age. They have entertained me with stories of their youth: jumping out of bed early to try to catch the Bone Men just as they start out, waiting on certain street corners to hear the approach of an Indian gang and being thrilled to catch a glimpse of the Spy Boy in his suit looking up and down the block. One friend has a story of being about 14, riding a Mardi Gras float as what he called a “float grunt.” He wrote the story down and it was published. They've told me lots of stories, some of which I am sure their parents still know nothing of today, but they all involved spontaneity, expectation of a remarkable experience, and above all, music. Whether they were walking down the street hearing it from a corner or a backyard or out the door of a club on their first forbidden walk down Bourbon Street, to a man their eyes still get wide in the telling of the story, the awe they felt seeing this or that now long dead musician is still in their voices, the joy of hearing that one long perfect note still resonates in their memories today. I am betting you have some memories like that. Perhaps you even have some still secret ones, the ones you'll wait to tell your kids until they have kids themselves.<br />
<br />
That makes you and all the other people who grew up here in New Orleans unique. Your contemporaries in other cities in other states didn't have the wealth of culture, the almost embarrassingly rich culture, that you did. They most certainly didn't have the wide range of music right there, right there in the streets.<br />
<br />
On the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau website it says: “It is said that in New Orleans, culture bubbles up from the streets. Nowhere is this more evident than in the music scene. You'll know it when you come across a street performance that rivals any ticketed show you've seen.” It goes on to say that “New Orleans is one big stage.”<br />
<br />
I have been attending the discussion meetings that Kermit Ruffins has so kindly opened his doors for regarding clubs, permits, and all the other issues surrounding live music lately. The attendees are club owners, musicians, visual artists, and music lovers, all wanting to find a solution to the various issues involved. I very much want to thank Scott Hutcheson for joining us and speaking with us. I believe that since he is there on your behalf, that you believe the words on the NOCVB website. There is no doubt that it's a true statement: “...in New Orleans, culture bubbles up from the streets.” Someone at the last meeting made a comment that that culture has come from the most marginalized neighborhoods and population in the City by and large. What they didn't mention was the scope and importance of the street culture within those neighborhoods and the rest of the city.<br />
<br />
As the discussion wandered off into ordinance technicalities, Big Chief Albert Doucette stood up and took the floor. He gave voice to the issues that most concern those of us in attendance. He said, “Things like Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs are grandfathered in. They are trying to kill the grandfather. If you allow them to kill the grandfather, the walls are going to disintegrate. They can't allow people who have a lot of money to come into our town and buy into OUR neighborhoods and tell us you can't have that live music in your club. We need to make an ordinance where if you move into a neighborhood, you better accept what's IN that neighborhood. This is our culture. This is our City. This is OUR City. We made New Orleans.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Mayor, everyone applauded. The folks at this meeting were from various neighborhoods and various economic levels. Those applauding were business owners. They were musicians. They were creators of the culture we all want to protect. They were the locals who pay to see those cultural creators. They were, I believe, people who hold the same beliefs about this remarkable culture that you do. They also are fierce in their determination to let it grow, organically and naturally as it always has. <br />
<br />
In 2009 the Louisiana Endowment for Humanities did a series of interviews with local musicians called, “As Told By Themselves.” I attended one that featured the Treme Brass Band. The LEH graciously put these online and I listened to it again earlier this week because there was one particular story that I remembered but couldn't put the musician's name to. As I listened waiting for that particular story, I heard Mr. Benny Jones, Jr. talking about seeing jazz funerals two or three times a week with parades of the Social Aid and Pleasure clubs on Sunday as a kid. That's about four street performances a week that he saw free from his doorstep. He, along with all the musicians, explained that just about everyone in their family played an instrument, and just about everyone in their friend's family did too. They all spoke of the mentoring, from one generation to the next, dropping names like Harold Dejean and Milton Batiste, Olympia Brass Band, Danny Barker. Each of them could recite a litany of “my uncle played trombone, my aunt played clarinet, my cousin played drums.” It was astonishing, and yes, as I said earlier, unique. I can think of no other city in which music is so totally embedded in the culture through family and community ties. They talked about hearing someone play in a backyard down the way, grabbing their instrument, even if it was only a bucket to bang on, and heading down there soon to be joined by others who heard the music and joined in. They talked about going down to the Quarter to play on street corners as kids learning their craft. They learned traditions from their elders and the great band teachers in the schools. If they saw someone walking down the street with a horn they'd ask if they were going to practice today, and join them. One said, “We created music right then and there, anywhere. There'd be a knock on the door and someone else would join in, then there'd be people in the streets dancing.”<br />
<br />
Today, the way the ordinances are written, they could get a ticket for playing or rehearsing in their backyard, or on their stoop, or in their house, or on the street. Mr. Mayor, the way the ordinances are written right now you could get a ticket for playing a tambourine on your front porch, and while I don't know for certain, I am pretty sure there is a tambourine somewhere in your house. It seems to be standard equipment in New Orleans' households in every neighborhood.<br />
<br />
Finally as I listened, I came across the story I had been looking for. It was told by Kenneth Terry, the trumpet player for Treme Brass Band. He remembered being about 7 years old, standing on his stoop when a parade or second line went by. There was a man playing trumpet with one hand, holding it up in the air like Gabriel himself. Kenneth was mesmerized and told his mom he wanted to do that. Soon she bought him a trumpet from Weirlein's. A few days later there was a knock on the door and when Kenneth opened it, he saw a man standing there. Kenneth said to him, “You're the guy who played with one hand!” The man said, “Yeah, Kenny, your mama said you want to play the trumpet.” That man was Milton Batiste and he took him to his house and taught him and helped him. Mentored him. A legend helping a 7 year old kid just because the young man showed interest. I am pretty sure that nothing like that happens in Dubuque. In that way the culture was handed down to the next generation intact with room for innovation, evolution and growth, but still uniquely New Orleans.<br />
<br />
Every note played, every bead sewn, every dance step taken has been handed down by those who came before. It's a living, breathing thing, this culture we are lucky enough to experience, and if we legislate it too much or try to make it too orderly we will lose the spontaneity that lets it breathe. If that happens, if it is allowed to happen, this culture we love will die, but only after becoming a caricature of itself. That, sir, would be the world's loss not just ours.<br />
<br />
Mr. Mayor, someday you'll tell your stories to your grandchildren, maybe even some of the secret ones. I hope that you will be able to tell them the story and then show them what you're talking about. You'll sit on a curb with them in the summer sun, laughing to yourself about the blue snoball juice dripping on their clothes as they dance to the rhythms of an Indian practice taking place inside the door. You'll take them into the Quarter where they'll see other kids their age hoping the bigger guys will let them play a few notes on their horn and maybe one of those grandchildren will ask you for a trumpet. You'll grab your tambourine and take them to dance in a second line letting them choose from the list of Sundays held by a magnet to your refrigerator door. You'll play the music you grew up with for them and look forward to the kind of music their generation will create and hear, still bubbling up out of the streets, just like the Visitor's website said back in your day.<br />
<br />
You'll do all this with a huge smile on your face, with the quiet knowledge that you played a large part in allowing that culture to live on by nurturing it and not letting it become a parody of itself. Or you'll do it with great sadness, the sadness we feel when we look at an endangered species. Mr. Mayor, this cultural protection can be your most important legacy. Please, sir, take up the fight so that so that this culture, your City's culture, isn't as remote an idea to your grandchildren as a saber toothed tiger.<br />
<br />
One of the attendees at the meeting last week said, “Frankly, the best friend you might have might be the Mayor to tell you the truth.” I am writing this letter in the hopes that that attendee was right.<br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Sam Jasper<br />
Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-58898969029897403122012-10-02T19:12:00.000-05:002012-10-02T19:19:51.216-05:00NOLA 1 Big Stage: Truth and Other LiesFor a long time, my friend LD over at <a href="http://lorddavidtruth.blogspot.com/">The Truth and Other Lies</a> has been fighting the good fight on the permitting issue, beginning with the absurd exchange he had regarding creating art in his own home. (Seriously, the way the law is written currently you need a permit for that so put down your paint brush and step away from the glue gun. Holster that chisel, you sculptor! You over there, what do you think you're doing with that clay?) He has been through the various ordinances and he's doing a series on his blog about them. <br />
<br />
Here at New Orleans Slate, I have several guest posters lined up and will post their perspectives as soon as they are submitted.<br />
<br />
Also of immediate importance: THERE IS ANOTHER MEETING AT KERMIT'S SPEAKEASY TOMORROW, OCTOBER 3 AT NOON. We can't let the pressure drop down on this issue and we have to find a way to work together productively, so let's keep it up.<br />
<br />
Until my first guest post is ready to publish, why don't you wander over across to LD's and read <a href="http://lorddavidtruth.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-culture-wars-chronicle-of-battles.html">this latest post</a>. He has a good chronological timeline on all this. (He also mentions the Eris Debacle which I wrote a lot about at the time. For the record, last I heard the Internal Report had still not been a. finished, b. made available, or c. done at all. I talked to someone recently who told me to request it again and I think I will.) His post is a good read so go visit!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/NOLA" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">NOLA</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/New+Orleans" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">New Orleans</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Music+permits" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Music Permits</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span> <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Culture+War" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Culture War</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Kermit+Ruffins" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">Kermit Ruffins</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/new+orleans" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">New Orleans</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span> Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-77396651437079085562012-09-30T12:31:00.001-05:002012-09-30T12:31:22.565-05:00New Orleans is One Big Stage ReduxAfter Kermit Ruffins' meeting on Wednesday, someone who rarely writes took to the keyboard and sent me the piece below. It gave me an idea: Why don't I open up my blog for a week and have guest posters from the community give us their ideas on the subject of permits and City Hall. Not just a list of complaints but what they would like to see. I'm asking performers, lawyers, business owners, and yes, eventually, even City Hall to write a post which will be posted here on New Orleans Slate unedited. <br />
<br />
If you have a suggestion for a guest poster, or want to be one yourself, email me at jasper.sam@gmail.com. I'd like to have a new post every day. I can't guarantee yours will be posted, but am hoping that there are so many ideas for positive change that all will make it up here. I will also be posting all the links from the articles written last week. Some of the reporters got some things wrong, but the articles need to be in one place for folks to see easily. I hope to have that list ready by Tuesday, but as anyone who knows me knows, it'll probably be Wednesday.<br />
<br />
At any rate, I am soliciting guest posts. This one, by David Kern, came to me unsolicited and I want to thank him for sparking the idea of guest posters on this topic, and the passion he felt about this very important issue that overrode his abhorrence of keyboards to put this together.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
Music</div>
On Wednesday, September 26,
2012, a meeting was called by Kermit Ruffins, the man who, in the
calling of this meeting, has become the de facto face of new Orleans
music.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I got real pissed and I
called a meeting,” said Ruffins. The source of his anger is the
sudden arbitrary and aggressive crack-down on musicians and music
venues by New Orleans City Hall and the Mayor's office. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Answering the call, about
200 (although I've seen numbers ranging from 100 on up) musicians,
club owners, lawyers, and music loving citizens converged on Kermit's
Treme Speakeasy on Basin Street.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Before leaving the stage,
Ruffins said he would like to hold meetings every Wednesday which
would culminate in a march on City Hall on the 24<sup>th</sup> of
October, an idea which was met with instant and unanimous support.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are three things that
can be done immediately to blunt City Hall's attack on our culture. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The first is to completely
dismantle the “six month clause” which Councilwoman Stacey Head
has cleverly manipulated, making it incumbent upon the club owners to
prove there has not ever been a six month lapse in entertainment at
their respective establishments. (One club owner said, “If you buy
a business it might take MORE than six months to renovate it, so
we're behind the 8 ball from the beginning.”) It is unenforceable,
unconstitutional, and must go away.<br />
<br />Second, we need to force a
moratorium on the capricious enforcement of any ordinances pertaining
to any kind of public performance or special event. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And third, we need the city
to respect the “grandfathering”of entertainment venues. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This is a single cause with
many voices, and it is imperative that those many voices be channeled
into one clear and cohesive one. Musicians, by their nature are not
herd animals, so how this might be done, or whom this voice might be,
remains to be seen. But this movement, this cause must not be allowed
to collapse upon itself due to petty political infighting. This is
what City Hall would most like to see. A united front is an absolute
must. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The old saying “you can't
fight city hall” is defeatist bullshit. United, we can fight city
hall and we can prevail. City Hall is nothing more than a cabal of
lawyers and their minions. Guess what? We have lawyers too. Granted,
ours may end up working for free, but they are working on the side of
the angels. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And City Hall has
ordinance, dating back to 1952. Well, we have culture and tradition,
dating back to when that first luckless Frenchman stepped off the
boat. And we have the power of Jazz, Blues, Rock-and-Roll and Gospel,
all children born of this city, behind us. If we unite, we will
prevail, and our song will not be silenced.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nola" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">NOLA</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/new+orleans" rel="tag"><span style="font-size: 85%;">New Orleans</span></a><span style="font-size: 85%;"> </span><strong></strong>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-14061048455644732642012-08-07T21:27:00.002-05:002012-08-07T21:42:15.542-05:00New Orleans is One Big Stage. . . .<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HHzhdQZnla0/UCHN4esiNsI/AAAAAAAAAMk/n8IuqnCGOBU/s1600/geoffrey_pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="300" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HHzhdQZnla0/UCHN4esiNsI/AAAAAAAAAMk/n8IuqnCGOBU/s400/geoffrey_pic.jpg" /></a></div>Photo Courtesy of Geoffrey Douville<br />
<br />
From the "Things to Do" section of the <a href="http://www.neworleanscvb.com/things-to-do/music/">New Orleans Convention and Visitors' Bureau website</a>:<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote>It is said that in New Orleans, culture bubbles up from the streets. Nowhere is this more evident than in the music scene. You'll know it when you come across a street performance that rivals any ticketed show you've seen. Or when you find yourself inspired to sway, clap and move like never before.<br />
<br />
The city is the birthplace of jazz and a mecca for gospel, R&B and ultimately, the rock and pop we love today. We aren't exaggerating when we say that a wholly original spirit of creativity and musical magic is alive on the streets and in the clubs of New Orleans. Experience unbelievable live musical performances in venues from swank lounges to tiny honky tonks to mega concerts in places like the New Orleans Arena.<br />
<br />
New Orleans is one big stage. Come and play your part.</blockquote><br />
Did you see it? My favorite part? "On the streets and in the clubs of New Orleans."<br />
<br />
And yet in the last few weeks there have been tidbits of scuttlebutt, rumors proven to be true, culminating in several articles about clubs and bars being told no more live music. Not just in one part of town, but all over town. Circle Bar Uptown: blammo. Siberia on St. Claude: blammo. A move to kill Frenchmen Street music: blammo. Nevermind the continuing harassment of brass bands on the street. You know. That "On the streets" part the CVB is touting. Wrong permit. No permit. Mayoralty permit. Nagin, no, Landrieu, no, "it's been this way for a long time just now being enforced". . . . .AAAARRRRRRGHHH. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.offbeat.com/">Offbeat Magazine</a> has done a couple of great articles about this as has <a href="http://www.bestofneworleans.com/">The Gambit</a>. In fact I think it was the Gambit that first told us about the Frenchmen Street issues. <br />
<br />
I decided to look into all this for myself but lucky for me, Geoffrey Douville, a businessman, bar owner, musician and neighbor, already did the homework I was about to embark on. I am forever grateful. What follows is what he wrote today, (I've left the links as originally placed) and it's an important read:<br />
<br />
EDIT: Prior to my using this Geoffrey added: "I would just add that it was pointed out to me that my zeroing in on the Real Estate biz was taken narrowly to mean the businesses that broker real estate deals, and that needs to be modified--I mean real estate in the broadest sense meaning all the itinerant businesses and interests relating to property in general, and that can be draftsmen, designers, Architects, preservationists--and thus many of the people involved in the drafting of the Master Plan." Below is his entire piece.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The long-term viability of music venues in New Orleans is in real danger. Something has to be done to reverse this increasing and unacceptable trend. In the last year no less than three music venues have had their entertainment shut down, two of these in the last three weeks alone. In the last year some interested parties attempted to re-open Donna's on Rampart St., long known as the Brass Band hub of the city, and were rejected in their attempts due to an arbitrary and capricious city standard that reverts zoning to some or other designation (almost always one that does not allow live entertainment) if a commercial property has been “vacated” for longer than 6 months. As an owner/partner of the Lost Love Lounge, and a musician myself, our application was rejected last year despite the fact that our location has been in operation as a business, continuously, since at least 1930, probably longer, when it was the V&G Tavern (Viola & George Heck, Dancing Saturdays! Television!! Drink Jax!). Additionally, other clubs that are unlicensed for music are being harassed continuously with threats of having their entertainment shut down. I can think of three well known venues off the top of my head. They are all vulnerable. Add to this the general hostility of some of the more aggressive, indeed out-of-control and drunk on power neighborhood organizations (not all of them, so we're clear) that seem to derive a kind of sadistic pleasure from succeeding in destroying that which others have built, and top it off with a Federal Grant that Bobby Jindal is using to fund a seemingly unending string of cheap stings (conducted when businesses are most vulnerable) on small businesses, and you've got a recipe for disaster. I say these things not from the perspective of a whining business owner crying foul over some minor tax increase or other (I'm no Republican), but as a musician in need of places to play. Because that's one of the basic requirements of maintaining our musical culture: places to play.<br />
<br />
The issue faced by music clubs and/or entrepreneurs who would like to start one is that the issuance of live entertainment permits is currently governed by a set of rules that will, over time, lead to the existence of less and less permits. The deleterious effects are happening before our eyes. The rules as they stand are so hostile to music venues that regulations outlined in the new “Master Plan” could be legitimately interpreted to mean that all currently operating venues could have entertainment shut down right now, today. It seems designed, over time, to use attrition as a mechanism to drastically lessen (if not wipe out completely) music venues in New Orleans. This is not hyperbole—it's very real as we've all seen in the past weeks. This is of course good for no one save a few nasty people—people no one wants to hang out with anyway--who happen to have a lot of time on their hands to hang around with the people who cobbled our so-called “Master Plan” together, namely real estate interests. And I mean "real estate" interests in the broadest sense, inclusive of all the associated elements: brokerage, construction, Architecture, etc. Together they make up the Silence Crusaders of New Orleans, guided by self-congratulatory heroification whose justice emanates from a the single misguided (and unsupported by facts) belief that they are, mafia-style, protecting property values from the vagaries of the unstoppable incoming generation, tattoos and all.<br />
<br />
I'll try to address each manner in which the city prevents, takes away or allows certain venues to skirt regulations of which I'm aware. As anyone can see, preventing, taking away and allowing under special circumstances are all negative to neutral—there is currently no venue for a progressive, forward-moving licensing process available at City Hall, much less a venue for conversation or debate about your rights in the matter. I suppose the city would counter by saying that any business can apply for an exception with your Councilperson or go before the City Planning Commission (ground zero for the Master Plan so what can one expect from that?) and apply for a zoning variance. But here again you run into the wall of conventional wisdom and/or zoning intractability whereupon you aren't engaged in a two-sided forum about real, legitimate legal issues—you're simply entering the rotunda with your hand out, hoping for a sympathetic ear. Believe me, there's none to be found--only in the rarest of rare cases. So those approaches do not rise to the level of an available process that the city is obligated to provide in service to your rights. In fact it's the opposite: it is a city-sponsored blockade of your right to legitimately contend for a legally available permit—one that your property rights may well grant to you. Legally, you must be extended the courtesy of being accepted or denied on real, legitimate grounds. And if you're not, within a narrow framework, the city must provide an explanation to you, not the other way around. The unavailability of such a process at this time therefore means the only legitimate process available is to file suit against the city challenging the appropriateness of your denial, or to beat the drum so loudly, from a very affectionate position, that it's politically expedient for the Council to grant the license as an “exception”—this is so rare as to render it not a real, viable option and further misses the point entirely.<br />
<br />
Here are the common ways in which the City refuses to grant live entertainment permits: <br />
<br />
1. The Live Entertainment License Moratorium<br />
<br />
For years, beginning at some point in the 1990's that I can't verify (I challenge any intrepid soul out there who can comb through City Council dockets and make hide or hair of when this occurred to please give it a go), a new understanding of rules came to exist in the New Orleans Department of Safety and Permits: http://www.nola.gov/RESIDENTS/Safety-and-Permits/ no new music licenses were to be granted, period. There was to be, henceforth, a moratorium on their issuance. This gold standard, which I believe is nothing more than codified conventional wisdom, but under which the city is still erroneously operating, is still a driving force behind denial of permits. However, the rules governing moratoria are outlined in the New Orleans Code of Ordinances, Part 1, Charter, Article III, Section 3-126. http://library.municode.com/HTML/10040/level3/PAI_CH_ARTIIITHCO.html#PAI_CH_ARTIIITHCO_S3-126TEPR<br />
Here is the authority granted: “The Council may by the affirmative vote of a majority of its membership impose a moratorium ordinance, interim zoning district, or other temporary prohibition on zoning, permitting, and other similar functions where necessary to protect the public health, safety, or welfare for a temporary period.” These are the limitations: “No moratorium ordinance, interim zoning district, or other temporary prohibition shall remain in effect for more than one year, provided that the Council may by ordinance authorize one extension for an additional period of one hundred eighty days.” It continues to further limit this authority: “Thereafter, no moratorium ordinance, interim zoning district, or similar prohibition of substantially the same legal effect on substantially the same geographic area may be imposed until at least one year after the expiration of the prior moratorium ordinance, interim zoning district, or other temporary prohibition.” In other words, the City Council may not impose an endless moratorium on new live entertainment permits or anything else for that matter. A moratorium is a temporary prohibition only. They would have to impose it every other year, or year and a half, leaving a required one-year window open whereupon this rationale could not be applied. But there's ample evidence to support that the endless live entertainment moratorium conventional wisdom is still the standard under which the city is operating. Read this article from Nola Defender in regard to Bacchanal's well-publicized struggles and you can plainly see this conventional wisdom is alive and well: http://noladefender.com/content/bacchanal-blues<br />
It appears there is no such city-wide moratorium, despite whether or not those in power want to operate under the false presumption that there is. Challenge it. It's baloney.<br />
<br />
2. The “the previous business or businesses that you didn't own in the same location must have had a robust and regular live entertainment history whereupon at no point now or in the distant past can there have been longer than a one-year absence of said entertainment operations. If this is not the case, your ability to showcase live entertainment at that location has expired.”<br />
<br />
If you don't believe this bizarre one, here's the final ruling in a case involving Little People's Place in the 90's: “Based on the evidence submitted, we conclude that live entertainment was not a continuous aspect of the club's operation. The conduct of live entertainment at the property was sporadic or intermittent at best. Under these circumstances, we are led to conclude that the use of the property did not establish a nonconforming use for live entertainment.” This is the one, from what I can tell, that is most often used to deny permits. Here is a link to that case: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-court-of-appeal/1042270.html<br />
<br />
Finally, “I pay a tax and they let me slide. I don't actually have an entertainment license.”<br />
<br />
I've heard about this one. I know it's been asserted in at least one instance and that this line of thinking assisted a business in not receiving a violation during a raid, or that's what I was told. I've never been able to ascertain what “tax” it is that gets paid, much less how the fee is calculated. Maybe it's the amusement tax? More than likely this is just a rumor. In any case, it's out there as conventional wisdom that if you pay this so-called tax, and you get raided, that Safety and Permits will let you slide.<br />
<br />
<br />
So the problem lies not with business owners who desperately want to operate legally under conditional-use live entertainment permits. Nor is the issue the obvious increasing demand for entertainment licenses that economic forces & population growth are making obvious. The problem is with the city in that it will not grant new permits to virtually anyone based on faulty reasoning and prejudicial application. This does nothing to curb the aforementioned demand for live entertainment in many geographic corners of the city, however, and creates an unnecessary black market where operators take the chance on getting busted because there are no other options available. That this is a current reality in New Orleans, of all places in the world, goes beyond the obvious mind-blowing stupidity that it represents and serves as a sad and dull reminder of all-too-familiar patterns of city and state-sponsored behavior that negatively impact economy, progressive development, and cultural continuity and maintenance. You know, the little things.<br />
<br />
That being said, right now there are sadly only three available circumstances, that I can see, under which live entertainment is possible: 1. Stay open forever and keep your current live entertainment license until the business fails or you die—this is the only way to maintain a music license—if you die, the license is non-transferable and the business must apply for a new license in the name of whomever takes over, making the business again vulnerable to rejection. 2. Start a new business at a location that previously had definitive, provable live entertainment operations—not just music once a week for brunch, or on the weekends only, but a real, chock-full calendar of live entertainment all the time, AND those live entertainment events must not have ceased for a year or more at any point in the history of whomever operated it and however long it has been open--or you are ineligible, AND the new business must be licensed and operating and booking gigs absolutely, with no exceptions, inside of a 6-month window from the time the last operation shut its doors OR the new zoning variation kicks in, almost always with live entertainment excluded as a result of “Master Plan” zoning. 3. Finally, because of the onerousness of the aforementioned two circumstances, a club can choose to chance it and operate illegally, or somewhat illegally in a weird nook of City Hall winks and nods that, apparently if you pay the right amusement tax, can sometimes allow you to slide when busted, which was covered earlier.<br />
<br />
Tragically, as we can see almost every month, our forebears—the keepers of the flame—are leaving us for the Great St. Louis Cathedral in the sky. If we don't, right now, maintain and/or allow businesses that incubate musical talent then half of our cultural economy is done in the next 20 years, guaranteed. The City of New Orleans will have created, all on it's own, a cultural version of our wetlands, vanishing before our eyes and transforming us into the baseline vision of the Master Plan: a giant pensioner's village, filled to the brim with Silence Crusaders who loudly proclaim their devotion to live music while actively seeking to shut it down, in their dotage, because they just can't sleep at night, or are too dumb to figure out that Metairie is available if you want that life (please go there and have it thank you, nothing against Metairie brah) AND you're still just close enough to drive in, hear the racket, and drive your ass home. Cashing in on the geriatric bandwagon has everything to do with the behind-the-scenes motives of the Silence Crusade, and our politicians are nothing if not lovers of some elderly cash. But the aged will not be with us forever, and though they may be ripe for the fleecing right now, those in real estate, who seemed to have penned our lovely “Master Plan” all by themselves, will eventually find out that the Baby-Boomer cash cow will likely yield far less returns than expected given our sad state of economic affairs. Maybe not this year, but in the twenty years coming certainly.<br />
<br />
Remove the venues and the musicians will follow. Any numb nut half wit can figure that out. Austin, TX will be glad to have them, and we will be yet again engaging in a rare talent that New Orleans has honed to an almost perfect craft in the last 40 years: giving away the farm, encouraging the best of what we've got to get out, cherry-topped with a swift kick of “No thanks, asshole. Don't let the door hit you..” After all, what do pesky musicians do for the New New Orleans? How do they fit into the “Master Plan,” so exquisitely drafted by the real estate biz? Luckily, as Mr. Courreges asserted: http://uptownmessenger.com/2012/08/owen-courreges-the-latest-weapon-in-the-war-on-live-music/ property rights trump zoning, and every crisis has an attendant opportunity. It's time for small business owners to collectively challenge the constitutionality of the ordinances, zoning, bylaws and any other corner of officialdom that removes your rights by blocking the issuance of these permits. It is NOT your duty to explain to the city why you deserve something, like some bread beggar seeking permission to eat. It's the opposite. It is the duty of the city to provide a legal and legitimate reason why your rights are being denied, and that denial must happen very narrowly. Rights are rights, the top of the food chain, let's assert them forcefully.<br />
<br />
And finally, get it together New Orleans politicians, you're embarrassing yourself and the rest of us yet again.</blockquote><br />
Thank you, Geoffrey. Exactly.<br />
<br />
Then there's the article by Owen Courreges for <a href="http://uptownmessenger.com/2012/08/owen-courreges-the-latest-weapon-in-the-war-on-live-music/">Uptown Messenger</a>. Mr. Courreges cites this: <br />
<blockquote>Theatrical productions, athletic contests, exhibitions, pageants, concerts, recitals, circuses, karaoke, bands, combos, and other live musical performances, audience participation contests, floorshows, literature readings, dancing, fashion shows, comedy or magic acts, mime and the playing of recorded music (disc, records, tapes, etc.) by an employee, guest or other individual, one of whose functions is the playing of recorded music and who is in verbal communication with the clientele of the establishment.</blockquote><br />
Really? Literature readings are a zoning problem too? Thank goodness they don't stop at my house when a new bottle of rum has been opened and a couple friends might read their latest musings to each other. What if I read it over the phone? Oh wait, we have to all be in the same space, but renumeration isn't required. As for recorded music played by a guest, sometimes live music played by a guest, or some impromptu floor show or circus acts. . . well, it's been known to happen. I need a permit for that?<br />
<br />
There is a Facebook page for support of live music <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/119178244894712/120914434721093/?ref=notif¬if_t=group_activity">HERE</a>. Please head off and hit the like button on that.<br />
<br />
As one commenter on Facebook said: "It's a good thing they built that airport years ago so musicians can fly out of this town and build a career." Now that's a terrifying prospect. Didn't we already see what that looked like after Katrina?<br />
<br />
<br />Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-48343534598951513562012-06-12T21:34:00.000-05:002012-06-12T21:34:43.200-05:00Dead, for a ducat, Dead! Part 2-The Ducats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I
changed my mind. Once my butt was firmly planted on a barstool, I
ordered a Barbancourt neat instead of whiskey. I noticed that I was
unaccountably angry, well, maybe not unaccountably. Account.
Interesting word choice. The young woman who had held up the sign in
the beginning of class was there too. We commiserated over our drinks
for a while until she headed home, then I started dissecting my
anger. I was trying to find the core and found that the core wasn't
nice and tight like a pared down apple, it was more like a seed in
the applesauce.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I felt
a bit like an old timey scryer. Staring into the glass, the surface
became an amber colored screen for a mental slideshow. Pictures of
young men, black, white and latino, in orange jumpsuits. Sometimes
their eyes showed trauma or surprise or fear, sometimes anger,
sometimes nothing at all. Pictures of bright young faces in their
eighth grade school photos, shiny and smiling, ready for a framed
place on Grandma's mantel. Pictures of young men in white tshirts,
their bodies in improbable positions, framed by yellow crime tape
with a pool of something shiny and dark on the ground. Pictures of
bereaved relatives on the news or at the funeral. Pictures of the
Instructor, the other members of the class. The round, slightly ruddy
face of the Police Chief, grainy video footage of a robbery from a
convenience store, more of the same from a bar. Pictures of tables
full of guns: pistols, revolvers, sub-machine guns, just like in the
free encyclopedia but with somber police officers standing proudly
behind the stacks. Gordon Liddy behind a table full of gold coins and
bullion saying that this yellow metal will save me when times get
tough as they inevitably will, never actually saying but clearly
intimating that “they”, however you personally define “them”,
will be coming for YOU and you better be ready. You'll surely need a
gun or six to protect the gold ya know. Glenn Beck in a chalkboard
frenzy screaming Van Jones, Van Jones, Van Jones-he's a liberal
socialist with a socialist agenda bent on taking away your civil
rights, and mark (socialist) my words, people, am I the only one that
sees it? This guy is out (socialist) to change your way of life, not
the America I know, and it's not cuz he's black (socialist) that I'm
saying this, I'm just sayin' that he's a socialist and he wants to
shit on the Constitution (cue tears) and stomp on the flag and you
better get some guns to protect yourself before the socialist black
guy tries to take your guns away—by the way do you need a Survival
Kit for your bunker? Oh goodie. Now my slide show had a soundtrack.
Sketchy white guys in tall foam rubber and mesh trucker hats outside
a trailer next to a pickup truck complete with loaded up gun rack, a
Confederate flag bumpersticker and a macho pose, speaking a readily
identifiable proud-to-be-an-ignoramus dialect: Telling us about the
Second Amendment, which may be the only one that they readily
recognize, while stating with firm resolve that they are something
that sounds like “Mur-i-kins.” Ten guys in camo on ATV's
patrolling the border with scoped rifles and sidearms and handcuffs
and not a badge among them ready to “catch” some goddamned
pregnant wetback carrying an anchor baby intent on taking their jobs.
I guess these testosterone and fear spiked guys all work as maids at
the local Holiday Inn. A tastefully dressed and coiffed woman,
wearing a crucifix pendant in 18K gold in the mega-church parking lot
shows off the secret zip up compartment in her purse in which she
carries her “made specially for women” Lady-whatever gun. A
gorgeous tall thin babe in scanty clothes and a holster blasting away
in hi def glory without ever ruining her makeup or moving beyond her
mark by the wind machine so her hair streams in sexy fronds across
her sweaty, determined but beautiful face as men 13-80 replay the
scene in slo mo. Elderly men with angry faces, prone to saying “get
off my lawn” and “turn that racket down” have guns in every
room and one right there on the TV tray next to dinner. Men who grew
up in a very different world, where people knew their place, and they
by god aren't gonna stand by and watch it all go to. . . . .go to
them, go to hell, go go go go. . . .I'm tellin' ya, it's going. The
suburban soccer coach sobbing on the news saying, “I told Tommy
never, ever to touch that gun. I kept it way up high in the closet.
Who would have thought a six year old could get up there? My family
and I feel terrible about this and we hope that Johnnie's family can
find it in their heart to forgive us. It was an accident. A terrible
accident.” The newscaster saying, “Six year old Tommy Smith is
being questioned today in the death of his friend, five year old
Johnny Martin. . .” Angry young men in Matrix trenchcoats with more
guns and ammo than Rambo, purchased on Dad's credit card over the
internet or by phone, shooting up the affluent high school or the
University as helicopters fly overhead and the burghers are stunned
speechless. News photographers reduced to tears at the sight of a
young girl's head cradled in her father's arms, dead.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hey,
barkeep, mind getting me a beer in a really tall glass? And a
semi-automatic pistol with a side of hollow points. Something's off
with this rum.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So many
scenes. So many motivations. So many accidents. So many deliberate
acts. So many entertainments. So many. . . bullets, erupting,
projecting, flying out of so many barrels of so many guns. BOOM. I'm
so sorry. BOOM. I'm not sorry. BOOM. I didn't mean it. BOOM. “Honey,
I love you so much. I regret that I couldn't take better care of you.
Tell the children that I tried.” BOOM.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Okay,
lemme stop ya right here. I am not saying that anyone but the person
who pulled that trigger, except in the case of a kid getting hold of
Daddy's Glock, is responsible. So don't start. I am saying that there
is something that underlies the pulling of that trigger. And you know
as well as I do, if you played back your own slideshow, that mine was
just the tip of the proverbial iceburg.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
What I
realized was that I was angry about the wholesale marketing of fear
and the gun being sold as the cure for that particular malady. It's
also the cure for low self-esteem, free floating anxiety, the feeling
of lack (aka greed), and anger stemming from someone disrespecting
you. These diseases are contagious and the cure is lethal. I was
angry that anyone would consider a possession, any possession, as
inherently more valuable than a life, whether they were the
individuals in possession of it or the individuals trying to
appropriate it. I was angry that it was so easy to get hold of a gun,
for anyone: kid on tiptoes on a kitchen chair in the closet,
upstanding citizen at a sporting goods store, violent criminal
choosing one from the unfolded blanket in the trunk of the local
underground gun guy. Hell, I learned recently from an 11 year old
that a gun can be rented for a specific time period at a specific
price to be determined by the renter and that it had to be returned
“without a body on it.” WTF? Why on earth should any 11 year old
know this or even know that term? He might have seen it on TV. I
really hope that's the case.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was
really furious at the folks like the Instructor, the gun
manufacturers, the gun lobby, the scared-I'll-look-soft-on-crime
legislators, the gun sellers-legal or illegal-who all make a ton of
money feeding and growing that fear and churning out more guns,
putting them into more hands in the doing. And not a one of them seem
to feel any responsibility for the free fire zones we see in this
country. Following the old adage, “find a hole and fill it,” they
took it literally and are filling the hole by creating a different
kind of hole. (The new and improved hole, thanks to our R&D
wizards, is the BULLET hole. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, just take a
look at our beautiful Rachel, isn't she beautiful, she's holding up
our brand new Tektonik 1078, it's a beauty too. You can't have
Rachel, chuckle chuckle, but for the low price of . . . )</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sorry.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Lucre.
Spendolas. Bucks. Greenbacks. Cheddar. Dollars. Ducats.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Fear,
guns and money are a bonanza. The manufacturers make them, lobby
against restrictions, are (unlike car manufacturers who have been
sued when their product killed too many folks) protected from
liability, export them to regimes who then use them against us in
battles all over the world. Lots and lots of money there. For them
it's a win-win. The retailers mark them up and fill their cash
registers. Ammunition manufacturers follow suit. Ammo retailers do
the same. The NRA grows their war chest becoming more and more
powerful with unprecedented amounts of cash. The guy down the block
selling illegal guns makes a bunch, probably selling guns stolen from
citizens, so one gun can be sold over and over from the time it comes
out of the factory to the retailer to the citizen to the street gun
seller to the out of the trunk purchaser.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
From
there, the money pot widens. Private security forces for gated
communities paid high prices to keep the gun carrying bad guys away
from the gun carrying good guys. Security systems with passcodes and
lights and cameras, all money makers. Police, lawyers, judges,
ambulances, news reporters, prisons, oh yeah, prisons and sheriffs
and correction officers, whole towns whose economies are based on
that lockup (Plantation System 2.0 or how to make money on the backs
of people of color like we did in the old days); parole officers,
drug testing labs, electronic bracelet developers, after market gun
accessory companies making cases, high powered scopes, gun safes, gun
locks; gun show producers collecting admission fees and booth fees,
and the gun sellers who pay them; bulletproof glass makers,
installers; doctors, nurses, hospitals, gurney makers, body bag
makers. And let's not forget the morticians, the gravediggers and the
florists.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm
guessing someone will make an impassioned argument that they are the
premiere job creators.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am
not being flip. Nor am I representing that all of these businesses or
individuals are pro-gun, pro-violence or that they revel in the blood
rivers in our streets. I am saying that that list, and I'm certain
that I left a few groups out, are indeed part of the money honey pot
one gun can create, nevermind millions of guns. That, my friends,
seems crazy to me.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Years
of talk radio, divisive fear mongering TV show hosts, slanted news
coverage have all fueled the fear machine. Reliable gun stats are
hard to come by. I've buried myself for days in pro-gun and anti-gun
statistics. Sometimes the numbers are really close, just framed
according to each side's particular bias. I'm going to settle on the
number I saw most often: 14+ million guns sold in the U.S. in 2009.
(Industry projections say that we have surpassed that number since
the election of Obama, and that the numbers are trending higher in
2012.) The Instructor advised not buying a cheap gun, and told the
class better to buy a more expensive gun that could be depended on.
He used numbers like 300-500 dollars as sort of the low end.
Certainly guns can be had even cheaper than that or much more
expensive than that, but let's use the high number of the low end:
$500, and multiply it by 14 million. Excluding accessories or
ammunition, gun manufacturers made a minimum of $7 billion dollars in
the United States alone in 2009. Plenty of ducats, eh?</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now,
how about those nice folks I took the class with? They were nice
people. I'd say if I'd asked each one, which I didn't, why they were
considering gun ownership (if they didn't already own one—see
previous post) or a conceal carry permit, they would all have said
self protection or protection of property. Their property. Isn't that
what produced a George Zimmerman? He appears to have been a basically
decent guy, based on what people who know him are saying, but for
whatever reason, that night he saw a young black man in his
neighborhood, felt the need to protect that neighborhood, and called
the cops. Even after the dispatcher told him not to follow the young
man, Mr. Zimmerman did, no doubt in an effort to be a help to his
neighbors and the police. At least that's the story. Had he done all
that and not had a gun, he probably would not have approached
Trayvon, or perhaps the whole thing would have ended with a couple of
fists thrown. (Zimmerman claims Trayvon hit him. If I had a guy
following me like that, who then approached me, I might hit him too.)
But Zimmerman had a gun. On his person. My guess is his defense will
be that he thought he'd just hold Trayvon (at gunpoint) for the cops.
That gun made him a big man. Whether he was a racist in his daily
interactions with people may or may not be an issue. What is an issue
is that he absolutely profiled Trayvon (young, black, in a hoodie),
had a gun on his person and pulled the trigger. On his person. A gun.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can
tell you that there were at least two people in the class I took that
I'd really prefer not have guns on their persons. One was terrified
and I think might hurt someone in a panic and the other had the “big
man” syndrome going pretty strongly.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don't
think I'm entirely stupid (except in the fields of economic theory,
surgical procedures, internal combustion engines, oh wait, this could
be a pretty long list come to think of it). I don't sit here thinking
for one minute that a gun free world is possible. In fact, I'd have
to give a whole lot of thought to my philosophical stance regarding
its desirability. I do admit to lusting after the low crime stats and
gun limiting laws of other countries, and I really am baffled by the
American love affair with guns even in the face of monstrous costs to
life and the giant bogeyman--taxpayer dollars. I don't understand
why, upon seeing kids killed or locked up for killing, we aren't
screaming at the top of our lungs for solutions and regulations that
might change that. Even the hardest hearted out there have to know
that if they don't care about urban center violence (let 'em all kill
each other), they probably do care if their brother blows his head
off in a low moment because a gun was there instead of a baseball
bat. (Some would be criminals have been rebuked with Louisville
Sluggers, but I've never heard of suicide by baseball bat. However
the stats I've been steeped in appear to show that possibly as many
as 50% of the gun fatalities every year are suicides.)</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
moaning over the crime rate. The lock 'em up mentality. The “I'll
get a gun and they can't get me” thinking. All of this is strictly
reactionary. The logical conclusion would be, upon seeing the carnage
in this country that is directly tied to guns, to restrict and
regulate them. For chrissake, DO something, cuz clearly what we are
doing isn't working. Say that out loud in a bar or a town hall
meeting and see how many catcalls you get. Immediate shouting will
occur replete with the tired “guns don't kill people. . .” You
can fill in the rest. Or “they can have my guns when they pry them
from. . .” Or “you want to gut the Cons'tooshun, second amendment
sez. . .” Or my personal favorite, “if they take our guns only
the criminals will have guns.” Remarkably in countries with strict
handgun laws that isn't what has happened. Nor has their government
come to take them all away and put them in socialist re-programming
camps. We have friends who live in Australia who are flabbergasted by
our complete refusal to regulate handguns. When they ask us why, I
really can't answer them with anything that approaches a rational
statement. As for the criminals with arsenals:</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ya
know, folks, a shitload of those criminals' guns came from YOUR
house, YOUR car, YOUR closet, YOUR dresser drawer. Many were driven
into your state after having been bought in a state with less
stringent gun laws than your own, bought legally, transported
illegally. Pay some fine upstanding citizen (on paper) to go to the
local sporting goods store or the one in the more lenient state, have
them get the background check, and they can walk out with several
guns.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
called a local sporting goods store this morning. I told them I was
considering purchasing a firearm and had some questions. I asked if
there was a fee in addition to the purchase price of the gun for the
background check. No. I asked how long it would take. The answer was
that for most people it takes a minute or two, some others might take
up to three days. (She said it as though she'd been coached to tell
someone who sounded overly eager, ya know, like someone who might
want a gun this afternoon to kill her wayward husband with after
smelling the Chanel she doesn't own, when he comes in the door
tonight, that it could take up to three days.) Either way, by
Saturday I could have had one on each ankle, two in shoulder
holsters, one in the back of my pants (just like in the movies,
man!), another in my bag and one in my pocket. All with one free
background check and enough cash to flash around. As long as I'm on
my own property, in my house, my office (if I have a key, which is
the key in that particular location, no pun intended) or my car, all
that firepower would be legal. Again, yeah, I think that's nuts.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
American love affair with guns and money, along with the mass
marketing of fear of the “other”, will be a roadblock to any
slowdown in the blood letting. If we really want to change this
situation, we're going to have to knuckle down and change some
thinking, change our cultural view, and pass some laws that a lot of
people won't like.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Some
people and municipalities are already trying.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Next
up: Dead, for a ducat, Dead! Part 3-Gun Laws and Culture</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
(It may
be a week or so before Part 3 is done. I will be out of town next
week so will be taking a break.)</div>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-67037000792134462282012-06-09T12:34:00.003-05:002012-06-09T12:59:51.945-05:00Dead, for a ducat, Dead! Part 1-The Class<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N415L1_6C80/T9OIYFGsToI/AAAAAAAAAMI/QbWdouRzTcs/s1600/IMG_1283.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N415L1_6C80/T9OIYFGsToI/AAAAAAAAAMI/QbWdouRzTcs/s320/IMG_1283.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><p>A text message from a neighbor: “Did you see your mail today?” I hadn't. Intrigued I headed for the mailbox and saw what appeared to be junk mail. I turned it over, a large postcard type item, and saw that it was an announcement for a free one hour class to be held at a local coffee shop. The class topic was how to get a conceal carry permit, and it said the first ten people to show up would get a free encyclopedia of armaments: great full color pictures of pistols, revolvers and sub-machine guns. I was surprised that this particular coffee shop would have this class there. The place is routinely full of artist types, bicycles chained up on one side in the street, nice chats held out front. A regular gathering place for locals, its denizens would probably be labelled at first glance as having a bohemian liberal bias. Definitely not the kind of place I think of when I think of guns. At first I was just surprised and I tossed it into the trash. A few minutes later I was curious and retrieved it. I decided that I wanted to see which of my neighbors would attend, would want this kind of information, would think this was a good idea.</div></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The night for the class came and I headed over. I passed some young people, one with a guitar, another with what looked like a portable chess set, as I made my way through the vegetation that constricts the sidewalk around the entrance. As I entered I was greeted by the barrista but it looked empty, so I walked into the next room. There was a fairly large table, a public pay by the minute computer or two, a couple loose chairs scattered around the walls. One young man with a blonde not quite mohawk and tattoos was completely focused on one of the computers. No time for distraction at these prices. At the head of the table and standing slightly to the side was a large man with a friendly smile and a former football player build. Wearing a casual shirt and camo cargo shorts, he looked to be in his late 40's or early 50's. He asked if I was there for the class. I said yes and he gave me the book and a CD of his local band, which he explained, he'd been told he couldn't sell on eBay because of an injunction filed by the Who Dat trademark owners. We talked about how silly that was and a black man, probably in his sixties who was already seated at the table with his book and CD, agreed. The large man straightened his glasses and said we'd give it a few minutes to see if more people would show up. His graying hair was well cut, his manners perfect, his personality outgoing. He was not the gung ho upcountry redneck I had expected and I was ashamed of myself for that assumption.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Just then a young woman walked in. I had already taken a seat at the foot of the large table and put a stenopad in front of me. I had also put my phone prominently on the table next to the pad. The young woman took a seat in a chair by the window behind me and said nothing. The young man at the computer finished what he was doing, looked at us and left. As we waited we chatted easily: he was a New Orleans native, grew up Uptown, went to Brother Martin. I asked how he made his living, he said he was a musician, a sometime real estate salesman (we bemoaned the economy), does some standby work for a local radio station if there's an emergency like a storm, and he said, he made his living doing this: Instructing and training people about guns, the laws involved in their ownership, and safety. I asked how he chose this neighborhood and he told me that he planned on doing this in other neighborhoods in weeks to come, and that this was just the first because the date worked.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As we chit chatted, others filtered in. First a 30-40 year old white man, dressed impeccably with a long white silk scarf, a Rolex, and beneath that, a collection of small beaded bracelets. He sat at the head of the table next to the Instructor. He was waiting for his partner he said. Next a woman in her 50's, fit, comfortably dressed, long neat gray hair, very interested and a bit nervous sat down to my right. These two were followed by a 50-ish professional man of mixed race, who said he was a professor at UNO; a 50-ish white guy with a graying well trimmed beard who sat in the back near the windows unobtrusively and looked like he was probably middle to upper middle class; a 60-ish white guy, probably blue collar with a Dogs and Generals tshirt; a late 30's white guy, upper middle class with what looked like a $200 haircut and pricy casual clothes who headed to a chair near the wall by the computer. Finally the owner of a local business and the owner of the coffee shop joined the group and we were a group of eleven excluding the Instructor.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Most of the people had come in looking around the room. They all looked vaguely uncomfortable, almost as though they wanted to be sure, extra sure, that no one thought they were gun nuts or militia types. It was interesting to watch them all size each other up, trying to divine the others' motives for being there. The Instructor retained his charming, chatty, smiling demeanor, welcoming each one as they came in and finally he introduced himself and explained what we were there to learn.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">At that moment, the young woman who had come in early and had sat by the windows, unfurled a Day Glo orange posterboard. She looked solidly at all of us, held it up over her head to be sure we saw it. It read: “If you're afraid of your black neighbors, don't buy a gun. Move to Metairie.” The Instructor said he respected her point of view. A few respectful words were exchanged, with her explaining that she definitely saw all of this as a racial issue (she was white) and then she left. The Instructor didn't miss a beat, although some of the other attendees looked uncomfortable, the close-to-elderly black man was unfazed.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As he started the class I reached over to my phone, making sure that he saw me hit the audio record button. He had seen me scribbling on the stenopad, so it didn't seem to bother him. He started by asking if we already owned a gun. All but the last three to come in and myself said yes. The woman said her husband had a .45 but it was too big for her and she wanted advice on what gun to buy.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Over the next hour he explained various kinds of guns, recommending a .380 to the woman and quickly condemning the idea of a shotgun for home protection as being misguided. He explained that a revolver would pretty much never jam, bringing a self satisfied smile to the face of the man who said he owned a .38. He talked about gun safety, stressing training. He cited statistics of gun incidents in which a citizen had pulled a gun and no harm had come to either the “perpetrator or the carrier.” He talked a lot about defense of one's own life, quietly and expertly ramping up the level of fear without ever saying the hordes were at the gate. It was subtle and understated and smart. Someone asked where a gun could be kept without a conceal carry permit, where in a car can a gun be carried, what about open carry? The Instructor laughed his infectious hail-fellow-well-met laugh and said open carry was legal but you'd have to decide how often you wanted to be stopped by the police after someone called them saying they saw you walking down the street with a gun.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Then he suddenly stopped, took his watch off and seemed to fumble good naturedly with it, saying he was trying to find the stopwatch function. Then, almost as an aside he said, “They tell me that the response time in Orleans Parish to a 911 call is 9 minutes.” He then continued dispensing information and fielding questions. Does he recommend keeping it loaded? How about trigger locks? How about keeping the ammunition separate from the weapon? He confidently answered with only a tinge of machismo scented swagger. Steady and responsible, training training training. Firm confident voice. No Elmer Gantry of guns here. No histrionics, no NRA militantism. He was more like a master poker player, continuing to build the fear by increments, looking at his cards without making a move while the whole table waited to see if he was going to call, fold or go all in, forcing the players in the direction he wanted them to go with the psyche factor alone. It was impressive manipulation.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He talked about carrying a gun from state to state. He said that most states have a conceal carry law and will respect one from another state, but you'd have to check that out on your own. He did get the states that do not have conceal carry on their books wrong. (After looking it up, it would appear that the seven states he cited mostly have conceal carry and reciprocity, although some of the laws in some states are so byzantine that it would be hard to know precisely what is allowed and what isn't. From what I can tell, pretty much only Illinois doesn't have it, but that's a story for later.)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">People started asking about the paperwork, how long will it take and what's needed. He started to explain, then BEEP BEEP BEEP. He picked up his watch and grinned. “That's nine minutes. A lot can happen in nine minutes, huh?,” he said with a laugh. There were audible gasps as the fear continued to climb. “Bring your divorce papers,” he laughed. “They'll want to see those along with all your other documents.” Now people were asking questions rapid fire. How much? Mail or go to the place? How long is it good for? Fingerprints?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now came the pitch: He can help. He can help you choose and purchase a weapon. He'll come to your house and train you. He'll take you to the shooting range. One on one will cost $175, two people, for instance you (he looked at the woman) and your husband $150. He can help you with all the paperwork, he has copies of all the forms and affidavits. Of course you'll need to get them notarized, but how fortuitous, one of his relatives is a notary and will do it cheaply. The fingerprinting and background check will have be done, he can't do that but he will tell you where to go. He explained the fees and said he offers group classes, but it was clear that most of these folks would probably opt for the private ones. He can also offer home security advice.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sadly, he saw no irony in the fact that the money for gun permits goes to the Department of Safety and Corrections.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">People started asking where to buy a gun. There was some discussion about Brady Laws and gun purchasing, and an explanation once more about where you can keep a gun without a conceal carry permit. I asked about the complete lack of regulation at gun shows (he said, “They're supposed to do a background check on the spot.” “Yeah, but they don't for the most part,” I said. He nodded.) and in one to one sales. He conceded that both gun shows and one to one sales are virtually unregulated with little to no oversight and even less enforcement of laws that may be on the books.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The attendees talked to him and each other. Their tone was a little bit bravado, a whole lot fear. Mention was made of the middle school kids who had been shot a couple days before. Everyone measured their words. Careful. Careful. The quiet ones remained quiet. The white silk scarf looked for his partner, then at his Rolex, then at the door again, clearly perturbed. Dogs and Generals guy had that gleam that affirmation of one's already deeply held beliefs brings to the eyes, lighting up his slightly rough face. The Instructor exhorted, “Training, training training! We learned in Florida recently what a lack of training can do.” He followed that remark with a slight, tight chuckle. The Professor asked me if I was going to do it: get a conceal carry permit, or for that matter, a gun.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Everyone looked at me. “No, sir. Definitely not,” I said. The Instructor looked at me like a priest patiently forgiving a recalcitrant sinner. “I didn't think so,” he said quietly. I waited a second, steeling my courage, took a deep breath and said, “Many years ago I was raped. A gun at my temple, a pillow over my head. In my own bedroom on the fourth floor of an apartment building. My window was open and the fire escape was right there.” The group stared in disbelief, some squirming, the woman to my right horrified. I continued, “Short of having a gun strapped to my naked hip, I can't see how a gun would have helped me do anything but get killed. And even then his trigger finger would have been faster than any movement I could have made to retrieve the weapon.”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The whole place went silent and everyone stared uncomfortably. The Instructor, regaining his poise, said “I'm sorry that happened to you.” Then turning his face to the group he said, “But that's not how things usually happen, and don't you want to give yourself a chance?”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It was a bravura performance. When he closed out the class, the silent guy by the window applauded. The others looked confused, but a couple of them half heartedly clapped their hands a few times, then each looking at the other, they converged on him to ask a private question or two. The Instructor smiled patiently and took them one by one, a stack of business cards sat on the table in front of the empty space where the free gun encyclopedia copies had been, a couple of CD's left for the taking.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I headed out the door toward whiskey.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Dead, for a ducat, Dead! Part 2: What did I take from all this?</div><br />
<br />Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-16249586871638815572012-05-15T20:42:00.000-05:002012-05-16T08:19:32.628-05:00Swim, Baby, Swim<br />
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My 12 year old grandson lived in New Orleans for a while. He grew very fond of the Dry Dock restaurant on the Westbank. We'd bike to the Ferry building, get on the boat, go have a bite to eat, then ride back home. He is growing fast, is a smart kid (my personal bias aside) and rocks English vocabulary. He's coming for a visit this summer and when asked what he wanted to eat, one of his requests was a visit to the Dry Dock. I told him yeah, we'd better do that because next time he comes there might not be a Ferry anymore. He was silent for a minute then said, “What morons decided to implement THAT idea? Don't they know the Ferry is important?” After I finished laughing I asked if I could quote him, and so from the mouths of babes and all that. . . . .<br />
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We actually wound up talking about it for about half an hour. He's convinced the Bridge will collapse with all the extra cars. I told him not likely immediately but that one day it might need some extra bolstering. We talked about traffic jams and closed entrance/exit ramps. We talked about the impossibility of riding a bike over that bridge, forget about the extra riding distance to get to it. A 12 year old. He was appalled. What about people with no cars, he asked. Did I tell you he's just 12?<br />
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So some people want the toll booths gone and don't like paying the single greenback (or the .60 I think it is with a bridge pass) and if the toll goes, there go some entrances, some exits, probably maintenance, landscaping, policing and possibly lights on the Bridge. And probably adios to the Ferries. Probably gone unless privatized some way. (Hey wait a minute, doesn't the City of New Orleans need some bucks? Judging from the outrageous traffic/parking ticket extortion, I'm thinking it does. Can we work out something here?) And jobs: toll booth folks, maintenance folks, CCC police, Ferry employees, and lots more that I can't name. (CORRECTION: It's been brought to my attention by several people, including that guy that lives in my house, that it's .40 with a bridge pass. I should have known that since the pass still resides on our windshield.)<br />
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Jobs will also be an issue for the good Westbank dwellers who work on the Eastbank and rely on the Ferry to get them there. Income will be an issue for some Westbank landlords who will lose tenants who can no longer get to their jobs. (This I know first hand. I lived on the Westbank prior to the storm. The Ferry didn't start running again for a while and then not reliably. With both of us working in the Quarter and commuting by bicycle, it became untenable to continue living there so we moved. To the Eastbank.) Once those people start making their Westbank exodus the Eastbank rents, already ridiculous, will rise even higher. Or if they decide to stay on the Westbank and buy a car, there will be that many more cars to contend with on the Eastbank. Fun, any way you look at it.<br />
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As of now it's one dollar coming from Westbank to Eastbank by Bridge or by Ferry if you drive your car onto the boat. Pedestrians or bicyclists are free inbound and out. I've always thought everyone should pay, but then I also thought the Ferry should run longer hours as well. I'm evidently in the minority on both points.<br />
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Loss of the Ferry would increase (and this is just me making a guess) DUI's, and we'd probably see more traffic accidents, more injuries, more fatalities. I've seen folks stagger onto that Ferry who most assuredly shouldn't have been driving. They get off the Ferry and go home, all in one piece. I can count myself among that group on a couple of occasions.<br />
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One buck.<br />
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The Mississippi River is a fact of life here in New Orleans and it's gotta be crossed now and then. It's not going anywhere.<br />
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I have made the acquaintance of many a Ferry: New York, San Francisco, Seattle. All are used as a form of mass transit by commuters and visitors alike. I've also crossed bridges in those areas, because like the Mississippi, people have to cross the Hudson River, the East River, the San Francisco Bay and the various waterways in the Northwest, as none of those are going to disappear either.<br />
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The fact that anyone is complaining over one dollar is ludicrous in light of what other cities are charging for ferries or bridge crossings. Here are some samplings:<br />
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George Washington Bridge: Paid inbound not outbound $12 cash. Multi-pass cost $9.50 during peak hours, $7.50 off peak. Multi-axle vehicles $22-$78 bucks depending on what you're driving. (I didn't look but as I recall, the Lincoln Tunnel is the same rate. Either way people are getting from New Jersey to Manhattan in cars via one of these routes. I think the Brooklyn Bridge might be the same. I didn't check that or the Triboro or any of the other bridges in the area. I also found an article saying something about these rates being raised soon. I haven't checked that out yet.)<br />
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Ferries from New Jersey side of the Hudson to Midtown (there are several that I saw in my quick search: Hudson River, East River and Belford). I chose the Hoboken to Midtown for rates. First know that it is drop off only. No cars. Unless you want to pay to park which is another monthly fee not included in your crossing. So, no cars on the boats. However the fee structure is incredible. Pedestrians $9 (inbound to the City only), kids 6-12 $6, a 10 trip card will run you $76. Or you can buy monthly for $272. Want to take your bike? See above fees and add a $1.25 surcharge, or buy a $310 bike/ferry pass for the month. I believe there are senior and student rates, but I just grabbed up some numbers.<br />
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Here in New Orleans, Crescent City Connection or Ferry: ONE BUCK.<br />
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Let's go to the San Francisco now. The Bay is a longer commute. I did it for a short time many years ago. If you miss the Ferry from Sausalito to the City, you're gonna wait a long while for the next one. How much are those folks paying?<br />
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Golden Gate Bridge: Paid inbound only. $6 cash. Monthly pass $5. Multi-axle vehicles $18-42. I didn't check the Bay Bridge or the cost of BART from San Francisco to Berkeley or Oakland.<br />
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Sausalito Ferry paid inbound only $9.25 cash. Senior or child 6-18 $4.50. Multi-pass fare $4.85. No cars (so drop off/pickup or possibly parking fees. Not sure and can't remember since I didn't have a car and used mass transit exclusively then.) There are ferries that run from Larkspur, and there are special runs for Giants games (reservations recommended for the Giants game ferries. Yes. I'm serious.) Bikes are allowed based on the class of boat being used. Some of them can take 750 passengers/200 bikes, others can only take 15 bikes, still others can take 100 bikes. That said, it's first come first served, so if you happen to be bicycle number 201 on the big boat, you'll be waiting for the next Ferry.<br />
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Seattle area has at least 8 different Ferry routes connecting various islands to the city. At least that's what I counted but I'm betting island to island there are even more. I took one once a long time ago. It was a long ride, but people regularly use them to commute in that area. Since I have friends who live on Bainbridge Island and commute to Seattle daily, I decided to use that one for the rates. The crossing is about 9.7 miles and takes about half an hour. Looks like there might be a bridge there too but I didn't check that. Ferry rates from Bainbridge Island to Seattle paid inbound only are $7.70 cash, Senior $3.85, Children 6-18 $6.25. Remember, these are pedestrians. A 10 ride ticket is $62.10, monthly ticket $99.40, Bike surcharge $1.00. (It must be godawful to have to make change for these rates every day.) A two axle car is $13.25, with rates for multi-axle going higher still, as with the other examples, however, on this ferry there's a catch: Vehicles pay BOTH ways, so a round trip ticket with your car is $26.50. You can purchase tickets one way or round trip, along with various multi-pass options.<br />
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Let's review. Ferry in New Orleans Westbank to Eastbank, free for pedestrians, free for bikes, $1 for cars. Bridge, no pedestrians that I've ever seen, or bikes for that matter, and $1 one way for a two axle vehicle.<br />
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I will no doubt upset someone's apple cart, but I think the idea of eliminating the toll is completely nuts, nevermind short-sighted. I would propose that we raise them. On the CCC, on the Ferries, all of it. Treat these arteries like the commuter lifelines they are and let the commuters pay their way like in every other metropolis on the list of world class cities. (We do consider ourselves that don't we? I hear it a lot in any case.) Make the pedestrians and bicyclists pay to use the Ferry. Most of us wouldn't mind, and those who do can take a bus or drive if they really want to get pissy about it. Raise the tolls on the Bridge too.<br />
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We have to view those ferries as part of a mass transportation system. Greener for sure, vital for many, we have to keep them. More cars in town, higher rents on the Eastbank, loss of income on the Westbank, closure of entrance/exits—I'm just not seeing how any of those possible outcomes are good things.<br />
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I haven't finished reading the CCC report which can be found at <a href="http://keepthetolls.org/">Keepthetolls.org</a> <strong></strong>. I will attempt to do that as no doubt I am overlooking something. I just wanted to get it out there that our lousy one buck toll pales in comparison to other fees in other cities. Cities that understand that there are commuters and that bridges and traffic patterns can only stand so much. That anyone is complaining about that one dollar is baffling to me, when in my view the tolls should be increased.<br />
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I know I can't be the only one who thinks eliminating the tolls is ridiculous. I mean, my 12 year old grandson realized it immediately upon hearing it. How can grownups even be considering it, he wondered? From his point of view it's moronic, his word not mine, and I'm inclined to agree. Unless, of course, we all decide to start swimming across.</div>
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<br />Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-61911548146709670242012-05-05T20:45:00.002-05:002013-09-03T10:31:12.676-05:00Stabat Mater Dolorosa on Mother's DayA 17-year-old has been arrested in the shooting of a 13-year-old boy who was caught in crossfire Wednesday evening shortly after he stepped off a school bus. . . <br />
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17 years old. 13 years old. Babies.<br />
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8th grade girl's bullet ridden body. Girlfriend of the 8th grade boy shot the day before. Possibly for shooting hoops (not bullets) in the wrong neighborhood.<br />
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And a woman is summoned to the morgue. She stands behind a window. The shades are drawn and lifted. On a shiny metal slab is a body. The body of her son. Of her daughter. Her knees give out. She drops to the floor. She keens. She wails. She cries. She tried her best and yet, there is her child. In the morgue. Nothing but a statistic in the ongoing gun battle. When another boy died the day before, in New Orleans East, the gunman shot a dog. A pitbull named Spartacus. A great dog. Protected the family. Wonderful dog. A fund is quickly formed to pay for the surgery needed for the dog. The humans have to figure out the funeral and the grieving themselves. A senseless tragedy.<br />
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Across town another woman quakes in the sterile halls of a hospital. The child whose eyes she sheltered as the pediatrician administered the well baby shots now has needles attached to tubes in both arms. The doctor tells her that her son might not walk again as the bullet nicked the spinal cord. The doctor tells her that her daughter might not see as the bullet might have caused some irreversible nerve damage. She cries silently and only outside the room. Her knees can't buckle. She'll have to be strong to help her child through this. She'll have to figure out the hospital bills and the rehabilitation and the permanent changes to her house and life that this injury will cause. She'll have to figure it out herself. A senseless tragedy.<br />
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In another part of town, a woman watches as the son she held up by both hands as he learned to walk takes his last steps as a free person. He is held on both arms now, by uniformed officers and there are chains around the ankles she delighted in seeing wobble uncertainly 16 years earlier. She may never get a chance to speak to her child except through glass again. He's still so young but his life is over. She doesn't understand why he picked up a gun and pulled the trigger. She tried so hard to keep him from that. She will blame herself. She will cry into her pillow alone in the dark, wishing she could hear his step in her house once more. She'll get little if any support in her loss. She'll keen and she'll wail and she'll notice the averted eyes of her neighbors and hear them clucking behind their drawn shades. She'll obsess over what she did wrong, mentally analyzing every minute of those 17 years. She'll never figure it out herself. A senseless tragedy.<br />
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A week from now is Mother's Day. We send candy, flowers, fruit with chocolate covering. We send whatever we think Mom would like.<br />
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These mom's would like nothing more than to have their kids bitch about the curfew they imposed, or hear their kids complain about the spaghetti they're eating when they wanted something else. They won't get that. They will get silence. They'll be trying to decide where to put the memorial card. They'll be trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage or the rent after ante-ing up the cost of the funeral, or the hospital bill, or the payment to the lawyer or bondsman. They'll be staring into a closet filled with the clothes that their kids cared about. Wow. She loved that red skirt. Wow. He was so proud of that Saint's jersey. And she'll stand at the closet, and she'll stand at the door, and she'll jump at the sound of the phone. Then she'll turn around and realize that he or she isn't coming home. Then she'll stare into a casket, or a hospital bed, or a prison visitor booth looking at her child, the one she carried, the one she taught to walk, the one she taught the alphabet to, in that red skirt or that Saint's jersey, not looking like she remembered as he or she vaulted out the door laughing at her overprotectiveness.<br />
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These are kids. Our kids. Their kids. OUR kids.<br />
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The blood is running down the streets like water after a rainstorm. The cop shop says isn't it terrible. The DA files a case against the accused. We all jump with glee that the asshole that did the shooting is caught.<br />
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And the mothers keen. And the mothers will never recover. And the family is broken beyond repair. And the mothers keen.<br />
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Why are we not looking at the societal issues that cause a 17 year old kid to feel that shooting a gun is the only way to settle a debt, or a moment of disrespect, or to make them a man? Why are guns so easily bought? Are we entering an entirely Darwinian age? Those who are the strongest by virtue of the weapons they carry are the winners? Really? Why are we not furious at this situation?<br />
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Why are we not raging at the idiots who rail in newspaper comments' sections that we don't need more and better schools, or after school programs, or more teachers, or more mentors. What we need, they say, is more prisons, harsher prison sentences, more locks and keys. More cemeteries perhaps? Certainly more guns, in my purse, in my pocket, strapped to my ankle, hey, come to the coffee shop for a conceal carry class. It's free.<br />
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People. THINK. FEEL. LOOK AT THIS MESS.<br />
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I frankly don't think the “Framers” had this in mind when they wrote the second amendment. Do ya really think they envisioned “that a Glock is due to all?” I think the NRA and their big bucks lobbying is part of the problem, not the solution. Call me a commie. Call me a socialist. Call me whatever you want. Are you really that cold that you can't imagine for one minute what being in the place of one of those mothers would feel like? Seriously? Without the guns the kids would have a fist fight, you know, like the old days, and the mom would pull out the iodine and the bandaids. Without the guns the mom would have to explain that sometimes leaving the fight is the better choice. Without the guns the mother would be able to make pancakes for their kid on Mother's Day while bitching that they should have made them for her.<br />
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Ah. I see. Y'all are reading this thinking to yourselves that these Mom's are all, oh, I dunno, crack whores, welfare queens, certainly baby mama's that didn't think ahead. Certainly some are, and you bet there's some really bad parenting going on, but you'd be overwhelmingly wrong on one count. Statistics show that most welfare moms are white. But hell, why should a fact interfere with your pre-conceived notion of the world? I mean, really? You have your ideas, and thems the facts regardless of proof to the opposite.<br />
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Nevermind your latent (or not so latent) racism. Yeah. I know. You're not a racist. You have a black friend. Maybe. Okay, not a friend exactly but a black person you work with. And that let's you skate. In your mind. How is it that you assume that the children mentioned above are black? Why not Hispanic or Asian? Oh yeah. Asians are good at math. Nevermind the Asian gangs. Or the Hispanic gangs. Or the WHITE gangs. Think Aryan Brotherhood. Or Neo Nazi's. What the hell is that about? We have a wife of a North Carolina (I think) senator talking about how some proposition before a vote that is mostly about gay marriage will somehow protect the “Caucasians”. No. I couldn't make that up. All of them have guns, possibly even that Senator's wife. (Hey, Second Amendment sez we can, you stupid liberal bitch. I can have a whole bushel of them, and I can't help it if those project people, or the barrio people, or the trailer park people, or the Chinese alley people have them too. I need MINE to protect myself from them, so stow it.)<br />
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You are also probably assuming, along with the fact that all these tragedies are only found within black communities, that the Moms we're talking about are single and unemployed. Nice indictment of an entire segment of our society—easy, bumper sticker thinking: Teen mother, on welfare, lives in project, no husband. While certainly that tidy little stereotype exists, it cannot be applied to everyone. We gotta stop that. Besides, it is really insulting to all those dads out there who are holding up their buckling wives.<br />
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In New Mexico the blood is running too. Only there the commenters say: “Yeah well the vatos are shooting each other. Probably illegals anyway.” Every major metropolitan area has the blood of children running in the streets, it's not just us. This is a nationwide problem that more prisons and more cemeteries won't fix.<br />
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It comes down to what kind of country do you want.<br />
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One where every one is armed and we assume the “other” is dangerous? Those kinds of assumptions get people killed. Ask Trayvon Martin's family.<br />
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Or how about one where everyone is scared to death of the police they should be able to turn to when there is a real danger? An over-amped paramilitary crew with itchy trigger fingers and only rare and lengthy (let's get past a couple of news cycles and it'll fade away) accountability?<br />
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Or one where we take an entire generation of kids and just consider them lost to the streets? Even that choice would require that some pre-emptive and positive action be taken for the tiny ones. Things like daycare options, education that's meaningful to them, and I dunno, FOOD. Wouldn't be a bad thing to add some healthcare options in there. Mental health care, the red headed step-child, as well.<br />
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It's easy to say the P word if it's prison. Not so easy if it's poverty.<br />
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By now, if you're still reading this, you are either arguing with me, agreeing (maybe only in part) with me, or tossing your sandwich at the monitor hollering “Apologist!” I never once said that the shooters should go unpunished, I only decried the loss of a young person's life to an irrevocably bad choice in pulling that trigger. What I am saying is that we, as a nation, as a city, as a neighborhood, need to figure out why so many make that choice. We need to decide if we're going to be a reactionary, Darwinian society where the bigger bullet wins, and the blood runs down the streets, and the children are carted away in hearses and ambulances and cop cars and prison vans, and we're okay with that. Or are we going to take a long hard look at this seemingly intractable problem of violence, and a really good look at ourselves in the mirror under the harshest light we can find. In doing that we'll have to face some hard truths: some of us run to the easy fear, the easy stereotype, the easy racism, the easy .38. Our shoulders have to start cramping up from all the fucking shrugging we do at some point. Our necks will seize up if we keep shaking our heads upon hearing the news. Our tears must give way to outrage. Once that happens we have to find a way to listen to each other and not shout each other down as we look for solutions. There are no quick fixes, but we can't just throw up our hands and throw these kids away.<br />
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These are kids. Our kids. Their kids. OUR kids.<br />
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And the sound you hear next Sunday emanating from houses all over this country won't be back up singers for your favorite band. They'll be mothers. Wailing. Keening. The Stabat Mater Dolorosa rising in sorrow. Inconsolable.<br />
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As we should be.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CVwne4YEN7A" width="560"></iframe>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-81820349358877402612012-04-27T15:49:00.000-05:002012-05-02T14:19:41.068-05:00Slumber Parties, Death Songs and DNASome songs are in our DNA. I think.<br />
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I was at French Quarter Fest and over the speaker came a song I knew all the lyrics to: Who Shot the Lala by Oliver Morgan. I didn't identify the singer at the time just knew all of the lyrics. Like automatic pilot they came spilling out of me onto the grass. There were others of my vintage singing along as well. “I heard it was a .44.”<br />
<br />
I was a lucky kid. On top of our fridge was a radio. AM radio. My mama had it on as we ate our cereal, fruit juice, milk and the One a Day vitamin that lay in our spoons as we headed off to school. I heard all the latest and greatest. Not sure to this day if Mama knew how much she was shaping me and my musical tastes. (It was thanks to that fridge radio that I first heard the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.) The poor lady had no sense of rhythm but seemed to like music, although fact is I don't know if she listens to music for fun now. I'll have to ask her. But back then she played the radio and had a few albums. Hell, she turned me onto Harry Belafonte without realizing it. Nevermind it was next to the Mills Brothers and Mario Lanza (Drink, drink drink!). That AM radio and the Ed Sullivan Show planted a lot of songs and artists in my head.<br />
<br />
So somewhere in my psyche lay Oliver Morgan and Lawrence “Lala” Nelson and the .44. I heard it that day and I realized that I had no earthly clue who or what the “Lala” was. So I set about investigating (which got bonus points for justifying my procrastination on a bigger project). In the process I uncovered a possible murder mystery embroiled in the entire New Orleans dynastic music scene. It was a joy. Forget that everyone else I know seemed to already know the story. Lawrence “Lala” Nelson was the brother of “Papoose” Nelson, the guitar player for Fats Domino—and the pedigree and totally overlapping business that is New Orleans musical dynasties goes on and on. I now am the proud owner of an Orpheus oversized doubloon with Oliver Morgan on it, and the title of the song as well, along with a pristine .45 (no NOT a gun) record of the song. I can't wait to hear it on a turntable.<br />
<br />
But how'd I get there? Why was I so curious about the Lala?<br />
<br />
Well, I was listening to the songs on the radio over my pineapple/orange juice. We heard the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the Motown stuff, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Otis Redding. That list is actually much longer. But a lot of the songs we heard were about death. Really romantic death—or so it seemed at that age.<br />
<br />
Jan and Dean's Dead Man's Curve with the doomed race between a Corvette and a Jaguar. Last Kiss with Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers (about 1964, I was in fourth grade) about the car crash, him holding her tight and losing his love, his life, that night. Nevermind Tell Laura I Love Her. They were all sort of mysteries. (I mean they were young and they died! That in itself was the mystery since only old people died.) Romantic mysteries to be sure, but mysteries that didn't send me off to Google to find out who died/cause of death/was it a who or a what: indeed was it real. Most of those were mysterious only in their idiocy, as in “guess I'll enter a race to buy you a wedding ring.” Pfffft! Kids!<br />
<br />
I heard Stagger Lee, the Lloyd Price version, back then. I knew completely that Lee shot Billy over a Stetson hat with a .44. The first version of House of the Rising Sun that I heard was the Animals: Eric Burdon plaintively wailing about his sins, not technically a death song. Although certainly at that age I could only imagine what those sins were, they were clearly romantic and probably deadly. (Most certainly deadly in the sinnin' way if I had asked the local priest.)<br />
<br />
But at every slumber party, .45's like Last Kiss were played. There we were, with rollers in our hair, boobless chests heaving, tears welling up in our eyes, it was too, too too too romantic to stand. Oh, just so :::sob:::<sob>dreamy. He'll never love another, I'll never love another the way I loved him:::sigh::: <sigh>. He musta been cute. (Well, ya know, Mary, when I bought that wallet at Woolworth's two weeks ago, there was a picture of FABIAN in it. Uh huh. Really! No I won't trade it for Bobby Darin.)<sniffle haughty="" stare=""> :::sniffle/haughty stare:::</sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">So why did Oliver Morgan's song hit me so hard, causing me to research it? No idea. Some songs break into our DNA, of that I'm pretty sure. As we're dying, it would be great if we could all tell the folks around us what song is in our internal jukebox at that moment. (I would prefer my last song related words be something like Voodoo Chile rather than Tell Laura I Love Her although I could add some laughter to occasion but shouting out "Little Deuce Coupe!" right before I breathe my last. Good lord, it could be that old novelty song They're Coming to Take Me Away, ha ha, where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats. . . holy shit, why do I know all of THOSE words?) </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">So does this mean I need to investigate Betty and Jimmy? I can tell you that for SURE, Leader of the Pack by the Shangri La's (ignoring the obvious over-teased hair additions of the lead singer) could reduce a slumber party to tears over our Bugle snacks. Rollers--brush rollers only, usually pink or with pink pins; jammies--usually flannel and baggie; and hormones--raging and completely beyond our comprehension----this was the sexiest song ever written from a fourth/fifth grader's point of view. Forget that she said “what could she do” after Jimmy crashed, (maybe call 911 or was that extant then?). The feminist views that announced themselves in the late 60's and 70's weren't there yet. Her daddy was a bigoted classist prick and caused Jimmy to die and she had no option but to obey the bastard. Somehow that was understood, assimilated and taken for granted. Besides, this girl also had some seriously bad luck in the boyfriend department. Remember the schmuck who went away, then wrote her a Dear Betty letter in Walking in the Sand? Geez. This girl could pick 'em. Should I spend a day on Google checking to see if Jimmy ran into a tree or just skidded out? </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">Not gonna happen. </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">Besides, shortly after that we were listening to the Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds, the Box Tops, the Byrds. Eventually we got to Jim Morrison singing The End where it was pretty clear what was happening. (Or wait—did he want to fuck his mother or kill her, or fuck her then kill her? Maybe the reverse?) Sick bastard, but dreamy Brylcreem boys had been replaced by sullen long haired and/or leather clad sexpots. We did contemplate that scream a bit and discuss it some, mostly in terms of how much did it annoy and frighten our parents. I played it in a loop for three weeks prompting my poor mama to call a psychologist. </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">The only song with a real mystery is Who Shot the Lala. It appears it was a hot shot. Heroin. Possibly delivered to Lala deliberately out of jealousy, not over a woman or a Stetson hat but over his musical prowess and burgeoning fame. Or maybe his wardrobe choices. A cold case. But as the glorious new acquaintance <a href="http://homeofthegroove.blogspot.com/">HotG</a> sez: Oliver Morgan isn't exactly an investigative reporter. </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">Nevertheless, that song piqued my curiosity. And that's always a good thing. And it had managed to stay intact with all the lyrics in my brain for decades. That really IS a good thing. I'm lucky. </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">At least from my point of view. Wanna hear the .45 about the .44? Got a turntable? </sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare=""><br /></sniffle></sigh></sob><br />
<sob><sigh><sniffle haughty="" stare="">Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!:::::screech. . .crash:::::<screech. .="" .crash=""></screech.></sniffle></sigh></sob>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-26159935324817225092012-02-14T17:29:00.009-06:002012-02-14T18:12:10.209-06:00Between St. Roch and a Hard PlacePlease hit the "like" button on our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-the-St-Roch-Tavern/294359813961172">Friends of St. Roch Tavern</a> Facebook page and write a comment of support. We'd be much obliged. <br />_______<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aNFaqqM20iQ/Tzrw9fmJCRI/AAAAAAAAALc/mGf3h9CfimQ/s1600/photo.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aNFaqqM20iQ/Tzrw9fmJCRI/AAAAAAAAALc/mGf3h9CfimQ/s400/photo.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709140416889686290" /></a><br /><br />Neighbors. Seems I've been writing about neighbors one way or another for a little while now. I've always told people that I've never met friendlier people than reside here in New Orleans. Lately though I've found some anomalies in the tapestry of friendliness and neighborliness.<br /><br />I remember someone telling me a story about a person who had moved into the French Quarter, a lifelong dream. It wasn't Bourbon Street, I can't remember exactly where, Dauphine or Burgundy Street perhaps, at any rate off the tourist path for the most part. After a little while they started complaining about the bar across the street, a bar that had been there for decades catering mostly to locals. I couldn't help but wonder upon hearing that story, if somewhere between the “hey this place has good closet space” and “I'll sign the lease” they really hadn't noticed that they were moving in across from a bar. Just didn't see it? I guess it's possible, unlikely, but possible. Now having moved there they wanted the bar to change its ways, quiet down, stop people from talking outside just by virtue of their entitled ass having moved in there. I was incensed when I heard that story.<br /><br />When we moved into a house near a 24 hour market, we knew it was there and signed the lease anyway. The market has been here longer than we've been in the house, not decades, but longer than we have. We knew it was there when we moved in. We knew it was open 24 hours. We don't now get to get pissy and ask that they close at ten. We made the choice, as did the French Quarter resident. There seems to be a spate of whininess on the part of people in neighborhoods that they chose to move into, probably making that choice BECAUSE of the very things they now complain about. These neighbors seem to be multiplying. But that's a story for another day.<br /><br />The neighbors in this story are different. They seem to be pursuing some sort of vendetta.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-03NdEZY8wxM/TzrxMxZC48I/AAAAAAAAALo/0OEqMM29Ez8/s1600/photo%2B%25283%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-03NdEZY8wxM/TzrxMxZC48I/AAAAAAAAALo/0OEqMM29Ez8/s400/photo%2B%25283%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709140679364633538" /></a><br /><br />On the corner of St. Roch and Marais you will find the St. Roch Tavern. For those of you familiar with Buffa's on Esplanade, I've always been sure that the St. Roch was designed and/or built by the same bunch as they both sport unique windows that remind me of submarine ports, not that I've actually seen a submarine port. Long ovals, atypical design for windows in the areas surrounding both places. One day I'll verify my theory. But this isn't about architecture interesting though that may be. That too is a story for another day. This is about neighbors and livelihoods and gathering places.<br /><br />Opening in the 1930's, Caranek's (which can still be found in a browser search, sometimes called Caranek's Ale House) was a neighborhood tavern. Operated by the family for nearly 70 years, it has always been a tavern. A local watering hole. A gathering place. Nine years ago the Caranek family sold it (I heard that one of the last of the Caranek owners recently passed away at the age of 84 meaning that that particular Caranek traipsed through those doors at about 4 years old. Remarkable.) About nine years ago the Caranek's sold it, but their name is still embedded in the tiles on the step and in the back of the place near the pool table. <br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tq5YnzmmkcU/TzrxxaG5RKI/AAAAAAAAAL0/mEMujzGlwRo/s1600/photo%2B%25285%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tq5YnzmmkcU/TzrxxaG5RKI/AAAAAAAAAL0/mEMujzGlwRo/s400/photo%2B%25285%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709141308769649826" /></a><br /><br />Having worked in casinos and eventually construction, John Victorson decided after spending a few days working underneath a house trying to avoid a large population of spiders that there had to be a better way to make a living. He bought the business, which by then had been renamed the St. Roch Tavern. While he might find a spider here or there behind the bar, most of the spiders he'd see now would be people in costumes with eight limbs. That sounded good to him and he happily threw himself into running the St. Roch. He also felt strong ties to the past and prided himself on keeping the neighborhood character of the place intact.<br /><br />At the St. Roch on any given night, there is an interesting population of patrons: maybe some young black men playing pool being watched by young white Goth'd out kids sharing a pitcher and a hot dog, while an elderly lady plays the poker machines. Performers, musicians, little old ladies on a pension, skinny 21st century punks with puppets or puppies (used to be able to take your dog in there—no more, and that's too bad), a tall black man who suddenly turns around and belts out a song with pipes reminiscent of Sam Cooke, filmmakers, a large lady who hollers Who Dat and hugs you for every touch down the Saints make, poets and artists, sometimes one and the same person, will give impromptu readings of poems just now scribbled down on a napkin.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pYuv1WHhU-g/TzryBdlw7HI/AAAAAAAAAMA/RhEr2ysp1JQ/s1600/dr_john2_asher.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pYuv1WHhU-g/TzryBdlw7HI/AAAAAAAAAMA/RhEr2ysp1JQ/s400/dr_john2_asher.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5709141584582339698" /></a><br /><br />Along with that diverse group, occasionally the likes of Dr. John, Deacon John, Al “Carnival Time” Johnson, and others will show up, maybe do a set, maybe be there in support of a friend. That old piano in there has been played by many hands. Hands filled with talent, hands with no talent at all, drunken hands, awkward hands, and I-can-still-play-chopsticks hands. I'll have to ask if it's original to the place. It might well be.<br /><br />In the last 18 months or so, St. Roch Tavern has been the target of a concerted effort to harass the bar itself and its customers. Launched by a neighbor, who in fact used to work there, it has become a purposeful, obsessive attack which has spilled out on occasion to the neutral ground. While there hasn't been a ticket for anything written inside or outside the St. Roch in four years, according to one of the bartenders there, the police have been called over petty complaints repeatedly by this neighbor. The City Council person, Kristin Gisleson Palmer, has also gotten complaints. Formerly a partner in the food concern at St. Roch (not an employee, the food suppliers are separate business entities), this neighbor is on constant alert from reports I've heard. Evidently this guy and his domestic partner's sole purpose is to get the St. Roch Tavern shut down. (Who they'll harass if that happens I don't know, but it has become clear that these people are folks who need to have someone in the crosshairs in order to be happy.)<br /><br />The constant harassment has taken some dark turns, reports of customers allegedly being physically attacked by these neighbors aren't rare. Verbal attacks are apparently standard fare. The staff is walking on eggshells in order to avoid drama. The livelihoods of St. Roch staff are being endangered by an obsession for vengeance. I wish I could ask the neighbors why, but I have no doubt that the answer would make no sense to me.<br /><br />Bar on the corner for 80 years. Neighbors doing all this? Moved into the neighborhood barely 2 years ago. We can't let this neighbor and his partner close down a business out of vengeance. Police were called on New Year's Eve. Police were called Krewe du Vieux night. The Fifth District police want to see a show of support from those of us who care about this place. They've been very good at communicating what they need from us and I applaud that. Let's help them by contacting them, signing petitions, patronizing St. Roch Tavern.<br /><br />Hell, let's light some candles to St. Roch, who has a long list of causes he's linked to, including: protection from storms, skin diseases, cholera, knee problems, dogs and those who love them, bachelors, invalids, surgeons, gravediggers, second hand dealers, apothecaries, those falsely accused and epidemics. Let's get him on this.<br /><br />As John Victorson said, “I just want St. Roch Tavern to remain the hub of the neighborhood as it has been for 80 years. I want it to be all inclusive.”<br /><br />Too bad these two neighbors don't see things the same way.<br />___<br />Special thanks to Marlena Asher for the use of her photo of Dr. John with JD Hill at St. Roch Tavern a couple months ago.Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-3176664079688469222012-01-13T13:17:00.002-06:002012-01-19T13:09:30.766-06:00Of Blight and CircumstanceEDIT 1/19/12: Thanks to all of you for your support. There is now a Ku's House Facebook page to coordinate information, updates and requests for help/volunteers. Please head over to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kus-House/350616394949114?notif_t=page_new_likes">Ku's House Facebook Page</a><br />__________<br />We all know that there is blight in some neighborhoods in New Orleans. We also know that some people are taking advantage of that blight to knock down homes, buy them for a song to fix up cheaply and rent out, or just to get a neighbor they have a grudge against up against a bureaucratic wall. Since the storm we've seen that happen all over town. In some cases blight complaints have ruined lives, dreams, futures.<br /><br />Here in my neighborhood sits a beautiful old shotgun house. Built in 1866, it's the oldest house on our block. It was once occupied by members of the Tujague family. Mrs. Tujague had a niece who was her particular favorite. That niece was a member of the Poor Clare order, who had been shuttled hither and yon due to various diocesan edicts for many years. Although the Order had been invited to New Orleans around 1877, they had left for Cleveland for a while. Upon their return, Mrs. Tujague's niece was now Mother Mary Magdalen, the head of the local order, and the nuns moved into the house and used it as a base of operations from about June 16, 1885 until they built a proper monastery.<br /><br />Now that is a great New Orleans story. But here's another one.<br /><br />Kweku Nyaawie grew up in Central Texas based mostly out of Austin. A carpenter and cabinet maker, he came to New Orleans with his brother to help out with reconstruction of homes damaged by the Federal Flood in late 2005. He saw the destruction first hand and continued to work and save his money. At some point he decided to stay. He wanted to contribute to the community, buy a house, make it a home not a speculation project and found the shotgun at 616 Port Street. It needed work, but he knew he was the guy who could do it. He looked for period architectural pieces, was painstaking in his research, checked the history of the house, delighted in knowing that he'd be the one to restore this little bit of New Orleans history with the added bonus of living in it.<br /><br />He got involved with the Community Garden Project in Treme and put his money and time into fixing the house. Long after the Poor Clares, the house had been purchased by a Mr. Frisbe, who lived there with his partner from 1977 until he passed away. His partner continued to live there until the storm. Kweku, or Ku as we all call him, bought it already needing repair in 2008. He loved working on the house and loved that it was exactly 100 years older than he was. When we moved here we knew him to say hello but never saw him because he was always at the Garden or working on that house.<br /><br />Then came the summer of 2010. As Ku was riding his bicycle on Dumaine Street in the Sixth Ward, a black sedan hit him. Hard. Knocked completely off the bike, he watched as the car sped away without even checking to see if Ku was alright. He headed to his girlfriend's house battered, bruised and scratched badly. He didn't go to the ER as he thought he was just healing from some bad road rash and deep bruises. Knowing him now, my guess is that he also figured he'd just tough it out and he'd be fine. Weeks went by. His back still hurt. Months went by. His back still hurt. Then in December 2010 he realized that his legs wouldn't quite support his 6'3” frame. He headed off to the doctor but realized that he couldn't get the help he'd need here in New Orleans, he couldn't work so money was also an issue (given that the bastard who hit him took off, there was no insurance money coming in to help with medical bills), so he made the decision to move back to Austin and his family. Those of us who knew him were worried as we didn't hear from him.<br /><br />He was busy. He spent nearly 14 months in therapy and is still on crutches with his legs still unable to support him. Although he's the most positive attitude guy in the world, he's also a proud man and a man who loves his house. He is unfortunately learning the lesson many of us learned after the storm: sometimes you gotta ask for help.<br /><br />A few weeks ago he got a letter from the City. A hearing. Blight. Neighbors complaining. (We're neighbors, we couldn't figure out who would complain knowing how hard he'd worked and knowing what had happened to him.) At the hearing it was discovered that one complaint had come from a doctor (a DOCTOR? Wouldn't he know how devastatingly long spinal cord injuries can take to heal?) because some vines had overgrown the fence and were interfering with his backyard garden. (This doctor is also the owner of a lot of property on our block.) Evidently Ku's next door neighbor, an absentee homeowner and an attorney who lives in the house intermittently, wanted Ku's house demolished. Ku was given a list of things that had to be fixed or a $500 a day fine would be levied.(Although he wouldn't probably bring it up, he's one of only 2 black property owners on the four sides of this block, and some of us, though not Ku, can't help but wonder if that's a part of these complaints.)<br /><br />Ku sat in an office chair for a week sanding the front of the house in order to get it ready for painting. Stand across from it and you can see how far the outer limit of his reach is, which frankly from a desk chair is impressive. Today he's working on the bricks that front the house from the sidewalk to the base of the house. Siding needs to be replaced for sure. His brother had been able to help for a while, but we heard he recently got a job so he's on his own for the moment and his next hearing is a week from today.<br /><br />I am asking anyone out there who can help, who can climb a ladder, sand, paint, write a letter, anything that can toss a road block into the $500 buck a day fine that he can't afford, to get in touch. <br /><br />This is the guy you WANT for a neighbor. This is the man you WANT to settle in New Orleans, buy property and make it home. This is the man you WANT to fix up an historically interesting home and not fill it with press board cheap fixes to rent out at an exhorbitant rate. We're outraged that knowing his situation, some of our neighbors chose this time, when he's most vulnerable, to call his home out as a blighted property. It's just not fair. It's also not JUST.<br /><br />We know Mardi Gras is early this year. We're all tossing glitter around our living rooms and keeping feathers out of our cats' mouths and eating more King Cake than is good for us. I'm glad we're doing that. It's a part of New Orleans life and we love it. Kweku chose to set down roots here and become a part of the New Orleans community. There have to be some of us willing to help him, just as people like him helped us when we needed it.<br /><br />Don't let a hit and run driver who changed his life be joined by hit and run neighbors with their petty complaints to the blight police. He chose to join us. He chose to come back to fight for his home. We need to choose to help him so he remembers why he wanted to join us here in the first place.<br /><br />Please contact me if you can volunteer some time, some clout, some information. If we can build a float, we can paint a house.<br /><br />Old Mrs. Tujague and Mother Mary Magdalen would want us to.Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-44915736539550501782011-12-20T17:24:00.021-06:002011-12-20T19:48:46.916-06:00Soft Memories are Evergreen<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MHVk8i7-FmM/TvExvDvkBOI/AAAAAAAAALQ/8sU3e_wZehA/s1600/Will_Santa.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MHVk8i7-FmM/TvExvDvkBOI/AAAAAAAAALQ/8sU3e_wZehA/s400/Will_Santa.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688382488874058978" /></a><br />When I was little, every year Mama would get out the ornaments as Dad fought the tree stand to make the tree balance perfectly straight as nothing else would do. Nearby would be aerosol cans of spray-on snow and several boxes of silver tinsel. The tree would be decorated, colored bulbs replaced, tinsel strewn carefully then finally tossed willy nilly at the branches. Then my Mama would take out the little church.<br /><br />This little church seemed to me to be a cathedral. Tall steeple, rosette stained glass over the unopenable doors illuminated from within by a single little bulb. I would kneel next to the table it was placed on and turn the key to the music box that played Silent Night and be overcome not really knowing why. To my five or six year old self this was a thing of beauty and it was probably the first time I shed tears over something beautiful. For many many years that church was the big memory of Christmases past. <br /><br />I left home and I guess the little church was retired at some point, replaced by the innumerable Snowmen that Mama loved, and as a result, became inundated with as my sisters and I scoured malls and catalogues for the perfect new snowman for her each year. I think she's probably retired many of those by now too. She finally asked us to please not send her anymore. By then they were practically taking over her house.<br /><br />When my daughter was born, I cried again over beauty. She was and remains the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Over the next few years the soft memories are of her two year old self choosing ornaments for our own tree and particularly delighting in a fake hard candy garland held together with weak monofilament. The fake candy had to be restrung periodically over the years, but she loved it. We didn't have much money then, so we made a star for the top of the tree out of cardboard and tinfoil. Even when we could afford to replace it we didn't for a long time. Each year she chose two or three ornaments and they would get added to our collection along with those sent by family and friends. Eventually they became more sophisticated with porcelain doll angels added to the ones she had chosen at two and the clay/cookie bell she made in kindergarten. Each year they would be carefully unwrapped and delighted in, one by one, and hung very deliberately on our tree. If she didn't like the placement, she'd change it.<br /><br />One year I labored over a tree skirt, having decided that I would make this thing entirely by hand. Plaid taffeta pieces for the top, crocheted lace for the edges and the softest red corduroy I could find for the bottom. I've always maintained that I put too much polyfil in it, but it made a nice cushion for wrapped presents. Sometime around my daughter's 7th or 8th Christmas I tied it around her waist like a skirt and plopped a Santa hat on her head. For the next nearly ten years, that was the expected tree trimming outfit and she was wearing it still when at about 14 she insisted that I'd been putting the lights on all wrong for years so she would now take charge of the branch fluffing and lighting. She'd force her dad up to put the fish ornament she'd chosen for him up high and she'd dance in the tree skirt as he pretended to be Frank Sinatra or Elvis depending on what holiday music we were listening to. Not big on tree trimming, he'd provide entertainment with his finger snapping Vegas lounge act, also done in a Santa hat usually worn a la the Coneheads. Even after she married she wore that tree skirt to trim the tree one snowy Christmas on the mountain.<br /><br />My grandson was born and I cried at beauty again: the beauty of him and the courage and determination of his mother who didn't have an easy time of it. As difficult as it was, her damn mascara and eyeliner never smudged. She swears by Maybelline, or is it Cover Girl, to this day.<br /><br />When the boy child was not quite two, the three of us went to buy some new ornaments and other sundry things at a Hobby Lobby nearby. It might have been the year of her own tree skirt. I'm pretty sure I made it for her, but she might have done it herself as she had decided to learn to sew. Funny. I remember her buying the fabric but can't remember if I made it. I think I'll say I did. As I pushed the cart down the aisle I noticed my grandson grabbing a Father Christmas that was half the size he was and was unfortunately sitting on the bottom shelf just within his reach. I had not planned nor budgeted for that fabric covered cardboard cone with glorious curls and a perfect smile. I tried the age old distraction technique, some bells in one hand, the Father Christmas in the other trying to put him back on the shelf. My grandson was not having it. He wanted that damn Santa and that's all he knew. He kept handing it to me to put in the cart and I was sure he'd drop it and break the porcelain face, so I figured I'd put it in the cart and then plop it up somewhere later where he wouldn't notice. But instead, after I put the boy in the seat on the cart (facing away from the cart's contents was my reasoning), he turned around and laser beamed onto that face. He was in love. I most assuredly wasn't going to rid myself of the big jolly guy, so I put something else back and Santa came home with us.<br /><br />Soft memories, all. Bathed in light, music box sounds, fingers snapping and laughter. They all look like Marilyn in the Misfits: shot through a heavily vasolined lens so the harshness and wrinkles won't show.<br /><br />When Katrina came all the ornaments and that Father Christmas were in storage at Tulane and Broad. We weren't allowed in to the UHaul place for months. The stuff in there had been tossed around and dropped and stewed and mold had grown in places that the hydraulic fluid from the elevator hadn't bathed with its oil. With no lights in there as the power hadn't been restored, we signed the "not your problem if we die in there" waiver and entered it like miners from Germinal. I still don't know how my Christmas Sinatra opened that door, just sheer stubborn foolishness probably. When our flashlights saw the interior there were no words. But right on top of everything, wrapped tight in a plastic bag we saw our grandson's Father Christmas, seemingly unscathed.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a6uTUVwFl2s/TvEmeFD44zI/AAAAAAAAALE/7-cvJXdQbg4/s1600/Willl_Santa_Storage.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 290px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a6uTUVwFl2s/TvEmeFD44zI/AAAAAAAAALE/7-cvJXdQbg4/s400/Willl_Santa_Storage.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688370102542066482" /></a><br />It would take weeks to get through all the boxes of books and other treasures in that storage unit, but that Santa came home with us that day, a trophy, a gift, our crown jewel. We finally found the giant can of ornaments and most of them were trashed, but those that did survive I passed on to my daughter to put on her tree. A continuity from one set of memories to another.<br /><br />Since then I think I put up a tree one year, but mostly I find it too difficult. I know the tree skirt survived and I think it's in the shed. Some folks don't understand my reluctance to put up a tree, but for me it triggers too many sweet memories mixed up with some very difficult ones, like when you put too much salt in a soup--Martha Stewart and her "drop a potato in and it'll absorb the salt" be damned.<br /><br />But before you think me a total humbug, consider this. That Father Christmas is never in a box, never out of sight. He lives year around on a table in my living room. Some of the stryrofoam birds and eggs were pretty damaged, but removing them from his nest didn't hurt him any, and now he wears a special kind of Mardi Gras bead, the ones my grandson called World Record Beads. They are the old plastic cheapos with the push clasp that you can connect to one another. He once tried to make the Guinness Book of World Records by connecting one continuous string around Jackson Square in order to raise money for his school library. He actually made it all the way around the Square but Guinness wasn't interested to his great disappointment. I think his Father Christmas likes his new decorations.<br /><br />And two years ago my Mama sent me the little church, a real surprise. My Mama is really good at getting rid of stuff, so I thought it had probably gone the way of my Beatle cards and 45's. It's so much smaller than I remembered it, and not nearly so grand, made of a now-yellowed plastic with a decal instead of leaded stained glass. The music box still worked, but the little church was pretty brittle with age. I found that my Dad had evidently put a bulb in it that was too hot, so the bottom of it is a little bit melted. Okay. A lot melted. Last year my Christmas Sinatra rigged a small maglite in there so I could see the stained glass decal lit up again from the inside. It was the best gift ever and yes, there I was crying again as I looked at it and heard the music box's sappy Silent Night pinging. The little church sits right in front of the Father Christmas, also never boxed.<br /><br />I keep those soft memories in sight now as I stupidly never filmed the great tree skirted elf in her determined glory nor did I record the Sinatra songs as interpreted by a Conehead. I regret that. But I can still see them, and hear them, and remember the laser beam gaze of a tiny boy staring at a curly haired Santa. I still well up at the beauty of those memories: my father cussing at the tree stand, my mother trying to keep the tinsel off the rug, a totally futile exercise, my sisters handing out stockings with our names on them, Sinatra hanging a fish just below a tin foil star, the years that I was lucky enough to watch a little girl choose giant plastic lollipop ornaments growing up to deck her own house with lights, and a little boy whose belief in a magical being keeps me believing even when it's hard to. Incredible gifts all. Such luck I've had.<br /><br />And the music box still works.Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24843854.post-30915202622794499232011-11-27T12:46:00.006-06:002011-11-28T10:08:04.135-06:00Orbiting Coco Robicheaux<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fyP_oD1L3ow/TtKGNzrNBUI/AAAAAAAAAKg/IrploE2qRNg/s1600/DSCN5011.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fyP_oD1L3ow/TtKGNzrNBUI/AAAAAAAAAKg/IrploE2qRNg/s400/DSCN5011.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5679749651835454786" /></a><br />Coco Robicheaux passed away Friday evening. Much has been written about the man, his music, his artistry, his character and his seemingly mythical background. Much more will be written. Many of us spent yesterday between tears and laughter, blaring his music through our homes to let him know we're here thinking about him. I double checked my files to be sure that I hadn't lost the 40 minute live set I recorded on my phone at Mimi's a couple months ago. I regretted never having given him the eagle feather I had told him I'd bring when I saw him next. I remembered that the ancients believed there is a four day window between the time the soul leaves the body and its transition to the higher realms. I'll have to light a candle for him today so he sees it along the way.<br /><br />I saw some great remembrances yesterday and gathered them together in a little mental basket hoping to amass more and maybe put together the ultimate collection of “Memories of Coco.” Lord David spoke of learning about kindness through Coco's admonishments. Louis Maistros told a great story of breaking his elbow after a bike fall near the French Market and Coco laying hands on him telling him he'd be okay. Mark Folse spoke of Coco's authenticity. My friend Pam, who knew him for twenty years, told a story of taking a seriously drunk Coco home decades ago and carrying him up the stairs (once they finally found the house that he had forgotten the location of) only to be stunned the next day when he remembered her name even though he had been toast the night before.<br /><br />There were many, many people who knew him longer than I. Many who knew him better than I. But once you entered Coco's orbit, he knew YOU. If he knew you, he never forgot your name or passed by without acknowledging you. In the end, I decided to stick to my own memories, adding them to the collection that someone else will put together.<br /><br />I first became aware of Coco Robicheaux as a member of an audience. Many audiences actually. I'd seen him lots of times and loved his music, my closest contact being the dropping of a couple bucks into the tip jar. Then one day I happened to be on Frenchmen Street. I walked into the Apple Barrel to grab a beer and found myself sitting next to the man. He looked over and said hello. After introductions, him introducing himself as though I wouldn't possibly have known who he was, we spent some time in regular bar stool small talk. It was not long after the storm. The next time I saw him we were across the street from each other on Frenchmen. I shouted hello, he responded with, “Hey, you're the girl with the guy's name! How ya doing?” After that there were many bar stool conversations.<br /><br />One afternoon we spent a long time discussing the time I spent on Reservations in the Southwest and what I'd learned, comparing and finding similarities to his Native American Swamp knowledge. I actually wish I'd taped the conversation. We wound up deep in our cups and deep into a sort of theology of earth religion discussion. We delighted in each other's understanding and knowledge. I learned a lot that day.<br /><br />Another day I was locking my bike to the tree just down from the Barrel. My lock, notoriously rusty and difficult, was giving me fits so I was concentrating hard on that lock, bent over it and probably cussing. He came quietly up behind me and gruffed hello. He had startled me and found that hilarious. He laughed and laughed, then started down the street. I asked him where he was headed. He growled, “Goin' to make trouble wherever I can,” laughed some more and said he'd be back later. I watched him saunter down the street still laughing at me. I was laughing too.<br /><br />Months later, I had an appointment at Electric Ladyland. I walked into the Barrel for a beer before my appointment and found the usual afternoon small group at the bar. The wraithlike woman behind the bar was terribly upset. The bathroom door wouldn't open. Now, in order to understand this, one has to know the Apple Barrel bathroom. The door is closed and a little hook and eye lock is ready for use, but the door has to be pushed just a wee bit back open in order to actually place the hook into the eye. This is something that couldn't easily be accomplished by a slight slam of the door from the outside. The odds of that hook landing in that eye exactly without human hands placing it there are astronomical. After much discussion it was decided that we should pound on the door as there might be someone in there who was in distress. Each of us took a turn, with one of us attempting to look under the door, a fruitless but beer fueled suggestion. Finally it occurred to us that we'd been there an hour and hadn't seen anyone enter that bathroom. We were all accounted for.<br /><br />At that moment, the bartender said, “Goddammit, it was Coco! We had an argument and he left in a snit, but he walked back and forth out there for a while. He did this. He slapped a hoodoo whammy on it.” No one in the place thought this far fetched, although all of us, except the bartender, found it hilarious. One of the other denizens explained that an argument had taken place and told me what it was about, some petty thing I can't remember now, then nodded solemnly saying, “Yeah, it had to be Coco.” The bartender then determined that Coco Robicheaux would never be allowed in that place again. The bathroom door was eventually taken off at the hinges and the hook was indeed in the eye and the assumption that Coco's hoodoo had caused it became an Apple Barrel truth, remaining so to this day.<br /><br />The last time I saw him to talk to him was a couple months ago upstairs at Mimi's. He was playing a great set and I asked him if he'd mind if I recorded it. When he said no he wouldn't mind, I put my phone on the couch three feet from his mic and hit record. I just left it there and took a few pictures. I had a huge yellow bag with me that had been signed by many of the cast members of Treme as well as Mos' Def and Lloyd Price. Coco said he wanted to sign it and did. On a break I asked if I could buy him a drink. Dumb question. Of course the answer would be yes. He squinted his eyes into a slit, knowing me for a sucker, and asked for either a Remy Martin or a Courvoisier, I can't remember which. Then he grinned at me waiting to see if I'd spring for it. I said okay and he looked a little surprised when I came back with that instead of his usual tequila.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ift6hrImVNM/TtKGODSe4BI/AAAAAAAAAKs/ppgvI5fC0hQ/s1600/DSCN5006.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ift6hrImVNM/TtKGODSe4BI/AAAAAAAAAKs/ppgvI5fC0hQ/s400/DSCN5006.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5679749656026734610" /></a><br />His CD, Revelator, had come out and as he sipped his drink he showed me how it was packaged. He was so proud that it wasn't in the standard jewel case. The CD itself clipped onto a hard grey material entirely made of potatoes and the cover was entirely recycled/recyclable paper. He told me he was thrilled that his music wasn't going to damage the earth with its packaging. <br /><br />As he got ready for the next set I teased him about his shoes. He was wearing these pointy square toed white loafers with fleur de lis on them. I asked him if he'd just raided his 70's disco storage. He laughed that laugh of his and said, “Hey, these shoes still walk good!”<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TJgEuJNXPzI/TtKGOroURGI/AAAAAAAAAK4/5DprloKG9Uo/s1600/DSCN5003.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TJgEuJNXPzI/TtKGOroURGI/AAAAAAAAAK4/5DprloKG9Uo/s400/DSCN5003.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5679749666855732322" /></a><br />I have no doubt that the spirits he spoke of as being constant companions are his companions now. While he'll leave a big hole in our world, I am glad he didn't have a lengthy illness. I'm glad he left us in one of his favorite places, wherein he'll no doubt reside in spirit forever, perhaps locking the bathroom door randomly to amuse himself. His current companions already know of his kindness, his artistry, his metaphysical prowess and his laughter. I just wonder if they told him to leave those shoes behind as he'll no doubt “walk good” to the other side just fine without them.<br /><br />Cross-posted at <a href="http://www.b2l2.com">B2L2</a><br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Coco+Robicheaux" rel="tag"><span style="font-size:85%;">Coco Robicheaux</span></a>Sam Jasperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15609640045088229908noreply@blogger.com13