09, Mardi Gras

Water line on home located a couple blocks southeast of Broad and Fountainbleau.	Sarah waiting for a rental agent on the cold morning of January 30th outside what became our new home minutes later. We have civility! But also $900 less dollars.	Home sweet home, really is sweet compared to the church. We rented the upstairs unit at the rear of the building.	Street view from the front of the building. Nearly the entire neighborhood is abandoned, and appropriately, the area is overshadowed by the Crescent City Tower, the largest abandoned building in the city.	Crescent city tower rises over abandoned home.
Streets are trash-strewn.	Right next door is the Nanzy Cheatum Fellowship Hall, an old community center, which hangs wide open like most of the other surrounding empty buildings.	We had accumulated enough free possessions over the past couple months to justify renting a Uhaul for a couple hours, during which time this cushionless couch was discovered on a side street between Tulane and Canal.	Our room in the church sits half empty, stripped of all its sparkly bling.	TV stayed with Lane, still don't own one as of March 4th.
	On the desk, we left Faith(in the urn) to keep any future squatters company, along with a note.	"Dear Future Squatter, This church is not haunted and quite comfortable if you befriend the neighbor. We have left you 14 cents to help get you started(about what we had when we arrived). G + S p.s. and Faith will help keep you company	Leaving all the mess back to the rats.	Leaving the old electric organ.
In the new apartment, on our cushionless couch, Sarah celebrates the newfound civility by decorating me with beads.				Pretty purple recycling center located under the ugly concrete Interstate, just south of Claiborne.
"No Grocery Baskets allowed on Premises" "All Copper Sales Must Have Valid ID & a Vehicle License Plate Number, (Sorry, No Walk-Ins)"	Now some pics of our view at the new apartment. Our entrance is at the rear, which is conveniently gated and surrounded by Martha Stewart Home brand razor wire.		Sarah stands at our door. As you see, we sort of kind of almost have a balcony, as both upstairs doors lead to our apartment.	Civility requires a new obligation, keeping track of a key.
View directly north of our balcony, an old dilapidated Mardi Gras float.	View directly behind our house, to the intersection of Second and Roman, where we recorded a police beating on February 27th that made the front page of the Times-Picayune.	View southwest of our balcony. All the homes pictured are empty.	Roof of the Nanzy Cheatum Fellowship Hall, located 4 feet to the north of our apartment building.	At least there's nobody there making noise.
Bright blue house on Broad Street, one of a thousand bright blue houses in New Orleans.	February 3rd. We stop our bikes at a little barber shop off Galvez Street. Photo taken by Sarah(SH).	First haircut in many months. SH	Tiny new businesses such as this barber shop emerge every day, seeming to pop up overnight. SH	Front door of barber shop. SH
SH	SH	SH	Coincidentally, that's my former coworker Paul's niece's house behind the red fence. She's a lawyer, owning a house that appears as a sparkling gem in this ghetto, palm trees and all. SH	SH
SH	SH	My foots receive falling hair. SH	Old phone booths on an overgrown sidewalk along Washington Street.
The broken flatbed trailer stacked with old tires has sat there for the past month, along with several other forgotten flatbeds in the neighborhood.	"City of New Orleans, Marc H. Morial, Mayor" When Morial was mayor, times must have been good, they actually had phone booths, and sidewalks.	These are the scenes that we pass by everyday on our bike rides to and from work, often in the wee hours of the morning or well after dark when dazed lone individuals roam in the shadows.		The vines are called Cats Claw, I think, and they are always quick to move in whereever people move out.
Skyline looms over cats claw roof.		Fourth Street. Inside most empty homes such as this one, can be found the leavings of many a drunken squatter, things such as old food containers, liquor bottles, feces.		Across the street from the abandoned home in the previous pictures is this abandoned schoolyard. Notice that the grounds are maintained rather nicely, but.....
....the building has been standing open for ransacking, maybe not accidentally.	"The 'new' New Orleans Public Schools. High School Signature Centers. 2600 South Rocheblave Street..."	Kids can often be seen playing on the grounds, which are fenced off but with wide open gates.	Gymnasium.	Central courtyard with fallen tree.
Central courtyard.	Sidewalk facing courtyard.	Passageway leading to courtyard.	Another open gate at the end of the passageway.	Gymnasium.
Another abandoned home next to the school.	But directly next to that abandoned home are these brand new Habitat for Humanity dwellings. Habitat For Humanity other such organizations are still working regularly in the neighborhood, but there's years of work left to be done, obviously.	Burned out apartment building on First Street, a block north of our apartment.		A common spray painted message on many buildings, "DO NOT DEMO". Second Street.
	Our apartment building as seen from the intersection of Second and Roman.	"Undertaker, Gravedigger & Mike Auto Repair, 'not open to the general public'" I wonder how Mike feels about this excessive wrestling lingo?	Sarah's paintings in the sunset, now enjoying thier relatively safe, and definately drier, new home.
Sunset streaming in our barred window, through an old mouse eaten knitting project we salvaged from the church.	Livingroon/bedroom. It's an efficiency.	Everything you see came for free from somewhere.	Kitchen. Not all that surprisingly, the apartment was rented without a working fridge or oven. But that fact was of course not disclosed.	Bathroom.
After months of hairy homeless shelter showers, having a real tub is divine.	View of bathroom window through green shower curtain. The building on the other side of the window also appears abandoned, but we regularly see what looks like firelight inside. Almost called the fire department the first time, until realizing it was probably just squatters.	Ah, civility, the towels hung by the shower with care, some care at least.	Even with no couch cushions, still, ah civility. I did eventually obtain cushions from another abandoned couch, cutting them to fit underneath the cover of this one.	Introducing a new camera, the Canon Powershot SD750, purchased with recent Ebay profits, dropped twice in the first week but still snapping good pics. February 13th.
		Once again I can get in people's faces and take closeup pics of thier eyeballs.	Windowsill. SH	That's Quackmeyer, Sarah's flashing raver duck, a 26th birthday gift from her mother. SH
A silk scarf covers the ugliness of the windowsill. SH	Sarah's 4 harmonicas, which she occasionally plays. SH	Between the buildings, the passageway we come and go from daily. SH	SH	Finally, a laundromat opened in the neighborhood, just off Galvez street. Think they have wifi?
SH	SH		SH	Sarah rides her bike into the gloomy dusk, behind Family Dollar on Claiborne Avenue.
Crescent City Tower rises into the gloom.			St. Charles overpass.	Fence under the overpass.
Sarah clutches the fence, watching a parade put on by the Pygmalion Krewe, one of six krewes holding parades on this evening. Nearly every day in February is witness to at least one Mardi Gras parade.	We purchased feather masks in preparation for the events.	On Fat Tuesday, 11 days after this picture was taken, the nose of Sarah's mask was broken out by a malicious bead thrower in a huge bead battle on Bourbon Street between dozens of people, which was originally triggered by a bead battle between me and one other man.	Aftermath of the parade, beads in the kitchen sink.
The first thing Sarah does on Valentine's Day morning, before even getting out of bed, is put on her mask from the night before.		View outside the apartment after overnight rains.		Puddle reflection.
	The ever-increasing trash pile in the lot directly south of ours.	Paul stopped by, my former fellow meat cutter who had been fired earlier in the week.	Our work mugshots.	Sarah takes a break.
With me.	A coworker makes a huge mess.	And now some pics from the Barkus dog walking parade in the French Quarter on February 15.		That's my coworker Vicky in the pink sweatshirt, who brought me to the parade.
Some guy on a motorized cooler with a jack russel. Classy, yeah right, anybody who owns a jack russel is a homo......(cough, mike, cough)	Vicky assaulted every passing dog possible.	Big and small.		Peace, love, stupidity.
	Hey dog, there's a tasty treat, a nice juicy tampon. Yeah, dogs are gross, even when they wear pink.		OMG	I think I've had visions before of this woman carrying her weiner dog, with that ridiculous grinning man in the yellow hat looking on.
		Vicky find another victim.
			Favorite pic of the day. Thankfully no visions of her.	No, what am I talking about, this is the hottest thing I've seen since the sun.
	Happiest woman in the parade.
	End of parade.
Vicky poses with another victim dog.	The youngest of the New Orleans cops are actually the most corrupt.			Fortune tellers.
Vicky seems to know every business owner in the French Quarter. Here she is with a friend at the French Market who operates a booth.			A booth customer's bead necklaces.
Vicky got a free shirt out of the friend.	The remains of what once was a community garden a block from our apartment.	I discovered a 15-second shutter speed on my camera that can take great night pics as long as the camera is perfectly still.	Again, there's that intersection where the police beat up a man.	The results of waving the camera around during its fifteen second shutter speed.
Sarah poses with a new addition to the apartment, that I found on the sidewalk a block away. Jefferson is the loosing candidate that was found with $90,000 of bribe money in his freezer.	One of half-a-dozen abandoned public schools in our neighborhood. John W. Hoffman Elementary School.			Sarah at the Mystic Krewe of Druids parade on February 18th.
We watched it from St. Charles Avenue, facing this guest house.	Playing with shutter speeds.			Druid float.
Druids.	The tractors pulling each float displayed strange messages, like "you giveth and he taketh away".		Customers always complain at work about buying imported fish, but I guess they could care less about catching Chinese-made Mardi Gras beads.....	Some bands had not a single token white person.
Monroe float that Sarah thinks is "creepy".	Riding home, we noticed this cool old abandoned church.	This homeless man who lives there, Harold, saw me taking pictures and invited us in. Here, he displays part of the pipe organ on the second floor. Sarah is dead now. No, Harold is cool.	Barely enough light to get a picture of the organ without a flash.	Second floor with 15-second shutter speed.
Back home, displaying the night's spoils. These parades leave us feeling like pirates.	The results of Mad Dog 20/20.	Me sitting in the break room at work.	Sarah in break room.
	Sarah laying in bed with beads.		What the hell is that, you ask?	Really? Yes, really, I bought a bunch from Dollar General at 90% off.
Sarah's latest painting, appropriately titled "Eye".	And now to the French Quarter for Mardi Gras weekend insanity. The following pics were taken on the Saturday the 21st, three days before Fat Tuesday. SH	Raining beads on Bourbon. SH	Overcompensating.	If you're really pathetic, you can buy them from the shops for ridiculous prices, because catching them is dangerous, you know. SH.
Typical SH picture.		SH, of course SH, just look at that lamppost.	SH	SH
SH	SH	Not really unusual here this time of year, no more strange than a bird in a tree.		Surprised that people don't wear helmets in the streets. A constant shower of beads. It's dangerous, you know.
One Bourbon intersection was severely disrupted by a group of haters. I ask you to please read everything on this list. My favorite is "loud mouth women". I hate those.	My favorite here, "General Heathen". Are you a general heathen? This guy was probably very smart to wear the safety goggles.	Rebellious women go to hell!!!! Of course, but what about "good people"?	The man on the megaphone provoked everybody, calling them things like "masturbators". Maybe this scene was actually some kind of reality show. If it wasn't, then it should be.	Huge parade on Canal, with absolutely massive floats costing fortunes.
		Every inch of available parade watching space in use.	We made some thoughtful purchases before the parade, one of the stupidest $50 I've spent in a long time, but what the hey.
			Taken by a woman we spoke with during much of the parade.
The woman's husband. He claimed to have paid $250 for that mask.		Parade aftermath. This is nothing compared to the remains of some streets on Fat Tuesday.	I find a cone hat, good with whiskey and Coke.	The pink wig did not make it through the evening. Pic taken at the Double Play bar.
	We used a portion of our growing parade spoils to decorate the outside of our apartment. February 22, my first day off work in two weeks.
Couldn't forget the razor wire.			A dabloon, something to be caught at Mardi Gras parades. Each is emblazoned with name of the krewe holding the parade. This one is from the Pygmalion parade.	The "Demolition in Progress" sign on our closet door, in sunset.
Then on to the Baccus Parade, yet another held on St. Charles Avenue.		Between most Baccus floats, crews of men pass with flaming signs that say nothing.		Each sign holder wears a propane tank backpack. Try getting that through airport security.
We met this satellite radio DJ from New York, who hung out with us for the entire parade, and who tried to throw beads in a tuba.			The theme of this parade was monsters, with this alligator being the most massive of the monsterous monster floats. Notice all the beads hanging out the mouth. The crowds attacked every monster's head, attempting to get thier beads to stick.	The following set of pictures will hopefully convey the size of this float.
Sarah surveying the aftermath.	I caught a little alligator from the big alligator.	Aftermath.	And the aftermath at work after trying to sell ten times more than the store was designed for. Acutally, I really enjoyed the busiest of days, when nearly the entire contents of the whole meat storage cooler was bought out in a matter of hours. But I only completely ran out of a couple minor products!!! A huge success as far as I'm concerned, but probably only to be appreciated by fellow grocery store people.	Last sunset before Fat Tuesday, as seen from the apartment. February 23.
I woke up from an after-work nap to this sight.				The store closed at 3PM on Fat Tuesday, and our coworker Jesse gave us a ride home in his family's old conversion van.
We emerged from work to find vast swaths of the city paved in beads, leftovers from the citywide parades that draw hundreds of thousands of out-of-town visitors.	Hard to drive a car, but especially hard to ride a bike.			But, no mess we ever saw compared to the one on St. Charles.
Prison work crews on their way to clean up.		It takes blowers to clean up a mess that huge, and believe it or not, they eventually leave it even cleaner than it was before the parade.		Big Brother is watching, waiting to beat you up. Canal Street.
		These Blackwater Security guys tackled both of us for blocking some kind of VIP motorcade of limos. They patrol the street in front of the Holiday Inn on Derbigny(sp) Street, which apparently hosts the stupid little VIP's.	Random sidewalk drunk.
We just so happened to run into our old squatmates Tom and Ray Ray at the Double Play Bar. This is Ray Ray, he and Tom squatted with us at the Marine Medical Unit in November.	And there's Tom. They were leaving town in the morning.		Sarah speaks with Ray Ray.	Neither of us remember taking this picture.
Last picture of Mardi Gras, a time we will never forget, well, I do forget taking this, but. Mardi Gras, we recommend it to everyone. Coming to New Orleans then is like going through a wormhole to another dimension, as the picture shows.	And now, back to the abandoned school on Rocheblave, pictured earlier from the exterior. Notice the irony on the bulletin board, titled, "Nothing Fishy About It". Well, yes, there was something fishy about it, see the water level at the bottom of the board.		Creepy hanging homemade doll in the courtyard.
Grass nicely maintained, but building left wide open and full of trash.		Cafeteria.		This building was weird even before Katrina.
House that burned down the day before this picture was taken.		Finally, a laundromat opened in the neighborhood, just off Galvez street. Think they have wifi?	Chopped up car on Fourth Street, stripped of anything and everything valueable. SH	SH
Car fusebox. SH		SH	Our police beating video made the front page of the city paper on March 4th, right next to Brittany. Wonder if she read it? Wonder if she can read? No, Brittany is actually a robot, programmed to mess up every once in a while so she will appear human, but her operators have overdone it and now pretty much everybody knows she's a robot.	Now people say the police will have us killed.

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