LETTER FROM THE EDITORStephanie Pearl Travers

PARLOR GAMESRobin McDowell

BUMMED ON BOURBONAvery White

MICHAEL MEADS: ARTIST IN EXILE Interview with the artist

COMING SOON...Holly Devon

REAL GOODSLee “Leather”, Graison Gill, Oliver Manhattan

LIKE SMOKINGJimmy Hicks & Sophie Lee Borazanian

BUSINESS DIRECTORYA guide to local businesses

Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Pearl Travers Content Editor Holly DevonArt Director Tyler RosebushCopyediting Kate Mason

Drop us a Line editor@theironlattice.com

JUST OVER 50 YEARS AGO, Walt Disney set his sights on New Orleans as the location for his second theme park, Disney World. Legend has it that local government went looking for a kickback from Walt, but he wasn’t willing to pay out. It was then that a sleepy, swampy town in central Florida made an attractive offer that he couldn’t refuse. And so Walt brought his magical kingdom to Orlando instead, and the 40 million visitors a year that come to pay homage to that man’s dream have forever changed the landscape. You have to really look for Old Florida now, still there, but oftentimes paved over by the parking lots that accommodate the masses who make the pilgrimage year after year. Still, Disney admittedly did a lot of building from the ground up in Florida. New Orleans, with it’s complex and fecund layers of history, would have been another story.

People come to New Orleans looking for the ‘authentic’ experience. They want to hear,

taste, touch, and of course, drink New Orleans culture. Many are satisfied with what they get within a few blocks of the French Quarter. As residents, we sing the song, do the dance, make the sandwich, blend the drink, and then collect the paycheck. Many of us participate in the building and maintaining of this diorama of New Orleans built specifically for tourists to consume, knowing we can return to what is real, what sustains and keeps us, both native and adopted, loyal to this city.

Something is shifting though. It seems that younger generations are no longer satisfied with the Disney version of tourism. Millennial visitors want to stay in its residential neighborhoods, eat at its hidden gems, and frequent local bars once unseen by the visitor. One of the things I love about this city is that they will be welcomed into those sacred places as well, treated with the hospitality New Orleans is famous for. Still, part of what makes working on the front lines

of tourist economy possible is knowing that at the end of the day, you can take off your smile and shoes, have a drink with people you know and trust, and be excused from the gaze of those looking to consume a culture that you actually live your day-to-day life in. This becomes complicated when they are occupying the barstool next to you, or blasting music until what even this city might consider the wee-hours on the other side of your double shotgun. There is always something at stake when we cede too much to the visitor.

As always, infinite thanks to every single person who had these conversations, gave their time, and supported us in this second issue.

Stephanie TraversEditor-in-ChiefThe Iron Lattice

Special Thanks Jacky Kim, 40 Arpent, Slow and LeuxBellegarde Bread, Heathcliffe Hailey, George Ingmire,

Shannon Skardat, Clouet Gardens, Joshua SmithFaubourg Wines

Cover Le Roi du Carnaval, 2006Michael Meads

Inside Back Cover Long-Stemmed SuzySpencer Patrick Douglas

Back Cover Sophia Lee Borazanian

CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

IT’S THE SUNDAY MORNING before Mardi Gras, and I’m walking to Jackson Square to solicit tourists for a 10 a.m. St. Louis Cemetery #1 Walking Tour. Convinced that I’m the only person in the city both awake and sober, I sigh heavily as my boots make hollow clunking sounds on the undulating sidewalk of Esplanade Avenue. Tour guiding during Carnival is especially trying. For the past week I had been cursed with either no customers or the Most Bigoted Tourists In the United States: “Why would you be interested in slavery if you’re Asian?”...“Will our tour be in Japanese? Chinese?”...“If I were twenty years younger, I’d have you down the street and out to dinner.”

No one ever spontaneously walks up to a Sunday morning Haunted Cemetery tour. The only foot traffic are throngs of churchgoers pouring out of St. Louis Cathedral or other folks in the service industry. The parishioners turn their noses up at my “TOUR HERE” sign. I haven’t developed thick enough

skin to laugh it off, but I keep pushing flyers into people’s hands. I’d prefer to

watch other workers quietly going about their business; the Louisiana

Fresh delivery man unloads boxes of seafood and produce

at Tableau. A gentleman picks up the huge bins of trash that leak dirty water into the designated tour

meeting spot. Buggy drivers feed their horses, artists carefully hang canvasses along the fence, and servers rush off to work the brunch shift, brushing lint off neatly pressed aprons. Everyone looks tired. If I removed my makeup and taxidermied bird hairpiece, I would too.

With each lady in white short-shorts who sneers at me during the day, I rack up more items on my list of reasons to detest French

Quarter tourists. Two exceptionally intoxicated women on my tour began accosting people in bars, getting up in my face and yelling, “Get on with it!” and then face-planted into a doorway. I let them wander off into the night. Later, while showering off the smell of bile and corn syrup, I wonder if being on the front lines of the tourism economy is worth it.

The word “economy” comes from the Latin roots oikos and nemein, literally meaning household management. If the entire French Quarter is really a communally managed house, then make no mistake—it is definitely a haunted one. Tourists ask sheepishly if I believe in ghosts. “If you don’t believe in ghosts, you don’t believe in New Orleans,” I respond. We spin our yarns on top of the ever-shifting graves of the Celebrity, the Macabre,

and the Unsung. We borrow a glamorous battle story from one family and a fantastical voodoo account from another. The ghosts of the French Quarter must be laughing at us, playing a very expensive game of charades in their parlor. The idea of the French Quarter as a house with secret passageways and grand foyers tempers my frustrations.

Tour guides like myself must manage this house in our own unique ways. Whenever possible, I weave in “People’s History,”stories of ordinary citizens who worked to dismantle oppressive systems through small acts of resistance. I see the whole world in New

Orleans, my dirty grain of sand: Colonialism at its worst, defiance at its bravest, and social inequity in its most putrified state.

Ultimately, though, “hosting” tourists pays the bills.We make money by narrating encounters that meet the expectations stirred up by brochures, web campaigns, and Hollywood. The sales pitches are lavish: “Come on down to N’awlins, darlin’! Experience our unique culture! Learn about our rich history!” Tourists are most delighted when their walking tour fulfills advertised promises. I began changing my tours to better validate romantic images of pirates, spectres of noblemen, and fabulous cultural mashup cuisine. The more levity, the larger the tip. It’s hard not to feel like a sell-out.

Depending on which guides you ask, there are brighter and more rewarding aspects to participating in New Orleans’ tourist economy. A perfect example is my boss, Jennifer Raven, who has built a persona and career around her acclaimed tours. Sixteen years of guiding, both on horse-drawn buggy and foot, makes Jennifer a decorated veteran. She’s trained or advised almost every guide I’ve met. Jennifer’s iconic

red hair and signature pirate trappings match her fiery wit, quick tongue, and easy laugh. The first time I accompanied her on a cemetery tour, a guest whispered in ecstasy, “Ooh, we’re just so lucky. She’s better than the theater!” I spotted her one day twirling around the post of a gallery. She waved and told my guests that I was a great guide. I was proud to be a fellow French Quarter hostess.

My co-worker Barbara Crumm is an inspiring optimist. She rolls up to Jackson Square on her flower-adorned cruiser and keeps me company while I wait impatiently for tour guests. In addition to guiding for Jennifer, Barbara is a poet-for-hire on Royal Street and an aspiring singer-songwriter. She’s assembled a very colorful life, interacting with tourists and other artists nearly every day. I admire her more positive outlook on the symbiosis of New Orleans and tourists, and seek counsel on how she manages to not be a cynic like me.

I’m finding ways to get over the self-condemnation of playing (pandering?) to a paying audience. I fancy myself a hostess-in-training, learning how to balance entertainment

and education. Children giggle when I act out the scene of Capitan Nuñez running around on Good Friday trying to find someone to put out the Great New Orleans Fire of 1788. Uptight history buffs with guidebooks eventually loosen up and laugh at my awkwardly delivered puns. To my delight, I occasionally encounter people interested in social justice or teenagers who have heard of Homer Plessy. One afternoon, a young woman asked me to stand by while she spread her father’s ashes in the unmarked Protestant field of St. Louis #1. I momentarily suspended my cynicism and stopped thinking about tips. I must humbly admit that some guests do seem like people I’d actually invite into my home. At the very least, tourists keep Jennifer in business and me in good standing with my landlord. Feelings and finances sometimes align.

“I see the whole world in New Orleans, my dirty grain of sand: Colonialism at its worst, defiance at its bravest, and social

inequity in its most putrified state.”

Illustration by Trey Bryan

by Robin McDowell

by

Your most recent work takes on such epic proportions. How do you piece together the arc of one of these larger drawings?

I’ve always felt that these big drawings were basically the last 15 minutes of a four-hour epic, like a Wagnerian opera where I’m just trying to capture the most dramatic, intense

moment. First and foremost, I always think of it in theatrical terms—my whole world, really, is about opera.

Ultimately, I would say it’s history painting: recording one’s experiences, one’s history. That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never been conceptual. All I know how to do is simply record my world, pay attention to the things

that attract me and interest me, and that’s the underdog, the outcast, the loner. Those are the people with whom my sympathies lie. I want to make the work about those people and the things they’ve gone through, the things that I’ve gone through. I don’t know how to make art otherwise.

It’s easy to feel intimidated when approaching Michael Meads, the architect of a body of work ranging from intimate sketches to vast, dramatic tableaux, all of which indicate the kind of mastery of craft few contemporary artists can claim. But if you take a chance and give him a ring at his studio, you will be instantly rewarded, as his warm voice and artistic curiosity make for a conversation as engaging as his drawings. It is rare and refreshing to find an artist as humbled by his subjects and the artistic process as Michael Meads. He meticulously chronicled the New Orleans underworld for decades before Katrina hit and destroyed much of his studio and countless works of original art. Though he has relocated to higher ground in New Mexico for the time being, he remains a devoted reveler and supernumerary in the mad opera of New Orleans.

The Intercession (Second Version), 2010. Graphite and charcoal on acid free paper. 60”x60”

Detail from The Intercession, 2010

and actually have something to say. Those are the people whose work I find to be the most interesting. Even if they’re just in dialogue with themselves, and others may not speak the language, that’s okay. To me, the excitement is trying to decipher that visual language.

It seems like you draw a lot of inspiration from subterranean atmospheres like the Corner Pocket. Is that where you feel most at home?

Well, I’ve never really been comfortable in the mainstream of anything. Suburbia just makes my skin crawl: the plastic, the manufactured,

the inauthentic. As for the Pocket, Ms. Fly (the late Lee Featherstone) the original owner, who I knew and adored, created a really wonderfully twisted atmosphere. It was just this side of legal for the most part. The clientele was terrifying and the dancers on the bar could be everything from ex-marines to runaways from Mississippi. Back then they’d dance in pretty much whatever they had underneath their clothes: boxer shorts, tighty whiteys, whatever. It wasn’t just this G-string business you have now. Even the regular dancers would come out in briefs, and the bar just had a feel to it that was naughty, but not necessarily pretty, which is what I really liked about it. It was something

dark, sad, with a certain air of desperation. Many of these young guys were running away from bad situations; they had drug problems, or they were prostituting themselves. Usually I spent more time watching the crowd than I probably ever did watching the dancers. The crowd at the ballet, that was fun to draw.

But then my favorite bar in the city of course is Molly’s at the Market. I’ve spent more time there than any other bar in the city; ever since my husband and I moved to New Orleans, it’s always been our home bar. That’s where you would find us on a Saturday afternoon sitting in the window drinking. More so there than the gay bars, unless it was an event or we were just

The skeleton is a recurring character in your painting. How does it figure into the theatrical narrative?

I would say it’s my Memento mori. I’ve always had a very clear understanding of my own and other people’s mortality. Even as a kid, I did not have the illusion that life just goes on and on. Growing up in Alabama, when older family members died, you didn’t go to the funeral home. Instead the mortician would come to the home with the body. I remember the mortician coming to my grandmother’s house and placing the casket in the parlor. I was a wee lad, but I can still remember it, and it was rather grotesque… Alabama in the summer,

no air-conditioning, dead body… you get the idea. And then of course, as I entered college, I suddenly heard about this weird disease that seemed to be affecting gay men in New York and San Francisco. And then I started having friends that were becoming ill and dying—it was a nightmarish period of time. So death has always been part of my vocabulary.

How would you describe the relationship between the saints and sinners who share the canvas?

To me, the sacred and the profane are really the same. One of the things I like to emphasize is that religious ceremony used to always

incorporate both, until the Judeo-Christian tradition created the division between the sacred and sin. Mind-altering drugs and sex were all part of the worshipping process, as they brought about the transcendent moment where you could identify with God. Those are the closest things on earth that could give you an example of what the God-like state is about. I think so much has been lost in the human condition because those things have been removed from religion as opposed to being celebrated.

Carnival’s roots are in the pagan past as well as being a Catholic holiday. There’s a lot of dark history behind Carnival’s symbols; they carry a heavy weight, and although I’m not Catholic, I am fascinated by the rituals, or ‘the swag and the drag’ as a guy I know likes to say. But. I’m not trying to pick on Catholics. I mean, I was raised Southern Baptist, and if you want darkness, honey, let me tell you, go up to Alabama with a Southern Baptist and you’ll see just how dark it can get.

Do you find that your artistic sensibilities fit into the existing art scene in the city, and elsewhere?

The art scene in New Orleans—when I first moved down there—was like any other art scene, with artists locked in competition with each other. I find that ridiculous. There’s plenty of pie to go around. My studio is always open. If people need help or advice, or if I have a contact that might help someone, then why the hell wouldn’t I give them that information? It was like that then, and it’s like that now. Most of what I see are people with the facility to paint or sculpt, but they have nothing to say. They work hard to make you think they do, but when you cut to the chase, there’s really nothing going on. I’ve known a lot of people who called themselves artists, and you can always hear the capital “A” for Artist. That’s why I don’t really participate much in the world of contemporary art. You always see more galleries than are needed, that constantly look for new people to show whether or not they’re worth showing. I walked into a gallery one time in Chelsea, and there were pedestals throughout the space with melting sticks of butter displayed on top of them. Not ceramic castings, or sculptures, but actual sticks of butter. It’s an oversaturated scene.

Just to be clear, one of my heroes is Rothko, so I’m not saying that art has to be narrative or realistic, but it has to be well done with a brain behind it. Art-making is essential. It always will be. When it comes to being an artist, it’s not a career choice or a lifestyle. It’s about making the work, something you are compelled to do. You’re going to make the work no matter what, whether you’re getting attention or not. Folk or outsider artists are usually the most honest

Halloween Party, 1995. Acrylic and gesso on wood. 32”x48”

Detail of Jackie Mae’s Sour Hour at Le Round Up, 2004.

kind of making an evening of it, going on the grand tour, so to speak.

Even so, it seems like queer culture in New Orleans is a real preoccupation in your work.

I wouldn’t say a preoccupation, more just a matter of fact. I find gay culture is becoming more and more homogenized, and I find that extremely disturbing. No matter where you go, you can be in Berlin, or you can be in San Francisco or you can be in Atlanta, and it all looks and feels the same. I think New Orleans is something of an exception. The queers in New Orleans are, well, we’re a wackier bunch. In New Orleans, by birth right you’re an outsider—so then to be the outsiders within the outsiders makes it even more challenging, and also kind of wonderful—being a fabulous freak, so to speak, which I take great pride in. In New Orleans there’s also a certain degree of insanity that goes beyond any desire for conformity, and a wonderful disregard for fashion and trends. I think it ties into the larger culture—what everyone that has lived and died here had to go through to be here. Those shared experiences create a somewhat insulating effect from outside influences.

In what ways would you say New Orleans has shaped your art?

There is no one way to ever describe it. If you spend any length of time there, you’re never going to look at the rest of the world the same way. New Orleans is a hard place to live. I think people have been trying to come up with a description for 300 years, but just breathing the air has its effects. The history, the melodrama, the drama, the tragedy, the comedy, the costuming. If that doesn’t fuel one’s creativity, I don’t know what possibly can.

The people are just some of the most fascinating people you’ll ever meet. From your very sweet next-door neighbor, to some of the bizarre, perhaps a little mentally touched individuals just walking down the street. You head out the door for the day and you have no idea what adventure may lay ahead, no matter what you had planned out. That’s what I miss the most: on a daily basis, there is just that sense of adventure. What the hell might happen today?

How did you get from New Orleans to the high desert?

In 2006, I was blessed to receive an artist residency in Santa Fe for a couple of months, and that allowed me to get out here and kind of check out the lay of the land. The nearest

major body of water from Santa Fe is twelve hundred miles away; I figured it’s quite safe from hurricanes. The environment of the high desert is very cathartic, very healing and it was what was really needed at the time.

Do you still consider yourself in exile?

Well, the way I think of it in my head is that I live in New Orleans; I just happen to be spending too much time in the desert. What I’ve been trying to do for seven years now is figure out a way to be there for six months out of the year, and be here for six months out of the year. Unfortunately, it’s still weighted towards the desert. Homesickness has just become something that’s kind of always there, particularly when oysters come into the season. That’s when it gets really bad—I’m a raw oyster fanatic. But no, I have not found the solution to that question yet. If somebody said, “Here’s your house. You can live here year round.” I would have a very hard time doing that. With all that happened with Katrina, that would be difficult. After all the emotional trauma, it’s kind of like, do you really want to put yourself back into that position again full-time? And that’s the rub....but we always get home for Mardi Gras. It’s something that just has to happen. I spend 364 days a year preparing for that one day.

“New Orleans will be forever as it is now, the mighty mart of the merchandise brought from more than one thousand rivers. This rapidly increasing city will, in no distant time, leave the empire of the Eastern world far behind. With Boston, Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia on the left; with Mexico on the right, Havana in front, and the immense Valley of the Mississippi in the rear, no such position for the accumulation and perpetuity of wealth and power ever existed.”

-Thomas Jefferson

The Burden of Love, 1994. Acrylic on gesso on wood.

OF THE MANY developments coming to the Bywater, the cruise terminal to be established at Poland Avenue is one of the least divisive; almost everyone living in its vicinity agrees that the impact on residents will be substantial, and likely not for the better. Even though some aspects of its development are still uncertain, the image in many people’s minds resembles something like a full-scale invasion. If AirBnB already has the neighborhood straining at the seams with tourists, what’s a quiet riverside community to do when boatloads of cruise goers descend on the Bywater?

According to the Port of New Orleans, the terminal will be a home port, not a port of call, which means passengers will be alighting their vessel at Poland, rather than disembarking, unlike the terminals in the French Quarter and CBD. Still, when the Port presented the

plan late last fall to the Bywater Neighborhood Association and its more recent offshoot, Neighbors First for Bywater, community members felt that questions regarding the capacity of the neighborhood to support the influx of people arriving to Poland went largely unanswered. Brian Luckett, an active member of Neighbors First for Bywater, feels the numbers don’t add up:

“These very large cruise ships can hold 4,500 passengers and another 1,500 crew members. The Port is planning on two departures per weekend: one on Saturday and one on Sunday. That’s 9,000 passengers coming and going in a single day plus the trucks needed to resupply them. The Port cannot tell us how that traffic will be managed or even where all the cars will park. All we know is that on the couple of occasions when they previously used the

Poland Street Wharf for cruise ship departures, the traffic was jammed up all the way to Elysian Fields.”

During the presentation, the Port hoped to get the community on board by emphasizing the potential for retail space and showcasing local artists, but this didn’t do much to help people shake the feeling that they were being told, not asked. According to Mark Heck, President of Neighbors First for Bywater, “They never asked whether or not the neighborhood wanted it, and my sense, based on my immediate community, is that it doesn’t. I just don’t know how the positives would outweigh the negatives.”

That the Port held meetings with neighborhood organizations on both sides of St. Claude while still in the design phase seems to be a sign of good faith that they want to work

with the neighborhood. The fact is, though, that the Port of New Orleans operates the wharves autonomously from city government, and has the power to make development decisions regardless of community response. Finding that the fate of the neighborhood is entirely in the hands the Port’s Board of Commissioners is troubling for those opposed to the Poland Cruise Terminal. As Brian Luckett put it, “Nobody even knows what the Port of New Orleans is: is it a state agency, a parastatal, a free trade zone? The rules that apply to the government don’t seem to apply to the Port—for all intents and purposes, it’s a black box.”

When the Board of Commissioners for the Port of New Orleans was created in 1896, the New Orleans trade economy had entered a slump. Thomas Jefferson’s mighty mart of merchandise had not fared well in the tumultuous economy of the Civil War years, and during Reconstruction, maintenance of the port was neglected. As a result, excess silt began to clog the river, blocking passage and further discouraging trade. Towards the turn of the century, however, a new generation of businessmen came of age intent on restoring the port to its former glory. This was the era of the Panama Canal, and as Americans set their sights on Latin America, New Orleans was as well positioned as ever between Mexican and Caribbean sugar plantations and the burgeoning banana republics. As things stood, however, the city’s riverfront infrastructure wasn’t up to the challenge of seizing new economic opportunities. Men such as James W. Porch, an eager and industrious Midwestern transplant, argued that the city needed a cohesive and publicly-run port infrastructure. The wharves were run by corrupt private businessmen; the public had almost no control over the economic spine of the city. And so the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans was created to build and administer a state-of-the-art port facility, including 18 additional wharves along the river and a Public Grain Elevator. Through the vision of the first Board of Commissioners New Orleans saw a renewal of faith in the future of its international trade.

The Board of Commissioners is charged with setting policies and regulating traffic and commerce. The seven unsalaried commissioners are appointed by the governor from a list of nominees submitted by 19 local business, civic, labor, education, and maritime groups. Four are from Orleans Parish, two are from Jefferson Parish, and one is from St. Bernard Parish. From its inception until well into the

If the Port of New Orleans was founded to maintain this legacy, at what point do we consider its current actions to be contrary to its mandate?

1960s, the Board followed the vision of their predecessors in using the Port to promote the city as a bustling trade hub. However, in the late 50s, when a technological change in shipping meant that thousands of dock workers were left without work, the trade economy once again suffered a blow. The Port then began to reevaluate how best to use its assets. As the commissioners figured it, the riverfront could be as valuable for tourism as it was for commerce, and as the city began to move towards creating a more robust tourist economy, the Port paved the way. In 1968, the Port opened a trade exhibition center called The Rivergate, which helped bring conventions to New Orleans and served as a precursor to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. In 1984, the year New Orleans hosted the World’s Fair on the riverfront, the Port spearheaded the building of the Riverwalk Marketplace and developed its first modern cruise facilities.

Bywater residents have only recently begun to experience life in the fishbowl of the tourist gaze. After the creation of new wharves in the neighborhood during 1896 such as Poland, Pauline, and Gallier, the Bywater offered enough blue collar jobs to maintain a thriving working class. As the city drifted towards a tourism-based economy, the neighborhood’s economy took a blow, but those residents who stayed were too out of the way of the French Quarter for the Bywater to see much exposure to tourists. Kevin Peri, who grew up next to Saturn Bar back when the owner had a candy window for neighborhood kids, says that in spite of the economic hardship, the community was strong. “I used to walk into Markey’s and know everyone there.” Now, however, Satsuma is featured in in-flight magazines, AirBnB keeps local bars flush with newcomers, and old-timers have trouble recognizing their own neighborhood. “Living here in the nineties, it was dangerous. I had drug dealers on both sides, people would set cars on fire outside my house. And that’s when the neighborhood was the coolest. Anything could happen—underground concerts, parties. There was a Bywater party called Decadence that the lady from Vaughn’s put on. It was an anything goes type of party. Now the neighborhood is

safer, but nobody is left. The culture of the neighborhood is gone.”

For some, the changes the neighborhood has undergone mean that the coming cruise terminal will only exacerbate damage that has already been done. One resident who has owned a warehouse in the Bywater since 1989 where he lives and works, says “I’ve sort of given up on it being a neighborhood. Maybe it’s a neighborhood for those who have come recently, but a lot of people don’t stay year round, and there are a tremendous amount of bed and breakfasts. For me that’s not a neighborhood. I don’t blame people for wanting to make money, but with everything that’s already happened I just don’t think the cruise terminal will make that much of a difference.” Even those long-term residents who, like Kevin Peri, are worried about the impact of the cruise terminal and would like to see a change in the direction the neighborhood is taking, have a sense that

the city made up its mind long ago about the trajectory of New Orleans development. “I think whatever the city sees as the biggest money maker is what they’re going to do. I think the deal has already been done. Especially when you consider the [Crescent] park, I feel that the city had a plan before the plan came

out,” says Peri.The plan he is referring to has indeed

existed for some time, and goes by the name of Reinventing the Crescent. While the cruise terminal is not explicitly included in the design plan, Reinventing the Crescent is a cohesive blueprint for developing downriver properties to maximize revenue from real estate and tourism. Conceived in 2008 under Mayor Nagin, the project, according to the opening letter of the design plan, aims to “to redefine and transform the crescent of the Crescent City into an internationally prominent waterfront.” The realization of this vision is being spearheaded by a “public benefit corporation” called the New Orleans Building Corporation, under the helm of its CEO, prominent developer Sean Cummings. Phase 1, the only phase listed on the website, is the creation the of the Crescent City Park. But the website claims this is only the beginning: “As we move into the 21st Century, New Orleans is reinventing itself as an entrepreneurial and artisan-based economy. Our riverfront property will emerge as a symbol of our reinvention—a beacon for New Orleans’ transformation into America’s boutique city.”

The project of developing abandoned industrial waterfronts into bustling centers for condos, restaurants, and public parks has been

taken up by cities around the country. City governments in Baltimore, Pittsburg, Memphis, and many others have facilitated a waterfront real estate boom. If the forces involved in Reinventing the Crescent have their way, New Orleans will be no exception. In 2006, the New Orleans Building Corporation, the City of New Orleans, and the Port of New Orleans entered into an unprecedented Cooperative Endeavor Agreement, which released property owned by the Port and set aside strictly for maritime use, thus opening up riverfront property for development.

For most of its history, New Orleans has been a bustling center of trade and international business, and its cultural traditions, legendary musicians, and diverse population have all been direct beneficiaries. If the Port of New Orleans was founded to maintain this legacy, at what point do we consider its current actions to be contrary to its mandate? In 1968, when the Port initiated a series of building projects designed for tourists, it followed the precedent of other port cities like Venice, Italy, which turned towards tourism and away from trade as an economic mainstay. This is not to say that the Port of New Orleans has abandoned riverfront commerce; with over 500 million tons moved annually on the Lower Mississippi, it remains a leading export hub. However, the Port’s infrastructure currently requires millions of dollars in investment funding to bring the it to its full capacity. While raising the necessary funds would be difficult no matter what, the task is made more so with the Port dividing the budget between tourism and trade; the Poland Cruise Terminal is expected to cost a total of $50 million.

While there are certainly those with plenty of fight left when it comes to the Cruise Terminal

and other development projects, when you talk to most people about the drastic changes headed to their neighborhood, you hear the unmistakeable sound of defeat in their voice. And the more you learn about New Orleans development, the easier it is to understand why. Powerful organizations with money, influence, and savoir faire have come together to get behind a unified vision of the direction the city is to take. Read between the lines of Reinventing the Crescent’s rhetoric, with phrases such as “the new New Orleans is about smart, permanent economic growth, having maintained a steady in-flow of investment and young talent since Hurricane Katrina,” and you’ll see a strong commitment to a prosperous economy which may not include the city’s long-term residents. In the process of making their vision a reality, churches and neighborhood associations may be nominally included, but if their vision differs, officially they have very little power to resist.

That said, enough residents are dissatisfied with the current direction of New Orleans development to warrant an investigation of other avenues of resistance. The first step, however, might be to learn from the opposition, and present a unified vision of alternative development. Reinventing the Crescent is in part a response to an economy which was floundering long before the storm. One reason the interests behind it have gained so much ground is that they offer what they perceive to be a practical solution to the problems facing New Orleans. How then, can those individuals and organizations frustrated with the status quo come together to find an alternative to policies that promote a widening economic gap?

Though it might be challenging, and it might not reflect the national trend, one option

is to come up with a plan in which the city as a whole reinvests into trade, instead of tourism and real estate, thus providing the kind of steady blue collar jobs which have sustained the city’s most vital neighborhoods for centuries. Like in 1896, New Orleans currently has the potential to once again occupy a central position in international trade. As of June, the expansion of the Panama Canal has been completed. If New Orleans undertakes its own expansion and deepens the shipping canal, the city could accommodate larger vessels coming from Panama, and the century-old relationship would stand to become much more lucrative. The normalizing relations with Cuba is another promising sign for the future of international trade. Before 1962, when Kennedy cut off all exchange, more than 60 percent of our country’s Cuban imports and exports passed through the Port of New Orleans. As negotiations to end the embargo continue, there promises to be plenty of new opportunities for trade.

This is only one alternative to an economy which focuses primarily on entrepreneurs and the creative middle class, though there are surely many. What is most important is that we understand that while development plans like Reinventing the Crescent have already been set in motion, there is still time to make an impact on the final outcome. When it comes to the Poland Cruise Terminal, what kind of community resources can we insist be included in the development of the wharf? How can we do a better job of connecting across the city with those who want the New Orleans economy to bring prosperity to all its residents, regardless of race and class? If the coming changes inspire in us a sense of urgency rather than despair, then it is likely that we can still insist on taking up a seat at the table.

I started by shining shoes for an old man, and I used to watch him all day. I made money shining shoes, but he was making the real money repairing shoes. So I watched him and I watched him, and he and I built a little rapport with each other. He was from Saudi Arabia. One day, I came to work, and he said “What would you do if I leave you this shop? If you come up with $7,500 I’ll sell it to you.” So I came up with the money, and I’ve been rolling ever since. I opened that shop up in Dallas, Texas. We still have a shop over there, and my brother runs that one. Once a year, he’ll come over here for a week and work this shop, and I’ll go over there to work his. That was 16 years ago. I was just a young pup then, now I’m an old coot.

Growing up in New Orleans is rough. New Orleans, we don’t have a lot of positive role models. Very few escape it—you see a lot of negativity. Growing up in the 8th Ward, 7th Ward, 6th Ward, it’s a lot of violence, hustling. I hustled these streets a long time, I fell down a lot of times. I was in and out of the system. New Orleans is a rough place, and I was rough with ‘em. It was better for me just to leave town, get a fresh start. That’s why I say I’m my best success story. Now, this is my hustle. I’m here every day that ends with a Y. I come in

here 8 in the morning and I don’t mind staying ‘til 10. It keeps me out of trouble, I meet a lot of great people, and I love what I do. So I’m happy. To me, in New Orleans, to live to be 50 is an accomplishment in itself, if you really come from the streets.

I was missing home when I was in Texas though. I love New Orleans, you know my roots are here. My sister died in 2009. When I came home for the funeral I was like, “This is all the family we got?” It wasn’t too crowded, and I was watching my mom sobbing, and I said “I’m about to come back home.” So I came home, and I reopened my shop after months of looking for a perfect location, and I couldn’t ask for anything better than right here on historic Claiborne, right across from Kermit’s place [Mother-in-Law Lounge] and right down the street from the historic Circle Foods. I grew up in this neighborhood.

What I do here is a lost art. There’s not many cobblers in New Orleans. Considering we have Majorettes starting at five-years-old with their little marching boots here, and second line groups have their expensive, $2000 shoes, it’s funny to me that we don’t have more cobblers. I also do all the custom stuff, stuff you can’t get at a typical shoe repair. I do everything here. I do a lot of leather “specialty items.”This is New Orleans, you know—real decadent.

New Orleans is the kind of place where you got to make a lot of friends and you’ll be well-known. Every customer in here, I give a break.

I know I got the best prices. I help everybody who come in here. Nobody pay what the ticket say. Especially after Katrina, with the city needing so much help, this my contribution to New Orleans right here—I could help New Orleans one shoe at a time. I might have to start making flippers if we have another hurricane, but for right now that’s my contribution to New Orleans.

It is not uncommon to meet a tradesperson in New Orleans. Unlike some of the other larger cities in the U.S., there is still a visible working class here, and the high tech boom has somehow not yet found roots. Carpenters, bakers, cobblers, costume makers, butchers, bartenders—until recently, the low cost of living and support for local business has allowed

a rich landscape of trade to thrive. Making something with your hands to offer

in exchange for your livelihood establishes intimacy within community. It also offers a sense of liberty; labor is not absorbed by any larger corporate body, but instead, manifests into real goods that can be shared with others. Everybody needs shoes, everybody eats, and in

New Orleans, everybody masks. In what often feels like a an increasingly impersonal and corporate landscape, knowing and supporting the people who fashion the things we need to get by is a simple, powerful way to support your neighborhood and city.

Stephanie Pearl Travers

LEE “LEATHER” OF LEATHER LILY

My best friend’s mom is from Chalmette, and I had been living with him in Spain. I moved around, lived in New Hampshire after coming back to the States, and then decided to come down here. It was a very mundane, practical decision, based on weather. I took a Greyhound, it was 36 hours, or 40 hours. I still have the ticket. We got an apartment right on Royal Street.

I’d always cooked and have been around food as a profession since I was fifteen. I never worked in an office—it doesn’t sit well with me. But even the restaurant industry was too much: hours, pressure, competition, misogyny. One of the first things I did here in New Orleans was go to Hollygrove market, and that was a big moment. I started baking at home, reading about baking, researching in the library. Eventually, I started baking enough to begin selling to friends and working out of a commercial kitchen.

A few years into it, I felt like I needed leadership. I was having a hard time finding that mentor in New Orleans when it came to baking bread. Cooking, sure, but something was missing with baking. Baking takes a lot of

GRAISON GILL OF BELLEGARDE BAKERY

I started sewing when I was five years old. Nobody taught me—I just kind of knew how to. I started making money off of it when I was 11. I did a mother-of-the-bride dress for my neighbor. Then I started getting a lot of attention for it, and all of a sudden I was going to be a fashion designer. When I was 13 I was on TV—like sort of a local prodigy— this was Minneapolis, by the way. Then I got a bad haircut, and I shaved my head. I didn’t look so good with a shaved head, so I put a hat on. All I could find was old lady hats, because hats had kind of gone out of fashion, so I started making my own.

When I came to New Orleans in ‘89, I was coming for three months. I thought hats would be a good thing to bring because it’s kind of a party city, and I could make a little money. I played music, which doesn’t make a lot of money, so I thought I’ll bring some hats. t caught on like wildfire. Everybody wanted them, and then, people talked me into staying for Mardi Gras, and then talked me into staying for JazzFest, and next thing you know I was never going back to Los Angeles. By ‘90 I thought “Aw, man, I’m stuck here like glue. I better find a place.” I was walking on Decatur one morning, a little hungover, and someone said, “Hey, Oliver! Someone’s renting out their place on Magazine. You want it?” I was like, “Ahhh sure I’ll take it.” So, I gave him a ten-dollar deposit and said “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Cirque de Ville. I had it for five years. It was a “having fun, but making money shop.”

I thought I was moving back to Los Angeles, then I find out I’m having a baby with someone in New Orleans. I had already let go of everything. I let go of my store, and then suddenly I’m moving back. So I started having hat shows. I’d play music and bring my hats, do theatrical performances with hats. I started touring with that gig. Suddenly I had a family, a husband. What really started centering my business was when I opened a speakeasy. I didn’t want to work too much in bars because I had a baby, but with a speakeasy I could open it every couple weeks and keep that same clientele I had before. I ran the speakeasy for about six years, and then, Katrina.

When I came back to town, I needed a place again, and I ended up with my friend Alton Asborne on Frenchmen before it blew up—the place later became the Spotted Cat. Then finally I settled into the St. Claude neighborhood. My girlfriend got The AllWays, then I watched the wine shop open. Right around the same time, I got The Parlor. My intention was never to be completely open, but to be open sometimes, kind of like the hat shows. That’s how we came to do the soirees. Right now, I absolutely commit to the second Saturday, and then I do

events—you know, New Orleans is very event-centric. I also do appointments. My favorite line I learned from Mae West, and I say it every time I sell a hat, “It’s business doing pleasure with you.”

That brings us to the tourism conversation. Basically, people come to town, and they are here for St. Patrick’s day or Mardi Gras or Halloween, and they’re staying with friends. They say, “Oh, I need a costume,” and all of a sudden, I’ve got three guests that have never seen New Orleans who I’m outfitting. They spend a little money, I get a little economy, they get a little fun. There are many tourists who are repeat customers, and they bring more. Fashion can be difficult to find in New Orleans.There’s something interesting about needing to be eccentric, yet functional. It’s absolute necessity here. You can’t really go to Walmart and buy your clothes-—people in other places can. Here we need something that gives it a party spirit, but you don’t want to be a complete clown. That’s where a lot of my local business thrives.

A lot of my clients I’ve had since 1989. They know to come to Second Saturday, but if they have a wedding, they’re going to call, even if they’re going to the Hamptons. They don’t want to bring Hamptons fashion, they want to bring New Orleans. Once you figure out how to be comfortable in something that isn’t quite the norm, once you get that attention in your

blood, you get accustomed to it—you need it. I also do groups: Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls. I’ve done the Pussyfooters, helped them with their looks.

New Orleans has a lot of things that are discarded. For years and years I’ve seen that. I’ve made costumes out of chicken feed bags and Community Coffee bags. One time, I went to a convention and they were throwing out a stack of Cajun grab bags that look like produce bags—I’ve made a hat out of everyone of them. People know I’ll make something out of anything, and so I’ll go out and find things on my porch that someone has left. There’s an element of my business I like to call “disaster fashion.” It came from people giving me things after Katrina, something that might be made from interesting fabric, but doesn’t quite work. So I’d cut it up, and turn it into something else.

There’s a lot more fashion, even disaster fashion now, and a lot of hat makers. But I think after 40 years, the fit, the weight, the signature—it’s different. I have my niche. There’s something about funky-meets-comfort. It’s fun at festivals; I’ll see my pieces, some even from 25 years ago. It brings you back. I like to think about how my second line is going to be hilarious—the most colorful audience, with everything on they got from Oliver. It’s gonna be nutty.

OLIVER MANHATTAN OF THE PARLORthan the tourist economy. I think the biggest thing is precedence.

I’m not from here, but this place has such a magnetic compulsion for a lot of people, and I am one of them. We’re not talking about control or anarchy or anything that’s not tangibly present in New Orleans’ past. This isn’t about a boutique experience, or “local food” as a cultural commodity, but as a part of our history. Even though the city no longer owns the majority of these public buildings, some still stand as a testament that New Orleans once had its shit together when it came to providing and distributing fresh, locally-grown healthy food to its residents. There is no reason that this same system can’t work. It’s all tangled up now, but those threads can be un-teased with patient, willing fingers.

One in four children in New Orleans is hungry. Even though we package and sell New Orleans as this authentic, local experience, the majority of the ingredients in our current cuisine are not grown anywhere near here.

There was a publicly-owned market system in New Orleans that was active and healthy up until the 1940s—the city owned dozens of buildings, beginning with the French Market, the oldest public market in North America. Every single neighborhood had a publicly-owned market that was meant to serve the neighborhood around it. St Roch Market is the last. It is absurd that $4,500,000 in public money was spent on a building to sell food to a starving city. That money should fund the supply side of the food equation, not the demand. It should support the native rather

control, discipline, and time. Even though our baking tradition has been here for hundreds of years, I feel like we’ve lost knowledge over the past 80 or 90 years because of French bread, white bread, this pandering to the nostalgia of what a tourist expects to eat.

I realized as a young man that there is no growth without listening. I wasn’t comfortable without having someone to look up to and learn from. So I left town to go to a baking school. I learned everything from croissants to wedding cakes. After over two years away, I came back here and opened the bakery.

The irony when it comes to bread is that we have that French bread or Po’ boy loaf that’s been around since 1928 or 29—a result of the streetcar strike. There was a group of brothers that owned a bakery, the Martin Brothers, and they saw these laborers striking. As the anecdote goes, they made this large loaf of bread to accommodate feeding the guys on strike. So, there is no denigration involved when I talk about this white, French bread. It has an important place in the city’s history—cultural, social, and gastronomic. But if that was 1929, there is 200 years of European culture that comes before that when it comes to bread in this city. That’s something that I am really interested in; how bread moves through communities and is refracted into culture. I like to compare that po’ boy loaf to going to Preservation Hall and only hearing Muskrat Ramble. Or buying an Elvis record to learn about the blues. It’s really not the whole picture at all.

Locals consume the vast majority of the bread we sell. I’d say there are 15,000 people on a busy week that eat our bread. We don’t really focus that much on the tourist market. We do sell bread to smaller, local restaurants that are affected by people coming to town, but that’s not the main thrust of our business. Of the nearly 70 accounts that we have, the business garnered from tourists is more of a lagniappe for them, not what they are focused on. I think it’s really important that we don’t pander to that tourist market at the expense of our residents, not when we have the problems we do with infrastructure. It’s always a surprise to me that what we need as locals seems to be a shadow economy, while the tourist economy is what continues to cast the shadow.

For me, selling bread out of a commercial bakery in Broadmoor, there is never any intentional interaction with tourists, no billboards at the airport, or ads in tourist-centric magazines. Most New Orleans businesses are fiscally required to contribute to a Tourism tax. Instead, City Hall should be focused on supporting small businesses and finding pathways for healthy, local food for local people. It’s incredible to me that most of the food we are serving in this city wasn’t sourced in this state, or oftentimes even this country. 4 of the 5 top crops in Louisiana are non-edible.

Jimmy Hicks as told to Sophie Lee BorazanianPhotographs by Sophie Lee Borazanian

I STARTED PLAYING MUSIC in 1961. A friend of mine, Ernest Williams, wanted to play the guitar, but we didn’t know how or even have enough money to buy one so we took the back steps off of his Mom’s house and carved the guitar out of the steps. He still has the guitar. Our group, the Alpines, would practice on his Mom’s front steps. We learned 3 songs and a guy gave us a gig in Bridge City. We played the same 3 songs over and over, all over Louisiana and Mississippi. Even when we didn’t have a job, we would just show up and find spots to play.

There were ordeals that we went through while playing in the South. One time on our way to Meridian, we stopped in Laurel at a gas station. A sheriff came over and told us that if we didn’t set up and play at the station we were going to go to jail. We set up all of our instruments and played two songs then he let us go.

I was married August 6th, 1955. I was 17 and she was 14. My son was born November 23rd, 1955 (he is 61 this year). I was visiting and taking care of my great aunt at the time in Mississippi. I was in Moorehead, in the outskirts, backwoods Mississippi. My relatives told me I was too young to get married, too young for that responsibility. I said that I was man enough to make it, I am man enough to take care of it. We came down to New Orleans about eight months after he was born.

The first time I played on Bourbon was around 1966 on the 200 block. I had started singing in 1961, I worked Bourbon for about five years. After that I stayed away until 1994. I wasn’t comfortable working there the ways things were, between the low wages and all the racial stuff going on at that time. We’d be seated in the back—we couldn’t mix and mingle, and going up to the bar was out of the question.

Things in the 90’s were better, the money was a little different. I always kept a job though- for about 12 years I had a thrift store on 1717 Dryades St. It was called Hick’s Stuff Shop. I started with one building and eventually I got the one next to it and they both were full. Then the change came. They started renovating the street around 96 and 97. They started buying properties and making arrangements- they stopped renting the properties to people who were living there. Be wealthy and own or be poor and be gone.

This city now is not the city it was. The economy changed, and people are really suffering. I don’t really know who to get angry with. There’s politicians that run this city, and the people who come in from out of town and try to make New Orleans like their home— change the whole concept of New Orleans. I don’t really know. There is nothing I can do about it but sit back and look at it.

I am debating about going back on Bourbon St. I don’t want to, too much chaos. All of those partially-lit streets, anything is liable to happen to me. But it’s like smoking; I don’t ever really quit music. I am always excited whenever I start again. Music is just a thing that I love. I said I would quit a lot of times but I don’t. It is a part of me. Music is just me.

UNITED BAKERYwww.unitedbakeryrecords.comunitedbakeryrecords@gmail.com

An independent artist friendly record label supporting local music

FACTOTUM + SUPPLY504-208-9801

www.factotumbarber.comKick up your feet with a nip and a clip at Factotum Barber + Supply, the Bywater’s

reestablished full-service barber shop

40 ARPENT BREWERYwww.40arpentbrewery.com

40arpentbrewing@gmail.com40 Arpent beers are crafted

in Arabi, Louisiana

DESIGNER CRAFTS & MILLWORK CO. 985-707 -3964

dcm504@hotmail.comHigh-quality woodworking and renovations

from craftsmen with an artist’s eye

SCOUT BAKERYwww.scoutbakery.net

scoutbakeryno@gmail.comWholesale breads and traditional pastries

with locally sourced and seasonal ingredients. Delivery Available

LEATHER LILY SHOE REPAIR1509 N. Claiborne Ave

504-400-7639For cobbling done with style,

let Leather Lily save your soles

STEPHANIE VISCO DOULA SEVICES610-680-6363

stephanie.kay.visco@gmail.comCertified, holistic doula and lactation

counseler. Support. Empowerment through education. Empathy.

DANIEL GREY PHOTOGRAPHY www.instagram.com/danielgr3y

danielgreyphotography@gmail.comArtistic photography and creative imagery

FAUBOURG WINES2805 St Claude Avenue

504-342-2217Your friendly and fearless neighborhood wine shop

DOZI DOTESdozidotes.etsy.com

Instagram: @dozidotesbossladyTrying to make the world

a cuter place

BELLEGARDE BAKERYwww.bellegardebakery.wordpress.com

bellegardebakery@gmail.comA commercial bakery in New Orleans that

uses organic, identity- preserved grains

MIMI’S IN THE MARIGNY

2601 Royal St. New OrleansMimismarigny.com

heathcliffehailey@gmail.com

More house party than hotspot.Kitchen open daily. 6pm-2am

6pm-4am Sat, SunServing the best tapas around

THE LOOKOUT INNwww.lookoutneworleans.comkelly@lookoutneworleans.comA sparkling little gem set in the vibrant Bywater neighborhood

CRESCENT CITY BOOKS504-524-4997

books@crescentcitybooks.comOld-school, independent bookstore known for stacks of used to out-of-print volumes,

plus maps and prints

SLOW & LEAUX504‐430‐0076

slowandleaux@gmail.comBarbecue catering and pop-up

FLORA GALLERY & COFFEE SHOP2600 Royal St. New Orleans

Coffee, tea and top notch Middle Eastern fare from the little cafe in the Marigny with

a heart of gold

THE JOINT

701 Mazant, New Orleans 70117www.alwayssmokin.com

The Joint...Always Smokin’