Atlantica - 01.02.2006, Qupperneq 46

44 AT L A N T I CA
WITNESSEDa
By the roadside are stripped cars,
abandoned furniture and debris.
Looking down from the highway,
I can see a sea of blue tarps over
houses. Other than the crawling
traffic on the interstate, there’s no
noticeable movement in the city.
No cars, no traffic lights, no pedes-
trians. When I turn off to enter
the French Quarter, leaving the
miles of jammed up dump trucks,
FEMA trailers and Army Corps of
Engineers trailers, mine is the only
vehicle on the surface street.
For a moment, just after leaving
the exit, I remember the coverage
after the flood, reporting looting
and violence. I wince when a man
crosses in front of my car with a
shopping cart full of appliances, but
as I drive into the French Quarter,
I pass a few other people carrying
a few pieces of electronics. I real-
ize pretty quickly that nobody is
stealing – the street is littered with
appliances. If you are willing to
move something at this point, you
are doing someone a favor.
Little I’d read or seen in the weeks
leading up to my visit could have
prepared me for this: the highest
ground in New Orleans, the party
capital of the United States, has
one coffee shop open for business.
Barely. Given that the other 95% of
the city suffered the brunt of the
water damage, it is hard to imagine
tourism could be picking back up
here, as reports seemed to indicate.
In my first three hours walk-
ing the city, I find t-shirt shops
open, but spot a total of 12 tourists.
And, other than shop owners, I
meet a total of ten native locals in
the streets, restaurants and cafés of
New Orleans. The French Quarter
is a ghost town, reeking of the
bacteria left behind from the flood-
waters, and this is the least affected
area of the city. At least here there
is electricity.
I found a few locals at the one
coffee shop open for business; they
seemed shell-shocked, but ready to
talk.
One resident told me, “What you
don’t realize is the damage water
does to paper. Every single scrap of
paper in your home is destroyed.”
She has been working all day trying
to track down a way to get her birth
certificate in order to get a passport.
She is leaving New Orleans as soon
as she can.
I f ind my way to the one
untouched establishment in the
French Quarter, the place all
reporters now head to: Lafitte’s
Blacksmith, a celebrated jazz bar
that lost, according to its owners,
only one shingle in the hurricane.
At Lafitte’s, the bartender says
that contrary to reports, there
isn’t any partying in New Orleans
anymore. The idea of tourism has
become a sad joke: she recounts the
story of a man from Alaska who
came to spend his vacation money
as an act of philanthropy. “He told
me he had never heard so many
‘thank yous’ from bartenders and
shop owners in his life.”
A local musician chimes in: “This
place will never recover. It’s over.
And if people come to New Orleans
for the women, like they used to,
they won’t find ‘em.” Continuing
on the theme of the tourist from up
North, he points out, “It’s like Alaska
now, 12 men to every woman.”
The bartender nods. “And even
the relief workers don’t party here.
They go out to the suburbs, where
there’s housing.”
On the way out of the French
Quarter, I stop in at the Superdome,
the icon of the federal and local gov-
ernments’ failures during Katrina.
To my surprise, this behemoth of
a stadium, vaguely resembling an
atomic reactor, is spotless. Looming
and impersonal, this monument
to hysterical news coverage – the
BBC and other usually reliable news
sources printed reports of murder
and mass rape at the shelter, claims
that were later disproved – shows
none of the scars that the rest of the
city so obviously bears.
That night it takes three hours to
get out of the metropolitan area.
Almost every one of the employees
and rescue workers in New Orleans
lives far outside the city now, and
the roads are jammed with trucks,
cars and trailers, guaranteeing any-
In New Orleans
042-047 New Orleans.indd 44 21.2.2006 12:58:55