Well, this letter could really be titled “Love Letter to the French Quarter” since that is where my mother brought me as a “world-weary” teenager and where I found my city. That lovely introduction to it all was why I write about the Quarter today; so that others will come to it and find their own home. I wrote this in an hour and sent it off without rereading it again so that I would have to let the emotion stay in there.
Category Archives: people
Unfathomable City
Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I wrote an earlier review of this book ( I keep busy) and have now decided to update it since receiving the actual published book as I used the advanced reader copy for the previous review and now after reading more of it in a different location than the last time and viewing all of the maps that weren’t in the ARC and let me share that I did all of that new stuff all on All Saints Day, no less. Told you: multitudes.
I decided to do it without the cranky insertion of MY New Orleans up front that was in the previous review and to simply state that it’s a well designed, well-edited and at times beautifully written and illustrated homage to our mysterious city.
This book gives credit where credit is due. To the city’s geography, to its outlandish robber barons of bananas and oil, to the nameless and named that have brought us and bring us music, food, and public displays and joy and sorrow and pain and punishment. It neatly shows a number of juxtapositions that may be uncomfortable for some to view and others that are certainly unfathomable, but it does show them. There. credit given.
Now, back to me:
If you look through my reviews, you can spot a certain fondness for maps. I love them and love poring over them before, during or in spite of actually traveling to the place depicted.
If you read my reviews, you will no doubt spot a serious fondness for essayists. I admire what seems to me to be honest human bravery in extending a point or a purpose to a new end. Taking a walk with an author is how I visualize an essay, and yes there are times that I turn back before getting to the end, but I still appreciate the offer. So maps and essays seem like two sides of one coin and when put together well can alter or color each other’s point and purpose.
So that this is a book of illusory and real maps combined with odd and delightful essays, edited by two sensitive writers is enough for me to tell you.
Let me let the writers and artists tell you themselves in essays and maps such as:
Civil rights and Lemon Ice
Hot and Steamy: Selling Seafood and Selling Sex
Ebb and Flow: Migrations of the Houma, Erosions of the Coast
Juju and Cuckoo: Taking Care of Crazy
Stationary Revelations: Sites of Contemplation and Delight
The first essays introducing this book are alone worth poring over and sharing; how often is that true? That should tell you about the care and thought put into this entire work and offer the best reason to plunk down your money, open it and thumb through while having a Pimm’s or a coffee in front of you, tucked away in a shady corner of our shared city. Enjoy it all.
Notes from meeting with city about Jackson Square issues
Jackson Square meeting
Scott Hutcheson, Asante Salaam, and city attorney had a second meeting with folks interested in maintaining Jackson Square as a dynamic public space.
Artist, musician and psychic spokespeople were in attendance and spoke convincingly about their wish for a viable community space in Jackson Square. Here are my notes from the meeting: in the notes below, the statements were made by the artists, musicians and readers that attended the meeting. SH is Scott Hutcheson, Mayor’s Advisor on Cultural Economy and is the city staff person who responded during meeting, and his responses are in italics. Overall, it was a very amiable meeting.
SH has talked to Farmers Market Corporation (FMC)
FMC security may start patrolling the Square
City can do in-depth training with FMC security personnel
FMC has 11 security personnel, 3 full-time, the rest part-time
Psychic org: fine with that, but no one will still have permit oversight.
Recently, readers leaving set-ups 24 hours a day.
Vendors illegally chalking their spaces to hold, including artists.
Out of control artists ignoring rules and entreaties from peers to follow rules; video on YouTube of artist on Square passed out with needle in arm.
Can licenses be in jeopardy when they ticket?
NOPD has said in past that they will not enforce the rules, they have just woken people up and told them to stay awake.
SH said they ticketed Thursday before FQF
Ticket should go to revenue dept, rather than municipal court to relate the infractions back to license.
All artists should have to show licenses. Some scofflaws leave a homeless person with their stuff so it is “attended”.
Guidelines before Katrina were clear and enforceable, need to go back to that.
Pre-Katrina: Set up more than an hour was unattended, the setup would be moved by NOPD or other readers or artists.
SH: not sure it’s legal to do that, have to be clear about codified law versus standards of conduct
Illegal activity is widespread and unenforced.
Calling emergency services is almost impossible as they want street addresses.
Extra space when big events for artists? State museum says yes, but FQF says no.
Want to talk to French Market about using more space.
Dutch Alley, used to be an open spot, street entertainers still get run off.
SH: FMC asks street performers only to “register”, although it says “permit” on it.
SH: No such thing as a street performer permit in the city.
dba licenses, can anything be done? (No says city attorney)
Enforce before 6 pm on St. Peter and St. Ann that readers cannot hold spaces.
FMC security already has oversight over Jackson Square: can manage city owned property.
FMC demanded FMC permit for Decatur reader
Illegal vending happens on Jackson Square and artists/readers are powerless to stop.
Vieux Carre church sets up table and does ceremonies illegally.
Segways in the square are problem.
Stanchions-have a hard time getting them unlocked in emergencies and locked to stop cars and trucks.
Slope of the entryways is problematic for older people, needs to be textured.
Loading zone tickets are given to musicians and artists even though they have been told they can use them to unload and load.
NOPD says artists and musicians can unload in the “curve” but only informally.
Barkers are working illegally, overwhelming honest vendors.
Street performers with amplifiers are a problem.
Television from museum plays constantly and loudly.
3 Easter parades to roll in French Quarter Sunday
For in your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it
You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade…
all 3 of them.
Fringes of the festival
Once you buy a panel pass for the TWLF, I understand that you might then feel compelled to squeeze every dime from it, running from one room to the next, checking off workshops, circling possibilities, slowly scanning the merchandise table in a spare moment, sure that the right gift for your literary friends is here. I have been guilty of that. 75 bucks doesn’t come that easily to me and so often I equate value with quantity, like so many Americans. I do, after all , shop at the dollar store.
Luckily, with age comes experience (let’s not talk about the bad eyesight and odd aches- what DID I do to my arm?) and so I have grown more aware of my choices, at least those that are available with a panel pass.
I could sit in the uncomfortable chairs of a ballroom or a museum through the post-breakfast to cocktail hours, hoping that the gentleman behind me would realize that his throat clearing is not discreet at all, but incredibly well-timed to cover the bon mots that most likely were what the rest of the audience was chuckling over when my ambient hearing returned. I could do that and have.
Or, I could pack up when I feel the energy lagging at the 12:10 mark and head for a fortifying gumbo lunch at the most appropriately named restaurant for a Tennessee festival goer (I believe in you. you CAN decipher this) followed by a cheap cocktail from the oddly agreeably afternoon haunt of the Chart Room, ultimately heading to Crescent City Books for an afternoon of lessons.
Once there, you meet Isabel, their traumatized but healing cat and talk of books and John Boutte with local author and bookseller Michael Z.
You head upstairs and immediately find a book that has no reason to be prominently displayed (this visit it was “Farmers Last Frontier: Agriculture 1860-1897, which is an astounding find this month), sit with your discreet, illicit cocktail and thumb through it while viewing books and book lovers, pausing to think of calliopes on steamboats and why people honk their horns so often and how creaking stairs can be both frightening and comforting.
And salute Tennessee and his devotees who bring you to the Quarter this fine day.
French Quarter block by block 
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