New Orleans...

So, it's been a few days since my last update. I was without Wi-Fi in New Orleans so I figured I'd update in Austin. And then Austin became an awesome hang out and I never found the time. But... here we go.




My first time in New Orleans was 2005, about two or three months before Katrina. I went with my family for the New Orleans Jazz Fest. I absolutely fell in love with the place. The food, people, music, it just seemed like an amazing place all together. And then Katrina came, and tore the city apart. One of the most incompetent Presidents in the history of the United States didn't help the matter much either. And so I was left with this hollow sunken feeling while I helplessly watched the TV as New Orleans tore itself apart. An already poor working class city was left without food or water for a week, bodies left out on the side of the roads to cook in the hot Bayou sun. Not the best of times. George Bush of course was never held accountable for this, or any of his other atrocities.

How would the city be almost ten years later? I hadn't the slightest clue. But I'm glad I went back. Almost a decade later, a lot of the houses in certain wards have been rebuilt or at least patched up. The French Quarter obviously was left almost exactly how I remember it.

There's a certain wonder you experience walking through a city like New Orleans, especially having watched the 24hour media circus that surrounded Katrina. A lot of the musicians have returned, the music is still great as it ever was, and the city seems to be rebounding from an unacceptable tragedy in the form of insane Governmental ineptitude. It's a city with a soul, and its soul is still intact, unbroken.

It just so happened my visit coincided with an extremely random, but no less awe-inducing, concert. In all honesty, I've never listened to a lot of The Melvins music. But King Buzzo was fucking great. Ripping through a lot of heavier songs on an acoustic guitar with a surgical accuracy that left me unable to do anything but just ROCK OUT. Here's a taste of that:



All in all, my time in New Orleans was short lived, but incredibly fun. I loved seeing some old faces and meeting some new ones. New Orleans is a special place that I'll have to go back to one day.

"Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?"