WP: City Fears for Its Soul-New Orleans Worries That Its Unique Culture

[Pirate Smile]

City Fears for Its Soul
New Orleans Worries That Its Unique Culture May Be Lost

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 3, 2006; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans, the theme park?

Frightening as it sounds, the prospect of this sultry, eclectic city rising from the muck of Hurricane Katrina as a sterile imitation of itself is becoming an abiding preoccupation. Even as the city's riverfront high ground -- now dubbed the "Isle of Denial" by one scholar -- gamely revives, miles of culturally vibrant neighborhoods that once smelled of simmering red beans and hosted funky second-line parades lie dark and empty, their futures in doubt.

A quiet but increasingly urgent conversation about that culture's survival consumes this city, both on its street corners and in its institutions. In the Lower Ninth Ward, a woman who stables horses on the Mississippi River levee frets about "a land grab" that could bulldoze her home to make a "playground for the rich." In the Bywater neighborhood, an acclaimed photographer longs for the sound of teenagers blowing horns from porches. At Loyola University, authors and academics convene a panel to ponder whether New Orleans culture can be saved.

Their worry is that the curious and crazy that developed naturally here over time will be replaced by an artificial version of what once was, that a desperate attempt to resurrect New Orleans will turn it into a sanitized, charmless, soulless city.

"Will this quirky and endlessly fascinating place become an X-rated theme park, a Disneyland for adults?" Tulane University professor Lawrence N. Powell asked in a speech that has been copied and circulated, gaining a cultlike following. "Is it fated to be the place where Orlando embraces Las Vegas? That's the American Pompeii I apprehend rising from the toxic sludge deposited by Lake Ponchartrain: an ersatz city, a veritable site of schlock and awe."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202746.html

[Jack_Dawson]

1. It's going to be Mexican Disneyland

You'll see...

[tatertop]

2. This is sad beyond belief

I far NO is gone gone gone

[Glorfindel]

3. Well, hell....it could be worse....it could be Atlanta

Soul-less, sterile, glass and concrete and asphalt. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, boring, pointless sprawl with intolerable traffic and not much else.

[Jack_Dawson]

4. Did you say Atlanta or Houston?

:shrug:

[OneBlueSky]

5. Emeril Lagasse, on what's happening in New Orleans . . .

"Nothing. The mayor's a clunk. The governor is also a clunk. The don't know their (nether sections) from a hole in the ground. All my three restaurants got hit. I've re-opened Emeril's, but only a few locals come. There's no tourists. No visitors. No spenders. No money. No future. No people. It's lost. It'll never come back."

in Cindy Adams' column in today's New York Post . . .

[Jack_Dawson]

6. Damnnnnnn

That's harsh.

[annagull]

7. Lagasse is a repuke asswipe

I actually hear him on his show one day call french fries "freedom fries". Probably a good thing if he left N.O for good, he'd probably lobby to call the French Quarter "Freedom Quarter".