Photo Essay: A Weekend In NOLA

[Cadenza]

Originally Posted by Robyn

Hey, just thought I'd post a great photo essay that captures the essence of NOLA and the people who live there ... it's at http://www.orato.com/node/3384 for anyone who's interested in some beautiful photos of a beautiful city!

Thank you for posting your beautiful shots! I will definitely check out your page on Flickr. Mine is http://flickr.com/photos/cadencecandids/
Still a work in progress.

Cadenza

[joepole]

New Orleans is a really misunderstood place with a long, equally misunderstood history. To many it's simply the birthplace of jazz and Mardi Gras and a spot where dozens of cultures intermingle and feed off each other's art, food, language, and spirit. What most people don't realize is that it's much more than that, the city is a wonderfully complex pit of filth and crime with hundreds of thousands of worthless citizens who can barely survive a few days without charity (or the forcible charity known as taxation) from the few productive citizens who reap nothing but scorn and blame for the ills of that cesspool of a city.

The citizenry is so much more than just the musicians, street performers, and hard workers you see reflected on television. Those few are but a small slice of the much larger population of worthless anchors on society. For every friendly saxophonist entertaining hundreds by blasting away for hours on a street corner there are literally dozens of other, shadier folks breaking in to your car, lifting your wallet, or mugging you at knife-point.

Katrina and its aftermath revealed a lot of New Orleans seedy underbelly to the rest of the nation (and the world) but anyone who has lived there and knows the real New Orleans, knows that's just the tip of the criminal iceberg. What the rest of the country sees as a city devastated by nature struggling to retain its identity while regaining its prosperity, we know to be a failing criminal Mecca, destroyed from within long ago, only to have its festive patina washed away by a hurricane.

[rhertz]

Originally Posted by joepole

New Orleans is a really misunderstood place with a long, equally misunderstood history. To many it's simply the birthplace of jazz and Mardi Gras and a spot where dozens of cultures intermingle and feed off each other's art, food, language, and spirit. What most people don't realize is that it's much more than that, the city is a wonderfully complex pit of filth and crime with hundreds of thousands of worthless citizens who can barely survive a few days without charity (or the forcible charity known as taxation) from the few productive citizens who reap nothing but scorn and blame for the ills of that cesspool of a city.

The citizenry is so much more than just the musicians, street performers, and hard workers you see reflected on television. Those few are but a small slice of the much larger population of worthless anchors on society. For every friendly saxophonist entertaining hundreds by blasting away for hours on a street corner there are literally dozens of other, shadier folks breaking in to your car, lifting your wallet, or mugging you at knife-point.

Katrina and its aftermath revealed a lot of New Orleans seedy underbelly to the rest of the nation (and the world) but anyone who has lived there and knows the real New Orleans, knows that's just the tip of the criminal iceberg. What the rest of the country sees as a city devastated by nature struggling to retain its identity while regaining its prosperity, we know to be a failing criminal Mecca, destroyed from within long ago, only to have its festive patina washed away by a hurricane.

Why Joe I didn't know you had such as way with words.... "festive patina"?

heh heh eh heh He said "festive patina"...........