Saturday, January 31, 2009

NOLA Flora & Fauna 015 - Green Tower

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I don't know if I could sleep with this dude standing behind my house.



Didn't Godzilla fight this guy?


Seriously.

Looks like a rejected Sid & Marty Krofft character.



This is on Maple Street at the corner of Dublin, up in Carrolton.

Friday, January 30, 2009

NOLA Architecture 016 - McDonald's


Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.So, you know,when times are tough just put a McDonald's billboard on your blighted structure. Wouldn't it be cool if you could do that? Notice that this is 2 doors down from the houses in my first post. This is Uptown, on the lake side of St. Charles, Delachaise St. & Freret.

"We break 'em then we fix 'em"




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Thursday, January 29, 2009

NOLA Art & Whimsy 011 - Endangered Species

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Ohh, the Carousel of Endangered Species. That's fun. It's right at the end of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. You just ride in circles and sob. Enjoy your day at the Zoo, kids!

Anyone see the duck growing out of the frog's butt?

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

NOLA Flora & Fauna 014 - Swamp Maple Seeds

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I really just can't get enough of these.

Acer Rubrum is by far not limited to Louisiana. In fact, I think its distribution includes lower Canada. I see these everywhere down south, so it's an association thing with me. This particular color scheme may be localized. I just love it. Which is odd, because I hate Red, yellow and orange. Really. They make me angry, but these are gorgeous.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

NOLA Architecture 015 - Pink House


Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.It was my suggestion that we buy this house and move into the little one on the left. Then we could rent out the big one to pay the note. It would be brilliant if the whole thing weren't out of our price range by about 800%. Oh and if we were 3' tall.

Monday, January 26, 2009

NOLA 2005 Tri-State Shutter Swap 008 - Hammer Time


Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.Not all was gloom and doom after the storm.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

NOLA Flora & Fauna 013 - Climbing Philodendron

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This is a climbing species of philodendron (or Pathos) making its way up an Oak tree. There is significant differentiation in leaf shape as it climbs higher.
This is something you see more commonly in Miami or Hawaii. I still get excited when I run across one in New Orleans.

Junking this up with lights and plastics signs and plastic owls is definitely not tacky. Wouldn't you love to have this thing dwarfing your house?

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Saturday, January 24, 2009

NOLA Architecture 014 - St. Vincent Orphan Asylum

St. Vincent Guesthouse
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Font sizeThe St. Vincent Guesthouse is a hotel created from an ancient Orphanage. Many simply refer to it as "The Orphanage". This is where we stay when we require paid lodging in New Orleans. It's also where we recommend people stay. It's very affordable and very "New Orleans". And when we say "very New Orleans", we mean, "sticky-filthy and crawling with cockroaches the size of cats". If you've got a problem with that, you may want to look into some of the cute little bed & breakfasts uptown. The staff are randomly cheery and helpful, surly and quiet or criminally insane. I love them all.

If you were to read reviews on, say Tripadvisor.com, you would see opinions split nearly in half. One group simply loves the "Character" (read: filth) ; "Charm" (read: illiteracy) and "Helpful staff" (read: the guest is happy he was not murdered when he was mugged).

I am SO kidding! The people there are lovely. They're just not too overly concerned when you don't have towels for 3 days. We just know to bring towels now.

The other group on the "opinion sites" feel like they just got out of boot camp, or lived through a slasher movie, "It seemed so lovely and idyllic! Then the sun went down..."

So, I will resolve the two by saying that staying at the St. Vincent Guesthouse is an "experience". You should do it at least once in your life.

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I can't find an exact date for when it was built. Early 19th Century, far as I can tell.
It looks like this reads: "St. Vinsent Infant Asylum"
not "St. Vincent"

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This chute was installed in case of fires. When a room goes ablaze, you start chuckin' the infants out the window and down the chute. This is not a joke.
I don't know if the pool was there to meet them at the bottom 150 years ago (that was a joke).
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Photo from Tripadvisor.com
There are many photographs on the wall of nuns caring for the children of St. Vincent's. Some superstitious people are leery to spend time in a place that housed so many ill and destitute children, but I personally have seen very few lesion-covered, crying phantom-babies wandering the halls at night.

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Mary among the bananas.

Right outside of the western entrance there is a large Mary grotto (or however you say it). I can't really tell what it's made of. Maybe cement covered in latex paint? I don't know.

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This is the grotto from the second balcony.

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This is the front porch or "gallery".

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porch detail

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porch detail

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Stairwell

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Photo from Tripadvisor.com
The rooms are not terrible. I think they each have 12 or 14-foot ceilings and white wicker furniture. Floral fabrics and pastels abound (are you there to enjoy New Orleans or look at your hotel room?). I'm usually only in the hotel long enough to sleep a few hours and grab a quick shower.
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The roof is still tarped 6 months after Katrina (as most of the city was).

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In the middle of the picture you can the see the Superdome. St. Vincent's in nicely situated uptown, but close to downtown.

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As you pan right from the Superdome, you follow the buildings on Canal & Poydras St and can see the World Trade Center, which sits right on the river (second building from right).

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Some interior shots:
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This red-head keeps showing up in my pictures.
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Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.The parking lot looks a lot like the driveway at my house.

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This was taken from the parking lot.

After Katrina, much of the Guesthouse became long-term housing for laborers from out of town who came to rebuild the city. Many of the rooms had the beds removed and bunks put in:

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Photo from Tripadvisor.com





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Friday, January 23, 2009

NOLA Burial & Necropolis 005 - Almost

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...Almost a Saint.
I don't know if that means "nearly canonized" or "big and or tough enough to be on the local NFL team". They grow 'em pretty big in NOLA. Anyway, you might recognize the last name from the Mamaw Nice Lady post. This is a fun burial spot. Death is often taken lightly way down yonder.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

NOLA Flora & Fauna 012 - Alligator

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We took a canoe out on the bayou in Jean Lafitte National Park out in Batataria, Jefferson County. This is just a stone's throw South of New Orleans and reminds you that you really are in the middle of a swamp there. We rented it from the fine people at Bayou Barn. It was actually a very chilly march morning. We were wearing multiple layers under hoodies until the sun got high. This alligator was out sunning himself early. I'm sure he sees so many tourists go by he never gets spooked. The turtles on the other hand weren't having any of it. They always did their best Errol Flynn into the water as the canoe approached. The seed pods on the red maples are just gorgeous this time of year.


Anyone catch the Don Quixote reference in here?

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

NOLA Architecture 013 - Blue House

Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.Again, New Orleanians are not afraid of bold colors. This is a shotgun house. This means there are no hallways, just a series of rooms with all of the doors in a row. Theoretically, you could open all of the doors and shoot a shotgun through without hitting anything.
Or at least that's one definition.


This could be a cross-over to the Shutter-Swap photos because it shows a pile of house guts next to it. The condition of the homes ranged in rows- maybe concentric circles. First you had houses with no damage, maybe a roof was damaged. Then you had houses with missing roofs and broken windows. Next were houses that look fine, but everything inside of them was destroyed by the flood, so everything had to be thrown out, right down to the sheet rock. Finally at the center, or last row of destruction, you had stuff that just needed to be bulldozed.
Very Dant
e.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

NOLA Art & Whimsy 010 - Coffee Shop Patio

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Ahhhh, FREEDOM!
Can you believe- can you just imagine:
We went out to a coffee house, ordered coffee and muffins, then went out to sit on the patio.
Believe it or not, I was able to pick up the ashtray and move it to another table myself!
Yep! All by myself! I didn't have to have the Nanny State do it for me! I'm a big-boy!


What will happen after Barry takes the ship today? As a smoker, will he humbly use himself as a bad example, citing his own sacrifice when he supports legislation to modify our behavior with wide-sweeping smoking bans? Or will his filthy habit give him the compassion to cut smokers some slack, since it is a legal substance and all.
I guess it's really up to the Tobacco Lobby. Lord knows the government doesn't trust the Market, which is just the will of the people voted in money.

I know, I know, the POTUS has more important things to worry about, like bicycle helmet laws. But really, all he has to do is sign a paper after the others do the work.

Barack Me Obamadeus



Disclaimer:
This is clearly whimsy on my part, not the whimsy of New Orleans.
The coffee house is "Fuel" on Magazine St. (not to be confused with "Refuel" on Hampson St). I stole the Obamadeus joke from XKCD.


Monday, January 19, 2009

NOLA Flora & Fauna 011 - Garden Snail

Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.Mr. (&Mrs.) Snail
Our "front yard" is about 4' x 6'. It's basically a patch of Canna that I tried to remove in its entirety to replace with Brugmansias (this will likely take me years to dig out, as Canna have massive rhizomes).
After each rain, this large land snail comes out and runs all crazy, silly-like around the little plot, then returns to the shade of a plant until the next rain. The whole ordeal takes about ten minutes.
It's really cool to watch its lower, olfactory tentacles (
Lemaire) slap all over the place as it inspects the area. The upper tentacles are eye stalks (Ommatophores).
And you may also see it in live-action Technicholor:




Sunday, January 18, 2009

NOLA Architecture 012 - Yellow General Pershing

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2008

This is a little house on General Pershing St. in which I lived very briefly in 1999. The neighborhood was pretty rough-it's the only place I lived where stuff was stolen out of my yard. But the big problem was the guy next to me with the iron fence that had two dogs that barked from sundown to sun up, every night. They weren't even outside but it was enough to keep me up. I called him once in the middle of the night to let him know. He was pretty unconcerned. So I left. Funny enough, it is 2 blocks over and 2 blocks up from where our house is now. Most little cottages like this were built when a boat was decommissioned (the river is mere yards away) and it was taken apart and a neighborhood was built from its reclaimed lumber. We call these Bargewood houses, not to be confused with "Bargeboard" which is an architectural element. The wood was already aged and proved its strength over years of service on the river before making a sturdy little house.

It was a common story in New Orleans: Dad lived in this house since before the Big War. When he died, the family thought they could earn a couple bucks from his house. But the neighborhood was already in serious decay and they were not experienced landlords. They haven't been able to care for the structure and somehow can't be functional in this rental market where you can ask pretty much anything you want for rent.

I have no doubt that the house still has the same owners, or that they tried to borrow against it and lost it. And now it sits, empty and blighted. It's a beautiful little building, built right before or after the Civil War. Like so many things in NOLA, it has weathered incomprehensible weather, fires, economic depression and it still stands, likely with strong bones and more or less solid foundation. It is possible it could last another 100 years- as soon as young, energetic, intelligent, upwardly-mobile people come in and invest some love (and cash).

That or a hard-working legal immigrant who would consider this place a palace.

If you've read The Chronicles of Narnia, my bride compares our last visit to this house with the scene in Prince Caspian when the Pevensie children are whisked back to Cair Paravel, now in ruins and covered in vines.

OK, that might be stretching it.

2005




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Saturday, January 17, 2009

NOLA Flora & Fauna 010 - Parrots


Many parts of the country have invasive flocks of feral Quaker Parrots, also called Monk Parakeets-(Myiopsitta monachus) thriving in their area. It's not just limited to semi-tropical places like New Orleans and Miami. Chicago has it's own group doing just fine through their Jet Stream winters. Many people became familiar with feral birds from the movie The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, though these were Cherry and Blue-crowned conures.

I watched these birds take this tree apart for a good while, taking the twigs away to make their giant nests, often in large power station grids- between transformers. They make a heck of a noise, too.

They are always of concern to biologists who want to know their environmental impact. In the mean time, residents and tourists are either amused or annoyed.

This is a map that tracks Monk Parakeet sightings.


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Friday, January 16, 2009

NOLA 2005 Tri-State Shutter Swap-Washateria


Please click on the image for a larger, more-detailed version.Down South, what we in Ohio call Laundromats are called Washaterias.
Not concerned with anyone's dignity, Katrina has turned this one into scatological humor.
Or maybe the title to one of those weird Hentai movies.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

NOLA Architecture 011 - Catwalk

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The catwalk is one of my favorite architectural elements that is very common in New Orleans. To me, it's up there with having multiple tree houses connected with rope bridges- how cool is that? This is behind Mojo coffee house on Magazine and Race St. It's across the street from St. Vincent Guest House, where we used to stay when visiting. But you have to walk through this courtyard to use their bathroom, which is in an old tool room or something. It has a louvered door. Wait! I have a picture...

Right. So, I love catwalks. Here are some more views:
Many air conditioning condensers are placed on roofs or as high as possible to prevent them from being stolen for copper scrap.

Oh, and check out the rounded gutters up top. Very nice.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

NOLA Burial & Necropolis 004 - Donated Remains

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Every time I look at this marker, I envision random body parts buried randomly about this field- not too deep, maybe wrapped in something flimsy or some old gauze. An arm here or a leg there... pile of guts, maybe...

Then I read this on NOLACemeteries.com:

"Charity Hospital Cemetery was established in 1847. It is is a mass grave for all of the poor of New Orleans. Thousands of patients without money or relatives have been buried in unmarked graves for almost 150 years. Most of the burials were from the Yellow Fever and Malaria epidemics that ravaged the city. The cemetery is never open and has a large iron fence with “No Trespassing” signs and barbed wire. In 1989, a monument was erected by the Tulane and L.S.U. Medical Schools to thank the people who donated their bodies to science. The cemetery is now closed and bodies that would have gone to the cemetery will now be cremated. The reason for the cemetery closure is because dogs got into the cemetery and dug up body parts, hence the chain-link fence and barbed wire."

You can not out-absurd New Orleans, no matter how hard you try.