The Battle of New Orleans
NIMBYs and newcomers threaten to regulate the Big Easy's music into extinction.
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GoogleThe late-night dancers in New Orleans wear everything from designer suits to bondage-club attire to nothing much at all. But recently a new accessory has started appearing in the Crescent City's nightlife: headphones. Silent discos, which have appeared at such local hotspots as the Dragon's Den and House of Blues, allow hipsters to pay a few bucks, strap on a pair of ear goggles, and dance to music spun by DJs broadcasting on site.
With its second-line parades, open drinking, and raucous live music spilling out into crowded streets, New Orleans is not the kind of town you'd normally associate with silence. But headphone venues are taking advantage of an escalating clash between neighborhood associations, clubs, musicians, and the city. Some have labeled it the War on Music.
During the last few years, this socially laissez-faire music capital has started trying to bring order to the endless party by stepping up licensing and zoning enforcement and passing laws designed to improve the "quality of life." By attempting to fine-tune the city's cultural economy, authorities are jeopardizing the very institutions that have made New Orleans such a vibrant and valuable part of American culture.
The crackdown is coming from two main sources. One is the deluge of idealistic newcomers who flooded into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to help rebuild what many older residents had fled. While many of the new transplants were particularly attracted to the music scene and other vestiges of "authentic" New Orleans-Mardi Gras, second-line parades, drinking outdoors-that doesn't mean they were accustomed to living with all-night noise.
NIMBYism is especially common among the older, more affluent professionals who also moved to the city after Katrina, hoping to own a little piece of historic New Orleans magic. These gentrifiers have often been hostile to one of the city's central cultural institutions: the clubs where working musicians make a living.
The second main source of party pooping is the mayor's office, which has a fondness for top-down plans. Elected in 2010, Mayor Mitch Landrieu inherited more than $67 million in debt and a police force so corrupt he asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate it. Landrieu set out to bring order and prosperity to his notoriously unmanageable city, with tourism and the arts as prime revenue generators. Before becoming mayor, he had unveiled the New Orleans Convention and Visitor's Bureau Boston Consulting Group Master Plan, an ambitious proposal that sought to attract 13.7 million annual visitors to New Orleans by 2018. Order and cleanliness, he maintains, are essential to any increase in tourism, and quality of life improvements have become a major goal of the Landrieu administration. The trouble is, cultural creation isn't a clean and orderly process, and "quality of life" can be a sticky issue for the city's clubs.
The Battle for North Rampart
This isn't the first time New Orleans has been remade by an influx of immigrants. The city's unique culture was born out of a malange of French, Spanish, English, African, and Caribbean influences. And the town's new arrivals have been a blessing in many ways. While much of the country was experiencing the Great Recession, New Orleans' unemployment actually dropped, thanks in large part to new entrepreneurs and developers. (The shrinking population helped too, as did federal reconstruction aid.)
But along with their enthusiasm and their economic activity, the gentrifiers brought a new willingness to wage war on noisy music clubs. Take North Rampart Street, which before Katrina was one of the city's cultural hotbeds. Only a few blocks away from Bourbon Street, North Rampart's two-block strip felt a world apart from the daiquiri shops and megabars that French Quarter tourists so often associate with New Orleans.
North Rampart attracted locals, longtime residents of neighboring Tremé (made famous by the eponymous HBO series), and many gay and transgendered New Orleanians, who have deep roots in the area. Two clubs dominated the street, each with a special place in the city's cultural ecology: the Funky Butt, a modern jazz and funk venue, and Donna's, home to brass bands.
Both clubs were institutions, hosting live music nightly and open jam sessions when business was slow. Both offered visitors an experience: Donna's had the ambience of an old-style juke joint and the hominess of a husband-and-wife team working the bar and the kitchen, while the Funky Butt let visitors step into a turn-of-the-century bordello, complete with velvet curtains, scarlet lighting, and erotic art on the walls. But by the fall of 2010, both clubs were closed.
While Katrina did not significantly damage the Funky Butt building, the costs of remediating existing problems, combined with life changes, prompted the owners, trombonist "Big Sam" Williams and his then-wife, Shaneka Patterson, to walk away from the venue. Then local businessman Pat Ritter tried to reopen the place, but he ran into trouble. City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson told him he would not have her support, because of neighbors' concerns that North Rampart might become another Bourbon Street.
In early 2013, Patterson began working on a plan to reopen the Funky Butt in the new Freret Arts Corridor, a mostly residential neighborhood that was seriously damaged by the hurricane and has since been designated one of the city's new cultural overlay districts to facilitate zoning and licensing. But Patterson ultimately abandoned the project for "personal reasons."
With the closing of the Funky Butt, Donna's became the lone music outpost on North Rampart. But the brass-band venue faced similar maintenance issues and, more important, growing complaints from the same neighbors who blocked the Funky Butt. Owners Donna Poniatowski and Charlie Sims finally shut the club down in 2010. When Eugene Oppman bought the business in 2011, the Board of Zoning Adjustments determined that the new Donna's would not retain its old entertainment license because more than six months had elapsed since the original Donna's closed.
Attempts to open other music clubs on North Rampart have met similar fates as would-be club owners' plans have been nixed by their inability to obtain music licenses over the complaints of French Quarter neighborhood groups. Today the street, which sits directly across from Armstrong Park and Congo Square-the fabled cradle of African-American music-is silent.
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In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. -
In nineteen and fifty-nine we took a little hike
With our scout master down to Lake Oneeganite
We took a little pizza and we took some saurkrauts
And we marched along together till we heard the girl scoutsWe're the boys from Camp Kookamonga
Our mothers sent us here for to study nature's ways
We learned to make sparks by rubbing sticks together
But if we catch the girls then we'll set the woods ablaze -
A fine rendition, sir!
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"New Orleans Convention and Visitor's Bureau Boston Consulting Group Master Plan"
You can tell it's a great idea by the long bureaucratic name. And the use of the phrase "Master Plan."
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I like Mike D's master plan myself.
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All I can say is this Chris fellow really has some big Kjorness!
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Back when I lived in the Irish Channel/Lower Garden, we would always throw a keg and a few sleeves of cups into a shopping cart and head to St. Charles to sell $2.00 beers at the parades. Also, Frenchmen St. always had a guy selling NO2 balloons out of his van ($5 each or 3 for $10). These cursed carpet-baggers are ruining one of the best cities in the nation.
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You know which other carpetbagger caused harm?
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Hillary Clinton?
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Jazz is a hundred years old. I love New Orleans Jazz as much as anyone. And really, New Orleans is the one place in the world you can consistently hear the good stuff.
That said, what do you want New Orleans to be? Do you want it to have a real music scene where real artists go to create art? Or do you want it to be a museum where nothing ever changes and the place becomes a sort of Disney Land for adults who like the past?
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Just like Paris and Athens!
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I think the point is that New Orleans is being turned into a Disney World by the new arrivals. They try and curate the culture. This can stay, it's charming! But that is too loud! It has to go! They try to make the city safe and non-offensive. Boring. And that will kill the cultural evolution. When we (nola residents) say we don't want the city to change, we mean we want to retain the reckless and permissive freedoms that has defined her...we don't want to tame her.
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Sounds like the damage is done. Fuck nawlins.
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Landrieu set out to bring order
So you're saying he offered the world ORDER?
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You're not free unless you have asked permission and been given orders.
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What kind of asshole moves to New Orleans and then complains that the music is too loud? People really are the worst.
I was going to take a trip there next month but then a bunch of things broke in my house and I think I can't afford it now.
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Good point Max. They probably also complained about all of the drinking and rich food.
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And it's just so hot! Can't someone do something?
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They can't be fervent worshipers of the AGW faith else they would not have moved to ground zero.
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I would bet that the vast majority of AGW true believers live where their precious models predict catastrophic flooding. Your urban proggies are the footsoldiers of AGW, and mostly live on the coasts, after all.
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Evidently they did complain. 8 years ago there wasn't even a vegan friendly section on any of the restaurant menus. You could order just the green beans, but you'd be assured they were simmered with bacon. Now, two Whole Food stores and a Naked Pizza later, we got several of 'em. And Juice bars too!
There is currently also a war on the infamous go-cups. Apparently these people move into a neighborhood with 5 or 6 bars in 5 block area and complain that people are walking home late and buzzed and talking too loud on the street and sometimes throwing their cup on the ground. So new restaurants/bars where I reside have to agree not to offer go-cups to get there alcohol permits. The old bars still can though. You can also still smoke in most bars if you wish...at least for now.
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What kind of asshole moves to New Orleans and then complains that the music is too loud?
Same kind of Massholes moving to New Hampshire, then griping about the gun laws...and voting for liberal democrats.
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How is the 911 coming Mainer?
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In primer, just about ready for paint. I'm upgrading the original 15 inch rims to later 16 inch, 8 inch wide in the rear, so he had to massage the fender flares in the back.
Not sure I told you, but the car was/is green, like many 1970's era cars, a bold primary color. I'm keeping it green, losing all the little chrome trim bits from the bumpers and rocker panels, to be replace by paint. My creative wife suggested instead of plain black stripes, we do the trim in a deep cobalt blue to set off the green.
The Fuchs wheels will also be done in cobalt blue in the "windows" as they call it.
Should be very striking when done, and I'm getting a little excited to get her back on the road.
Not as excited as you were last week with your new purchase, of course.
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Is it a darker green? I think green is a good color on a 911 and a lot of other cars.
So you are at paint, I assume the mechanics are sorted then? Just how fast are those old suckers? I have driven a 993 but never driven an actual old school 911. Cars were generally slower in the 70s, though I am sure 911s were never dogs.
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Do a google search on Porsche 911 in Viper Green, and you'll get the idea...it's fairly light and bright, not at all like a British Racing Green. It's a very 1970's color, and I was never tempted to change it.
The motor is actually sitting at another shop; it needs a few upgrades. Problem is, you can't run the engine outside the car due to the external oil tank and some other factors. So we won't Really know if everything is good until we put the whole car back together.
Performance wise, mine is the base 911T (T=Touring, not Targa) with a mere 140 hp. Zero to 60 is probably around 10 seconds, so I won't win any drag races with a Honda Civic. OTOH, it's so lively and responsive. If you are going 50 mph and roll on the power in 3rd gear, it just pulls all the way to redline with no hesitation, and the sound alone is a mini-orgasm.
If I had a do over, I would probably go for a 911S with 210 HP...That would, I suspect, keep up with almost any modern car, short of a 'vEtte or new 911 or similar.
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I saw an RS on one of the car shows and it was officially listed as going 0-60 in 5.1 seconds. That is exactly what my 02 C4S is rated at. Since Porsche is always conservative in their performance claims, both cars actually do it in around. 4.6 seconds.
Of course an RS if you can find one costs north of 100K. I would assume that an S would be slower but not that much slower.
Considering that your car probably doesn't have power steering and may or may not have disk breaks, it doesn't matter how fast it is. My old Mustang probably does zero to 60 in nine or ten seconds. But it has drum breaks and manual steering. Driving it is totally different than driving a new car. The thing is just great. The car is alive in a way new cars are not. On a good road in perfect weather, I would rather drive it than either of my modern cars, including the 911. You don't have to drive it fast to have a great time.
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I forgot about the old mustang. I think drum brakes would be a line I wouldn't want to cross. The 911 has a simple manual rack and pinion steering and four wheel disks. It really is a nice way to bridge the divide between old school and a palatable modern drive.
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Drum breaks are easy Mainer. You just have to make sure they are properly adjusted and bled. Right now mine need bled and the peddle goes down a bit farther than I like before the breaks kick in. But the car stops fine. You just have to pay attention and understand that there is nice steady breaking and lock them up and nothing in between.
The Mustang has terrible front suspension geometry. The first thing Carol Shelby did when Ford asked hm to build the 350GT was rebuild the front end. I would much rather have your 911 on any curvy road. But on a big open American highway, the Mustang is awesome.
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Pedant alert: is it really NIMBYism if the the thing you don't like was already there before you moved in ?
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No it is not. It is called moving to the nuisance.
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And it isn't limited to New Orleans by any means. My Mother In Law owns a shop in New Hope PA, and I've worked in the town on and off. The battles between bars that have been there longer than I remember and residents who bought their homes last year are perpetual. I've been knocking around from time to time New Hope since my Father's 1968 sabbatical at the Princeton Institute For Advanced Study. It has NEVER been quiet. If you like quiet, DON'T MOVE THERE.
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In outer suburbia of Chicago, people in newly developed subdivisions would complain, about the smell of manure from the farmland next door, OR complain about the loss of said farmland to another subdivision.
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So they hurriedly push for and vote for the Kane County Forest Preserve District to increase taxes and buy moar landz.... gah.
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Pull up that drawbridge !
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I am resident of Bywater in New Orleans. The changes that have happened here over the past five years are astonishing and frightening for good and bad. Beautiful old historical homes have been renovated. My home value has exploded. The streets are nicer. The part-time prostitute/pt drug dealer that lived across from me and whose clientele stole two cars from me are long gone. Her loud music and drug hazed screaming at some phantom in the empty house next to her are now a distant memory. We got along but I was secretly glad when she was finally evicted. But that rent house was bought, fixed up, and the new tenants are hip, quiet, banal, and utterly cliche', including skinny jeans and Obama bumper stickers. Now I pine for my old neighbor. I moved to New Orleans because of its corrupt chaotic nature. Coming Austin TX, New Orleans was a refreshingly sin filled, free, filthy, hot, soupy mass of an anarchic music and cultural scene that blew me away. I learned to love the city corruption and violence. I told myself that these elements are what keeps those Austin/SF/NYC types from coming in and setting up Hiptopia Zone 9. I underestimated them. It's still my favorite US city by far, yet I fear in 50-60 years, this will be the direct opposite of the Chocolate City. It will be 90% white. It will be filled with snipey, intolerable, pajama boys who will still insultingly claim the very legacy they slaughtered. Maybe we can fight it. I still have hope.
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The fundamental irony of the progressive is that they claim to despise gentrification and what it stands for, yet they are a huge part of the causes and factors that lead to it happening in the first. It's twisted logic that leads to that conclusion, but it's still logic nonetheless: "I hate my boring, suburban, upper class life that's totally environmentally unsustainable. Being part of a rich, "ethnic" culture of New Orleans makes me more "authentic" than my other hipster brethren could ever dream to be. But when I get there, I want to still access my vegan chicken product, my cleaned up shopping and arts district, and eww, I hate those redneck tourists that go there and muck up "my" place with those red go cups and unnecessary noise. If I can't get that, I'll ask Mayor Landrieu to regulate it for me!" And the cycle repeats itself.
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The irony is that it makes me miss *Nagin. At least he was too busy making money deals and traveling to China on bribery money to bother with some hipster complaints about the nightlife culture.
*I don't really miss Nagin.
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LOL, the unintended benefits of old-fashioned corruption: instead of all the gentry getting what they want, just a select few do. In all honesty, though, it's not that the stereotypical progressive lifestyle is inherently evil in any way, it's just that far too many of them are completely blind to the dissonance of moving into a city that they know has a reputation for a lack of social structure, and then later complaining about all the things that they signed up for. Very few know how to take the bad or even the "less good" with the great.
