Great quote. One of my office mates went to college in New Orleans and goes back for the New Orleans Jazz Fest about every other year. It's a great city. Hopefully, it won't disappear. But, given the environmental situation, I'm skeptical about exactly how much the government should invest to keep NOLA going as it is. And, the overall problem isn't necessary specific to New Orleans. What with rising sea levels, New York City, D.C. and other Atlantic Coast cities will both have to invest huge sums on dikes, levees and barrier islands in coming decades. What distinguishes New Orleans, however, is the loss of wetlands due to private development and channel improvements to the Mississippi River coupled with being located in a geological bathtub. Have to say that I'm amused that Beckham wants to build a stadium to house his MLS team right on Biscayne Bay. But, the stadium may well live out its natural lifespan of usefulness before a rising sea level becomes too much of a problem.
I've visited New Orleans five times. I love the city. It's Vegas with a soul and it makes music that wasn't written to be sold like other cities make smog.
You do realize he said that entirely because they were the 3 cities at the time that were accepting of homosexuals, right? It had nothing to do with anything else about those cities (at least in that quote). I'll take Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, and a few others over New Orleans.
I understand that your goal is to irritate the crap out of folks here; but really, to be successful, you need to be more subtle about it.
Is there any reason why the FO hasn't given free season tickets to every resident who lives within 4 blocks of Buzzard Point? What the team gains: 1) Reduced NIMBYism down the road 2) Maybe a few lifelong fans 3) Butts in seats (Lord knows we have enough of them) 4) Potentially merchandise sales What the team loses: 1) An intern, who has to sit at a special gate on gameday to let in the residents. (They wouldn't be given physical tickets that they could sell but would show ID at a special gate and get in.) 2) Maybe a handful of those residents would have purchased tickets to a few games were it not for this program. I don't think the paying STHs would be upset if they understood that this is an overt attempt to help stadium negotiations.
Hey, at least we're not NYCFC who plans to spend their first three seasons playing at Yankee Stadium.
Is there anything the Corps of Engineers can do with the Anacostia and that concrete seating area right off the river?
Well, they could follow the lead of North Carolina, which made it illegal for their planning agencies to consider the effects of global warming on sea level.
New Orleans is an interesting city. I've certainly enjoyed my visits there. That being said, it's pretty apparent, even pre-Katrina, that it's best days are behind it. All those decades of government corruption and the various social pathologies of its inhabitants have pretty much crippled the city.
I do think its best days are behind it; but I don't think the main reasons are the ones you cite. Those have been there for a long time without producing the decline you're describing. To me, the real problem is cultural, because to me, that's where New Orleans in particular stands out. And New Orleans is suffering in that regard just like every place in America is suffering in that regard. For much of its existence, New Orleans has been a place unlike any place else in the U.S. I'm originally from Louisville, and I ought to stand up for my home town; and to be sure, there are things about it I like. But to me, when compared to how different cities *can* be, there's not much difference between Louisville and Indianapolis, or Cincinnati, or St. Louis, or Nashville, or Milwaukee, or a kajillion other cities in the U.S. What has made New Orleans special -- to me, anyway -- has been the degree to which, culturally, it wasn't like the rest of the U.S., and didn't feel that way either. It's hardly surprising that it's had such a pivotal role (arguably, *the* pivotal role) in the changes that underwent American popular music in the 20th Century when it was so different. And IMO, the real reason that (as you put it) its best days are behind it is the relentless, inexorable, and execrably homogenizing influence of American mass/pop culture. Big place or small place, regionalized/cultural differences everywhere are fading away in a sea of Olive Gardens and American Idol graduates. The internet has dramatically accelerated this process, with local newspapers vanishing in favor of the Google News feed and local communities being replaced by online communities that span long distances. Every American city is having its uniqueness washed out; but New Orleans suffers exceptionally from that, because of just how unique it was. And then, of course, along came the 2005 engineering failures to deliver the coup de grace, breaking up those cultural links, many of them permanently as people decided not to return to a place which to them didn't really exist anymore. It's very sad, to me; but I'm obviously an anachronism. Most people don't live their lives in the real world these days anyway. As David Spade tweeted recently from Coachella when Instagram crashed, (paraphrasing) "I guess they'll cancel the rest of Coachella now? I mean, what's left for people to do? Listen to the music?" I think you can go higher than 75%; and as per above, I think most often, it's for the same reasons.
With regards to the culture, I think the biggest problem for New Orleans is that its government has been so hopelessly inept and corrupt for so long, that the city is incapable of leveraging its cultural heritage into a sustainable economic model. Tourism is certainly an economic plus for the city, but it's not something that generally creates a base of good jobs. I hate to use the cliche of the "creative class," but the crime, weak economy and governmental corruption does not make NO an attractive destination for the high-skill, high-education workforce that is the lifeblood of any city that wants to remain viable. A tourist economy coupled with a large population of poor people isn't a winning economic combination. Part of the problem, IMO, is the insularity of the city. I've heard it described that no one leaves NO, and no one moves there (though Katrina shook that up). The residents and their government seem pretty opposed to change of any sort. Certainly, maintaining many of the traditions of NO should be a priority (music, food, architecture etc.). On the other hand, many of the corrosive and destructive traditions of the city (corruption, unwillingness to adapt to new economics, racial segregation) needed to be shed if the city was to survive intact. The latter hasn't happened enough, IMO.
The creative class (well, me, anyway) would move to New Orleans in a heartbeat if it wasn't surrounded by Louisiana (AKA illiterate Southern dumbshits and fundamentalist pig********ers). Also the weather is more pleasant in Hell.
I'm an even older anachronism and I agree with much of what you say, but I have more confidence that New Orleans, for its long term residents, will always retain a cultural distinctiveness even as the greater USA melts into a homogeneous vapidity. Call me a romantic (guilty!) but I like to think of the city as described in books such as Walker Percy's The Moviegoer. Yes, it was written long before Katrina and the exodus, and the baleful effects of mass communication and popular culture, but the image of family living for generations in a unique culture prevails.
Ah, but you see that's the saving grace of New Orleans - it's surrounded by such people but not occupied by the same. (And please don't fall into the smug northeastern trap of labeling the South as "the land of sloping foreheads.")
New Orleans' inability to attract a young and educated workforce has very little to do with the population of the rest of the state, and pretty much everything to do with New Orleans' own failures. People in Baton Rouge didn't make New Orleans the murder capital of the US.
Let's talk 'generally' then to be fair. They more generally soak up federal money (whites in particular) and complain about others soaking up federal money. They are generally very interested advancing corporate welfare, removing the social safety net because ******** old people and poors (and kids), and generally (or comparatively to other regions of the US) don't care about the arts, the environment (killing off their entire coast one step at a time), the sciences, advancing healthcare for all and pay only lip service to personal freedom except in the case of their pet issues. They are the unhealthiest part of the US, generally, who have a warped sense of liberty and private entrepreneurship, where local businesses are annihilated in the name of freedom and replaced by chains en masse. That speaks nothing of high rates of unemployment in part due to continued support of avowed conservative leadership, high rates of poverty, high rates of addiction, particularly alcohol and tobacco, and are continuously among the least happy states in the entire US. Southern States including LA, Alabama and Mississippi occupy 6 or so of the worst 10 school systems in the country (and also have the lowest high school graduation and college attendance rates) and while some cities have resisted their regional placement (by being very dense, attracting more than regional or local industry and being more ethnically heterogeneous) to become 'not bad' places to live, they are often dragged down by their surroundings, politics and culture.
Putting aside the rest of your blatter, this is one of the dumbest expressions a person can use. "Poors" is not a word.