Thursday, March 30, 2006

Exclusive Interview


GulfSails and New Orleans Yacht Club, over the last two weeks, has conducted an exclusive interview with the candidates running for New Orleans City Council in District A.

The diverse issues we asked the candidates pertained primarily to the wasted neighborhoods of Lakeview, development pressures at West End and some general questions.

You can check out the interview by clicking HERE.

Stay tuned for a similar interview with the top candidates running for New Orleans Mayor.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

Quality over Quantity

I am currently working on some large projects which will make their way onto GulfSails as soon as they are finished.

Be prepared for some intersting political pieces as well as some uplifting interviews with several true heroes from the storm.

Expect the first one later on this week.

Thanks.


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Monday, March 13, 2006

Lakefront Land Grab

We've all heard the rumblings and yells from the residents of the Lower 9 on how there was going to be a huge land grab in that neighborhood, but the fact of the matter is that the neighborhood which needs to be concerned is Lakeview.

Already there are quiet City Hall meetings on grabbing the Lakefront real estate where Jaeger's and the Dock used to reside near West End Park. Word on the street is the South's largest and most expensive condominuium project is in the works.

With the talk also coming from several liveaboards regarding the privitization of the next door Orleans Marina - everyone who celebrated the lifestyle out at the marinas (who can't afford million dollar condos) should be very afraid.

This entire way of life, this community is about to be forever and irrevocably destroyed.

If you are a resident of District A, please email Councilman Jay Batt (jbatt@cityofno.com) explaing in no uncertain terms that the charm, historic viability and useability of the Lakefront must be saved and restored.

Whether you are a boater, enjoyed evenings playing volleyball out at Coconut Beach, spent countless hours eating at some of New Orleans' best seafood restaurants, docked your boat up at Jaegers on a Sunday afternoon you must become actively involved.

We can't rebuild our city simply for the sake of rebuilding. We have to fight for preserving our many and varied ways of living down in New Orleans or all is truly lost.

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Thursday, March 09, 2006

Blue Dog


Get your very own Blue Dog Katrina posters and help support the arts recovery in New Orleans!












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Monday, March 06, 2006

WWOZ & Your Momma


In this time of times down in New Orleans if there's only ONE thing that you're willing to support financially - please make it WWOZ - New Orleans Community Radio (other than levees, obviously).

WWOZ is the quintessential New Orleans radio station, broadcasting commercial free/listner supported radio doling out the brass, blues, cajun, zydeco, & jazz 24/7.

Sign up for your dirt cheap membership today and get a cool bumpersticker that no one else has up in Seattle or on Breakback Mountain.

Listen to OZ LIVE as they broadcast from the French Quarter!



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Levees of Decline

In New Orleans these days there's a quiet conversation taking place unmasking a deep almost primal fear of a Thursday not too far away... Hurricane season 2006 begins on Thursday June 1st and everyone is either ancy or getting depressed as that date looms and nears.

You hear it in conversations left and right over coffee, drinks or dinner - it always seems to come up and everyone feels it, senses that we're probably going to take another hit. It could simply be the post traumatic stress - but that fear is tangible.

It certainly does not help when articles come out in the Washington Post stating that the Army Corps of Engineeers is either screwing up the levee repairs or defering some obvious weakened levee re-construction for some date down the road and the fact that even now, six months later, the decayed, skeletal remains of people are still being pulled down out of attics or found behind couches.

New Orleans can not take another hit.

And if we do, the already colossal failure by the Army Corps to adequately and by law protect us from hurricanes will be but a footnote in the history of a truly colossal government screw-up.

New Orleans will cease to exist and the price will be paid by everyone in this country in the cost of oil, gas, wheat, steel - you name it.

Newt Gingrich has even opined how the Federal Government must wake up to the fact that South Louisiana's thoroughly weakened coasts is the most crucial issue facing this country and that he is sickened that the United States is spending more money to rebuild Iraq's wetlands than on our own soil.

We must force our government to realize that rebuilding the levees and wetlands of New Orleans and Louisiana is one of the greatest, unescapable challenges to ever face this republic. If we fail at this, it will be the defining moment for the decline of the United States of America.

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Sunday, March 05, 2006

Hastert Sped Through Town


Totally by coincedence, I happened to be leaving my FEMA trailer Friday and pulled up to West End Blvd. in the heart of Lakeview when my path was suddenly blocked by a Federal Protection Agency vehicle. Then low and behold, a medium-sized congressional delegation in town to view the devastation flew by on West End - I assume to visit the 17th St. Canal breach. Talk about a convoy, two large tour busses and probably ten Fed cop cars.

I'm, of course, pleased that Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi have finally made it down to the site of this country's worst natural disaster, but come on - it's been six months and they were cruising through the neighborhoods at close to 60 mph.

You can't smell it going that fast. You can't hear how quiet it is going that fast. You can't feel it going that fast. And you certainly can't talk to any of the residents while driving by that fast.

As a matter of fact, no resident of New Orleans was allowed to get near the Congressmen.

Although I did hear that at least one New Orleanian held up one of the quickly proliferating signs that demands that the Army Corps of Engineers be held responsible for flooding New Orleans and killing 1,300 people and leaving 1,840 still missing...

I just shot the bird at them through my sunroof.

_________

Thursday, March 02, 2006

What Has Brown Done For You?

It's quite astonishing that according to the Associated Press only 30% of US Senators and 13% of the members of the US House of Representatives have come down to witness the continued devastation of the Gulf Coast. Trust me -- you have to see it to understand it and it is shamefull that all of them did not come down in the first two months.

Though I drive through it and sleep in it everyday, I got a fresh understanding of what it looks like through the eyes of a friend who came down from Brooklyn for Mardi Gras.

All that he kept saying as I drove him through mile after mile of destroyed neighborhoods was "I have to keep saying to myself that this is six months later. Six months later. It looks like it happened yesterday!"

He had to keep reminding me to stop so that he could take photographs, and I kept telling him you ain't seen nothing yet.

On the way back from the 17th Street Canal breach in Lakeview headed back Uptown I told him that I would tell him when the flooding stopped. Twice he asked me if I had forgotten, and I replied not yet... not yet.

p.s. Dennis Hastert had better not run into me while he's down here.

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