HumidCity

It is common knowledge that I am not a fan of sports in general. Simply a matter of taste. Even I am aware fo the fact that it is football season, mainly because Twitter is awash with sports comments. That being the case I have decided that it is time to drag one out of the archives just for the Saints. This is slightly more hazardous now as the person lampooned currently has posting access here. (Nah, not really, I’m the admin.)

So without further ado here’s one from the archives, HumidCity’s very own cheerleader:

-Loki, Founder HumidCity

The score is 14/16 with the Saints just having scored a touchdown. The really interesting part is the vacant streets outside.

I just got back from walking to the store for cigarettes. It reminded me so much of those first weeks back after our exile. In the course of walking six blocks on a fairly major street (Prytania)  I saw only one car. When I entered the store there was only one other customer and the staff were howling as the Bears scored on the TV set up on ther counter.. Everywhere the exterior face of the city is deserted. I’m willing to bet that no crime will occur during this window either.

With the exception of that period when there were so few of us in the aftermath of the Katrina/Levee Failure/Rita apocalypse this is the emptiest I have ever seen the city streets…

While the Saints game is undeniably bread and circuses, garnering attentiion and participation in far greater quantity that things like housing or elections, it still has its good sides. For the first time (yes, first time, I am NOT a sports fan of any stripe) I watched the Saints pound Atlanta into the ground the other night. Besides the awe of the impossible I also felt that the game might help bring us back into the national consciousness. From the looks of things it has. Here is part of an excellent article from (Ta-Daa!) Sportsline:

New Orleans, ravaged by Katrina, far from recovered - CBS SportsLine.com
You hear how New Orleans is coming back, that the recovery is progressing, then you come here, to the mostly black neighborhoods, and you see it is a lie, and our shame.

There are few houses left totally intact within eyesight. Debris still lines some of the streets. There are people moving about but not many. There is a deserted feel. Football might be coming back to New Orleans on Monday night, but the money from the federal government seems to have not quite made it, so many of the homes stay annihilated, and people remain lost in the bureaucracy.

When part of an American city — in these times of the mega-rich, where wealth spills onto the streets by the c-note — looks like the surface of the moon all this time after Katrina, something is wrong. You want to say the Ninth Ward looks like bombed out Iraq, but Iraq is being rebuilt with more rapidity. Saying the Ninth Ward looks like Iraq is an insult to Iraq.

In fact a columnist for a weekly newspaper here asked the question: “… are you safer in the streets of New Orleans or Iraq?”