Dear Aspen,
You amaze me. Your mountains are so magnificent. Your weather so sunny.
Your thinking so darn progressive. Your people so pretty. And healthy.
And rich. Really rich.
Golly. Sometimes it makes a simple fella like me want to go smoke crack under a bridge somewhere hot and dirty and backward.
Yeah. So I went down to New Orleans for a week.
I moved to Aspen from there last summer, after sticking it out for
two-post Katrina years. Violent crime escalated in the city during
those post-K days and struck too close to home, more than I'd care to
remember. And I slowly realized that, in the jaundiced eyes of
Washington, this city wasn't worth rebuilding.
I had lived in New Orleans for a long while before the storm, and it
was the love of my life. But after two years in Katrinaville, I wanted
to move to Candyland. However, King Kandy and Queen Frostine weren't
hiring. And this paper was. . . so I came to Aspen.
My return to New Orleans was fraught with trepidation. It seemed a lot
had changed since I had left. The Hornets had gotten good. The Saints
had gone bad again. The President of the City Council — a man I knew
and admired — had been indicted, convicted and imprisoned for taking
bribes.
All in nine months.
Also in that span, the Upper Ninth Ward school where I ran a tutoring
program had been demolished, along with the neighboring housing
projects. The first time I visited Edwards Elementary after the storm
in 2005 it was a muddy, half-slanted, heartbreaking mess — Katrina's
toxic floodwaters having risen above its single story. On this trip, I
wouldn't go back to see the empty lot where it once stood.
Given those facts, I wondered if I would recognize the city — or she would recognize me — on my return.
But my beloved, tarnished, kudzu-covered angel New Orleans greeted her prodigal lover with open arms.
Officially I was there for the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and I saw
some good music there. But, even more, I was there to reconnect, to
feast on oysters and crawfish and fried shrimp poboys in familiar
haunts. To see old faces. To amble down the cracked, stained,
littered-with-shit streets I know too well.
I decamped with a handful of friends to Coop's on Decatur Street one
night, ostensibly to watch the Hornets-Mavericks playoff game. But the
food, jukebox and conversation took precedence. As did the wit of Bear
the Bartender: a barroom sage from the Ozarks with the frolicsome eyes
of a prospector, a beaten leather fedora on his head, and a bushy
pointed red-brown beard that falls to his belly.
He was a sight for my Aspen-sore eyes. I used to live around the corner
from this noisy French Quarter joint, and his gumbo — for my money, the
best in the city — was my midnight snack in those days.
A few blocks away and a few days earlier, I had lain on the banks of
the Mississippi River nibbling a muffuletta at sunset, watching
familiar barges and riverboats pass under redblack broken tendrils of
cloud and heartache.
New Orleans is indeed a magical place. Where a Frenchman Street
midnight music club acquaintance might by dawn be riding beside you
arm-in-arm on a sleepy St. Charles Avenue streetcar ride, like some
long, lost inamorata — the bouquet of honeysuckle and Spanish moss
guiding you home under a canopy of sprawling willow tree branches.
But this is not an entirely feel-good story. New Orleans is not scarred by Katrina, but still bleeding from it.
It has devolved into a third world tourist town, not unlike Cancun,
where shiny, happy places like the Quarter and the Garden District are
preserved for tourists to come have a good time at the minstrel show,
while the rest of the city rots.
They say tourism has rebounded to three-fourths of its pre-Katrina
volume, which is remarkable. And good: don't mistake me, the city
depends on a tourist economy not unlike Aspen's, and I'm glad it's
getting back on its feet.
But the per-capita murder rate remains higher than any city in the
country and higher even than it was in New Orleans before the storm —
owing mostly to drug-dealing wars over territory in the
storm-transformed landscape of the city.
Along Claiborne Avenue a tent city has sprung up under the interstate,
hosting those willing to live in this magic place at all costs. Yeah.
FEMA remains a four-letter word down here.
It might further shock you, Aspen, to learn that Louisiana is Sportsman's Paradise. The phrase is even on their license plates.
But the Louisiana sportsman wouldn't have much in common with his Aspen
counterparts. He is one as comfortable bagging a duck or tarpon as he
is cavorting seersuckered in some mirrored French Quarter bistro or
brothel with a gin fizz in hand. He is skilled at dice and cards and
cotillions, a member of several prestigious Carnival krewes.
I don't have much more in common with those sportsmen than I do with
the fitness freaks skinning up Aspen Mountain these days. But, for
whatever reason, I do enjoy their company.
Yours Lovingly,
Until I Can Find a Way Back Home,
The Interloper
Andrew Travers didn't actually smoke crack under a bridge in New
Orleans. That's a rhetorical device. Reach him at
andrew@aspendailynews.com.
