A post for JT, who misses New Orleans

I haven’t seen that man who was on the sidewalk since Thursday. So that’s not good. Also, I noticed that the bus stop shelter on Jackson where he used to hang out has been taken down.

The roaches are flying. The termites are swarming. Hank’s lost all his butt hair. I’m going through at least three t-shirts and taking at least three cool showers a day, and horniness has nothing to do with it. I’ve stopped cooking. My Entergy bill is $130. The summertime sauna has begun.

Crime is up. Papa Joe of Joe’s Cozy Corner died in jail. The cops are busting up second lines. Uptown and in Lakeview, white ladies are getting robbed while getting out of their cars in front of their houses. In the Marigny, black kids are throwing rocks at white hipsters on bikes. In Algiers, a Vietnamese girl working in a corner grocery got shot in the head during an attempted robbery. Dumbass shoots her before she has a chance to hand over any cash, then leaves without it. The ghetto thugs are at war with everyone, including and especially themselves. Even if you’ve got some good ideas about how to start fixing this mess, if you’ve been here awhile you start to accept that nothing’s ever going to change because any attempt to make things better will be co-opted by ineptitude, ignorance and greed. So then you’re just another person shrugging your shoulders and thinking about learning to shoot.

I did my regular middle-of-the-night radio show this weekend, and then I did Gentilly Jr.’s show last night. I’m going to quit deejaying when I move, because I’ll be farther away and because I’ll probably do better in school if I get in the habit of sleeping at night. I usually ride my bike to the station with a bag full of CDs strapped to the back. With so much mayhem in the streets, I’m thinking this may not be the smartest or safest thing to do, and I’ll be relieved to not do it anymore. But I’ll miss those late night trips, too.

I like going out on hot nights. When the sun is out, the heat is too oppressive, but after the sun goes down stepping outside is like stepping into a hot bath-- oddly comforting. I bike through the Lower Garden District, under the overpass, through the warehouse district and CBD and into the Quarter. The drunk tourists can be annoying, the quarter rats can be creepy, but I like the buzz of the Quarter at night. Then I ride through the park, past dignified and indignant geese and ducks walking across the street, napping on the lawn or floating in the lagoon. Then I get to the station and play my records and field phone calls from Norm from Algiers “pernt” and various other inebriated and unintelligible old men. I’ll miss all of that.