viz.

"Hey Cafe Magazine St. Uptown NOLA Jan. 2010" by Infrogmation

Via Flickr

This weekend, I visited a friend in New Orleans.  On Sunday, we sat in plastic chairs outside a coffee shop along Magazine Street, with my friend sipping a Diet Dr. Pepper (her addiction) and me indulging a tall glass of latte (my addiction). Let's not mention the almond-butter infused croissant.  As my host surveyed the Times Picayune, I took in the people passing and the variety of businesses and signs.  George Harrison "My Sweet Lord" was echoing from a restaurant across the way, and the morning air was mildly warm and a little smelly. We chatted with some NOLA locals sitting at the table nearby:  a mother and toddler, who was dressed adorably in an orange jack-o-lantern hoodie.  We talked about the Saints game (the toddler could cheer "Who Dat") and about Halloween festivities the coming evening.  When the toddler threw down the plastic lid from his chocolate milk, his mother coached him to one of the over-flowing trash cans on the sidewalk. 

Upon returning to Austin, I have been thinking how New Orleans is more than just an image, although you should check out fotogail, JustUptown, and Editor B for some Flickr users whose streams of photos give a sense of the visuality of NOLA. By "more than an image," I mean that there is something about New Orleans that engages all the senses simultaneously: a kind of multi-media experience, if you will. The city streets are a mixing of trash and human landscape, sound and sight, young and old, taste and touch, local and tourist. Add in the alcohol, and you feel like you're in a new state of existence. Maybe that's why New Orleans seems to have the effect of either waking you up(making you feel life's vitality), or delivering you to what feels like a surreal dream state (you might be eager to go home from at the end of a weekend of taking in too many "spirits"). I'll end with an interesting Youtube montage from earlier this year by The Economist Magazine. Watch how Economist Magazine shifts from images of New Orleans' deep loss, experienced during the events of Katrina, to the regaining of life in the years since the storm. Next, the montage adds the next chapter of the New Orleans' saga by depicting the events of the BP Oil Spill. Long live New Orleans. Bless those who were lost, and those who continue to try to thrive there.