I’ve never been able to commit the layout of this part of the city to memory.
I mean, who is responsible for this mess? I did learn the very useful shortcut Gentilly to Desaix to Moss / Jeff Davis or Wisner / Carrollton. But that stretch of Gentilly after the split always confused me. And Paris and St. Bernard Avenues, I never knew you.
Funny thing is that this is right in the middle of the city and can’t be blamed on the curve of the river.
jvanpelt - April 21st, 2009
The real estate site I use to check out houses in New Orleans recently switched to Virtual Earth. I was looking at the location of one on the satellite map and, when I scrolled over a few blocks, I saw this congregation of people and realized — it’s a Mardi Gras parade on Virtual Earth! This obviously isn’t mardi gras day. Judging by the size of the crowd as you go down the route I’d say it’s probably two weekends before Mardi Gras. Still, it’s a funny thing to come across.
jvanpelt - October 22nd, 2008
I was sitting on my porch, looking at how this house was framed by all of the darkness around it, then realized that my camera was sitting in the car. Our block was out of power, but they had power four houses down across Perrier St. I hoped that meant that ours would come back on last night, but we weren’t so lucky.
This pic is a combination of a 2 second exposure of the darker areas and .6 second exposure of the porches and brighter spots.
This is the view from my porch looking out across the street. The power was on 3 blocks to the left, so you can see lots of light reflecting off of the clouds low in the sky. It was a little surreal, but it was also kinda nice being one of the first back… except that it was uncomfortably warm with no fans or air conditioner. What a horrible night’s sleep I got last night.
This was a 13 second exposure and I still had to adjust the levels to brighten it up just a hair.
This is the view looking down my porch along the street. Not a lot to see, but… that’s pretty much how it was!
Also a 13 second exposure.
There’s a fire station not even half-way up the next block. They weren’t even pulling the truck into the station most of the time. They’d just pull up here and park. I’m surprised I got this much detail in a .8 second exposure with the lights flashing and spinning.
jvanpelt - September 4th, 2008
Apartment hunting here is NOT easy. This is what I’ve found from looking for apartments two years in a row:
There are four decent resources for finding apartments:
There’s this conventional wisdom that the people who own the better houses don’t always advertise them in classifieds in order to “keep it in the neighborhood.” In other words, allowing them to hand pick their tenants a little more. I don’t know how true that is, but I did find in driving around that there were a few places with For Rent signs that I did not see advertised. It’s a little odd to me how many property owners are using real estate companies to handle their properties, which I think I commented on last year. Something new I picked up this year, though, was that it’s best to go through the specific agent for a property. The idea of using one realtor like a buyer’s agent just doesn’t really work. As it turns out, the best resource of all is craigslist.
There’s something rudimentary about the way that craigslist works, but perhaps that IS what makes craigslist work. I didn’t see much overlap at all between properties on craigslist and those being handled by realtors, although i think there may have been a bit of overlap with the nola.com classifieds. New houses / apartments are being added on craigslist constantly throughout the day, with many of them being re-listed every day or so. It’s a little aggravating, on one hand, to keep seeing the same properties over and over. But the positive side to it is that it’s a easy to keep track of which properties are still available, which ones aren’t moving, and which ones are dropping their prices.
One thing to keep in mind, especially with places that aren’t being listed by realtors, is that owners can be flexible, especially if their apartment has been empty for a little while. It’s more of a hassle to haggle on the price with a realtor, who has to get back to the owner and relay messages, but it is possible. It’s also helpful if you have something to offer — like being willing to do the lawn work, offering to sign a longer lease, or if you’re moving uptown, play up the fact that you’re a family and not a couple of 19 year-olds getting your first apartment. Landlords love families! Who doesn’t, right? You’re not a couple of college kids, are you?
We searched for weeks to find the right place. I think Kim probably went to see at least ten different apartments. I did a LOT of driving around, gathering phone numbers from For Rent signs, doing drive-bys on places that we had seen online, and checking out a few of the places with Kim. There were a few notable apartments that we found. There was one on Egret St. near the lakefront that we probably should have taken and we knew it, but we kept holding out for something… The apartment wasn’t spectacular, but it was big and functional. The yard, though… the yard wasn’t really a yard. It was the park. The “bird streets” in Lake Vista all have these park / walking paths between them so all of the houses are basically situated in this park environment. The house we saw was actually on a cul-de-sac, so the yard was about as open as possible. It would have been a great place to just let the kids run and bike, but there was no fence, so the baby would have been uncontained. Nobody likes an unrestrained baby. You just can’t trust them. Oh and Lakeview, especially past Robert E Lee, just kinda feels a bit isolated from the rest of civilisation. It’s nice… but it’s kinda surrounded by under-populated areas on all sides. Kim and I kinda realized that she’d feel a bit isolated out there during the day, which isn’t so perfect.
We saw a few places in the Garden District that were compelling. One on Pleasant St. right off of Prytania that we really liked a LOT, but it needed quite a bit of work to really be livable and I only had so much faith that it would get done. Yet we still kept coming back to that place in our minds and would probably have taken it if nothing else came along in time — which was quickly approaching. The other one that we seriously considered for a day was on 4th St 1/2 block off of Magazine. It was amazing. It was 150 years old, green with shutters across the front, there was exposed brick and a remodeled kitchen, and a master bedroom upstairs that was literally 1000 sq/ft. Really. But it had a spiral staircase. It might have been perfect to actually give the kids the upstairs bedroom with all of that space to play. But it had a spiral staircase. And the bedrooms downstairs would not have suited Kim, Sid and I very well. But we really wanted it! But it had a spiral staircase and someone would have killed themselves on it.
At some point I started looking at slightly more expensive listings, sending emails asking if the owner would be willing to negotiate with the “right tenants.” Pushing it a little, but at least I didn’t go so far as to call us the “perfect tenants.” I found a place on Arabella, a double shotgun that’s been converted to a single house (perfect!!) and sent them and email… and got no response. Then Kim sent an email asking to see the place and got no response… until the next day. So we went to see it at 3:30 on Friday and LOVED it, but we told that someone else wanted the place and wanted to bring a deposit by later. Oh, and it turned out that the owner of the house was one of Sid’s pediatricians! We told her that if the other girl didn’t come through with the deposit that we’d really appreciate a phone call. I woke up Sat. morning thinking about the apartment and how I would phrase a phone call to her to ask if the other girl had come through and, if not, would she be willing to come down on the price even just a little bit please please pre
tty please? I asked God to look out for us and help us get this place and if He saw fit He could even have her call right now. And then she called. I swear I’m not exaggerating, it was like two minutes later. For whatever reason the other girl couldn’t get it together and they really wanted us to have the house, so we left the house and went to sign the lease on our new place:
Perhaps this picture doesn’t fully do it justice, but if you know nola you know this is a traditional New Orleans house. It’s a 6 block walk to Audubon Park, near PJ’s and Whole Foods, and right around the corner from the house that my mom grew up in on Joseph St. I don’t know when I’ve been so excited to pack all of my stuff and move.
jvanpelt - May 24th, 2008
My posts are all old lately, but I’ve spent the last 3 months being retarded amounts of busy and equally stressed out about what to do… in life. Now that some big decisions have been made we’re dealing with finding a new apartment. Ugh.
Here:
I haven’t gone into much detail at all about things here, but I’ve spent much of the last few months stressing out about The Clash’s big question: should I stay or should I go? Let me say, continuing with my lack of detail, that there were some pretty compelling reasons not to stay in New Orleans. I might even say that there were more reasons to go back to Milwaukee then there are to stay here. I don’t know, maybe that’s a little strong. But for me, some of the reasons for staying in Nola felt *larger*.
There are a few key things that I think really helped me decide, but I think the biggest factor is the permanence of the decision. knew when I left Milwaukee that, if nola didn’t work out, I could fall back. But it wouldn’t be so simple if I left nola. I think at this point I would have to accept that leaving here is very long-term. Which my wife was fine with. But the situation was such that I felt more compelled to go to Milwaukee than to leave New Orleans. Perhaps that sounds like splitting semantic hairs, but the point, which I may have stated before, is that I want to be in New Orleans assuming New Orleans doesn’t fail me. And I don’t think that it has It all. As a matter of fact I’ve had a great time here over the last year.
One of the things that I’d hoped to accomplish here was to spend more time with my wife and kids. Part of me felt that pulling myself ort of my Milwaukee routine would allow me to put more focus on my family. This has held true to some extent, except when I’ve been particularly busy with freelance work – like for the last 10 weeks, ugh. Between going for walks in the park, going out for snoballs or beignets, or going to various festivals, parades, and other events, I feel like we have done more things as a family. But then I’ve also spent quite a few late nights working at the coffee shop, too.
I probably don’t need to point out what a big draw the weather here is. Yes, it gets extremely hot in the summer and perhaps are were slightly spoiled last year in that when we got here summer was half over. But I don’t need to tell you how much better the winters are here. Or how much shorter. I bought a vespa and can ride it almost year-round. I got a new bicycle and ride in the park outside of my front door. I don’t have to wait for it to get warm enough to go for a walk. I can get outside and see people – friendly people who greet each other and genuinely smile.
jvanpelt - May 19th, 2008
Them dudes on the float rappin about LSU. Aw yeah.
This weekend was the first real weekend of parading in New Orleans — and the kid’s very first Mardi Gras parades. I took them to a parade Saturday night uptown, me elli and graham. It had been raining earlier in the day, and was even still a little misty as we were leaving the house. But by the time we parked, which was surprisingly easy, it was a really nice night out. A bit chilly, but I’m all jaded on the cold now. So we stayed long enough to fill up a bag with beads and cups and stuffed animals, until graham had to potty. Then home to bed.
Today, Sunday, it was really nice out. It’s kinda hard to gauge how long a parade is going to take to make its way along its route, so I guessed a bit wrong and caught just the end of the first in back-to-back parades uptown this afternoon. But we were there for the whole second one, this time with kim and the baby, who both had a great time. It’s really kinda ridiculous how much stuff people on the floats throw to very small kids. Graham can barely catch anything as it is. Elise is really getting into it, though — chasing after floats, grabbing stuff from under people’s feet… It meant a lot to finally get to take them to a parade, Elise especially. I’ve been talking to her about Mardi Gras since she was born, listening to the Meters and Professor Longhair, telling her how much fun it is and how one day we’d get to go. And here we are! And they DID have a ton of fun…
But man, we went to a parade in Metairie tonight, who knows which one. When I was in high school the Metairie parades were the place to be. It was probably cause we thought we’d see a lot of girls there or something. Not that I ever talked to girls before I was 16. But it was full of all these white gangsta wanna-be 16-20 y/o dudes drinking mickey’s and pullin up they pants. We got there like 2 hours after the parade started and thought maybe we’d missed it at first. But we were catching it a good ways down the parade route, so we parked and walked to hang out and wound up waiting for half an hour or so for the parade to come. Then by the time it got to about float 16, the parade just stopped. The driver of the tractor pulling the float even got down and went and hung out with the other tractor drivers or something. Who knows. We just sat there wondering for about 10 minutes, then decided it was too late and cold and we’d just had too much Metairie. So we went home.
No parades tomorrow or Tuesday that I know of, but Wednesday night there are 3! uptown, yay! Happy Mardi Gras!
jvanpelt - January 28th, 2008
It’s late on a friday night, as it always is, and I’m listening to the B-sides from Standing on a Beach for the first time since I’ve moved back and realizing that it’s odd that I haven’t heard it till now. It’s weird being here, being home, but in many ways it’s like i’m living somewhere completely new. Only I get to see some of the places I love more often than for the past dozen years.
Last weekend I took a ride through New Orleans East, past my old kenilworth neighborhood, past the baseball field and past some old friends’ houses and whatnot, and I regretted it. I didn’t like being there, I didn’t take my time. It didn’t feel rewarding to see my old house… it looks black on the inside like so many other dead houses. It’s overgrown. There’s no more tree in the front yard. Our neighborhood had “catwalks” — allies in the middle of the block to walk through — one of which was between our house and the neighbor’s. Our house was always the one with the skateboard ramps. We’d set them up in the catwalk, unimpeded by cars or anyone fussing at our presence. And we’d listen to all of this angsty punk music that we didn’t get, and weird new wave music that we also didn’t get, but we understood that it was different or whatever. Like they all say.
So now I’m back here, and the places I lived are not the places I visit. I was never in the CBD as I am daily now, I never did live in Mid-City (but for a few months in 97). While I was in Wisconsin I felt like I was constantly clinging to where I was from. It was what set me apart, in a way. It was my conversational trump card. But it was also a part of my identity, which in many ways I maintained through music and listening to these albums that I have always listened to, this B-sides collection in particular.
The reason it’s surprising to me that I haven’t heard it yet (besides the obvious — that it isn’t on my ipod) is that I’d kind of expect myself to be kicking the “who I used to be” reflection into high gear. I have passed through Gentilly quite a few times since I’ve been back, and I don’t feel bad going through there. It just feels weird not to have anywhere to stop. I suppose if my younger brother were in town we might get out and walk through the neighborhood. But I can’t stop at grandma’s. And I’m not going to be going back to my house across the street to put this album on. But I’m contradicting my point here… the point was how little I’ve actually been in that mode of conjuring up the past. But then I go through NO East and put on an old album that I never left behind and back I go.
jvanpelt - November 3rd, 2007
It’s kinda weird working in the CBD. It’s the one place in New Orleans where things aren’t moving slowly. I’ve been taking Esplanade to Decatur to Camp St. to get to work and it’s quite a nice ride. Decatur St. is kinda funny in the afternoons when all of the tourists are out. It’s kinda funny to think that they go to the French Quarter to walk around all day long, looking in shops, trying to find things to buy and drink and eat, like they’re at a big fair. No one’s telling them “just go find a place to sit and eat for two hours, then go find some shade along the river to sit.” They’re all so busy and we’re all so…
Now that I’m thinking about it, though, I don’t even know that I’d call this a lazy city anymore. It seems like there’s a lot more activity going on, aside from the streetcars. It’s probably more just that the city is compressed now. Everyone lives closer together or something. I guess what it is, at least in my experience, is that the city has become uptown, downtown, mid-city and the points in between. But it’s like, when i go North of Esplanade on Wisner (toward the lake) there’s just not much of anything there. There are pockets of civilization — there are businesses again on Harrison Ave (including a snoball stand that’s open past sun-down!), there are some things going on in Lakeview and Gentilly, but it’s not a lot. When we drive East to my mom’s or my dad’s we pass through New Orleans East and it doesn’t look a hell of a lot different. I know we don’t get the full story from the interstate, but you can just see it… there’s just not a lot of life there.
But when you stay localized to where you live, when we don’t go past City Park, it’s like things are fairly normal. I don’t know, i go back and forth. Sometimes it’s euphoric to be here. We’ve been going to the park nearly every evening so that I can go for walks and the kids can play with other kids. The evenings have been so beautiful. The temperature is warm but not stifling, everything is green and lush and there are trees everywhere. Huge oak trees and palm trees… there are so many different types of palm trees, some so huge and dense that the trunks have ferns growing in their shingled bark.
But you have to contrast that with the stories of the crimes, the woman who was car-jacked in broad daylight at the mall, the man who was shot down Carrollton right near the corner of Claiborne. I admit that I sometimes elect to be naive. It’s not going to happen to me because I’m invincible, or simply because it never has. I didn’t grow up in the best of neighborhoods, but we’ve always been safe. I think I live in a fantastic neighborhood now, but as everyone you meet points out, no area is completely safe.
I don’t think New Orleans is a lazy city anymore, and it may also simply be because my personal experience now, here, isn’t what it was in the past. (Though I have to say that in some ways I can’t help but feel like my mind has reverted back to it being 1993, but that’s a tangent for another day.) But I’m not the only one who’s mentioned this. This was what I was getting at with working in the CBD, that it’s like the one place in nola where things are in constant motion. Work is actually happening, there is money being spent and deadlines being met. But then you go home, back to your (hopefully) quiet neighborhood, you spend a few hours enjoying the warmth and slowing down the tempo…
Part of me feels compelled to chronicle my experiences here to offset this pervasive negativity that I’ve seen in New Orleans media, blogs in particular. Perhaps I’ve got rose-colored blinders on. Perhaps I don’t have it as hard as some other local writers and so my experience is inherently different. But listen, I grew up hearing my grandpa pseudo-swear at the local news as he sat at the dinner table, complaining about the crime, the politicians, the corruption, the pot holes in the streets, the bums in the French Quarter… I don’t know. You know, everything that people are complaining about now. But let’s face it, it’s not worse now, it’s just a continuation of the same old shit. And fo reals, the same old shit in New Orleans, as far as I’m concerned, is way more interesting then the same old shit in just about any other place this country has to offer. Of course I’d like less crime, to feel like my family is safe. I want my wife to feel safe. I’d like to get bounced off of the seat by the bumps in the road less as I ride my scooter. But I wouldn’t like less Spanish moss. I love that there are swans swimming through the waters of city park and a huge flock of herons nesting in the trees in Audubon Park. I enjoy seeing how many people are out walking, jogging, riding their bikes, and walking their dogs. I feel like there is community around me here, something I don’t EVER remember feeling in Milwaukee.
And part of me feels compelled to chronicle my experiences here to see how they change when things stop going my way.
jvanpelt - July 27th, 2007
When I thought I was going to be looking at houses in Slidell I thought things would be easy. I’d only need to see a few houses – they’re all ranches, it’s just a matter of which one is flatter. You know. But then the shift to looking uptown threw a wrench in things. I was driving until 11 pm Saturday, criss-crossing down every street writing down numbers. Today Elise and I drove around for hours, checking out the list of places I made from Latter & Blum’s website, figuring out which ones to call. In the end we only wound up actually going inside one place, primarily because realtors don’t work on Sunday.
It’s amazing to me how many of the houses for rent are being handled by realtors here. The vast majority, to be sure. I have to say, though, provided we find a nice house before Tuesday evening, I think I’ll be glad we decided to stay in the city. I won’t believe the high rents are worth my money, but it’ll be nice to be IN New Orleans. I’m actually going to see a place on Esplanade with some friend-of-the-family realtor tomorrow. She had given my mom the address, so I went to check it out today and am pretty excited to see the inside. It is also a continuance on this whole thing being providential. Kim and I, in our letters to each other (during the early 90s) had this recurring “when we can finally be together…” story about it being a warm Sunday afternoon and we’re lying around or the couch in our apartment on Esplanade. There had probably been some fried oysters earlier in the day.
Oh, I had a Hansen’s snoball today for the first time ever. I’ve been talking to Elise about snoballs for weeks so we’ve been rather gluttonous with them. I promised that we’d get one after lunch, but we were pretty far From Pandora’s and I think they are closed on Sunday. So we went looking for another snoball place and I remembered Hansen’s, though not once have I ever EVER seen that place open. Hansen’s is a pretty fabled place in New Orleans, for those who aren’t aware. Snoballs as smooth as ice cream, they say. It was owned and operated by a couple, like forever, and they got old and they only opened intermittently until eventually they passed away. After that the granddaughter took it over, in homage at first l believe.
I’m certain that all of the facts in that story are wrong but I believe the folklore aspect to it is spot on. I think there was an article about it on nola.com that I read. I don’t just know all this stuff.
jvanpelt - June 7th, 2007
So yesterday was my last day at Fullhouse. I wound up being fairly busy up until the very last minute. I did always say I preferred to be busy, but until 6:00 on your last day is pushing it. I did my best to help them transition, but even 4 weeks notice wasn’t enough to replace 2 flash Developers in Milwaukee. It’s odd, I wouldn’t have imagined it would be that hard to find good flash people, but it’s been a struggle even finding people to interview. You would think that some one there would know some one to refer.
Then again, thinking back I remember in the Cream City days how I used to feel like I was operating in a void. There was no one around to ask questions or act as a mentor. I didn’t feel like the work we were doing at Fullhouse was particularly advanced, but now that the other flash Developer and I are gone, I recognize how difficult it is going to be for them for the next few months and I feel bad about it. You know, you start a job and you think one day you’ll be gone and it just won’t matter anymore, but that never seems to be the case. Part of me couldn’t help but think, especially considering how hard they tried to keep me at Fullhouse, about the opportunity I was leaving behind as the lead interface developer (not to mention the headaches).
So today, being the day after my last day, I’m heading to nola with Elise to find a place to live. We’re looking for a house to rent, but prices there are pretty phenomenal. We were thinking of living in Slidell near my parents – which reminds me that I had this dream last night that my step mom was mounting a campaign for a full-scale war against me. I don’t know what it was that I had done to make her so upset, but she wanted my head on a platter. Anyway, Kim’s been looking into home-school groups to join and has found that there are several in Metairie and on the West Bank. Having me commute from Slidell to the CBD for work is one thing. Having us both do it is a waste.
So, contrary to what l had been thinking was the wise thing to do, we’ve decided to look at places uptown. Safety concerns me, and price really concerns me, but l think if we’re smart we can manage it. Besides,more than anything, I would like to be near Audubon Park. The bad part is that the shift in our mindset puts me behind in my research in finding a place. I had hoped to at least have a few appointments set up before I got to town and I don’t. I may have to do it old school style and drive around to see what I can find. I do have a bunch of listings from Latter & Blum’s website to start with, so at least I’m not going empty-handed. The trade off in living uptown is that I may be able to skip getting a second car for a while, and may even be able to not pay for parking – if l can take the scooter or, eventually, the streetcar.
I would love to take the streetcar to work everyday!
jvanpelt - June 7th, 2007