THE GULF COAST

I don't have much to say. Katrina has sort of burned herself into my consciousness, destroying so many lives, maybe wiping out an entire decade's worth of economic development and jobs for poor and low-skilled people on the Gulf, and forcing L's parents down from Boogie to Vicksburg, Mississippi to help "unwater" NOLA. It sort of feels like a few days after 9/11, when the coverage of the disaster was still in full swing, and we had all sort of wrapped our minds around it, so that it started to just seem like a fact of life.

Suffice it to say that I was only in NOLA once, for Mardi Gras. Les bon temps did roulette, that's for sure. However, it was a scary, half crazed environment in which it was never possible to feel very safe. The city was an edgy city. The cops were edgy, the locals were edgy, the cab drivers were edgy. Even the 6'3" trannie K and I ran into trying to avoid a fight was edgy. I can only imagine the level of lawlessness now. God save NOLA. They're going to need it.