Flood Street-Still in Ruins From End to End

This morning I rode my bike the length of Flood St. in the Lower 9th Ward, from the wharf on the riverside to the levy. Flood Street is in very bad shape. Little has been rebuilt. I passed only a couple of construction crews and a handful of volunteers who were doing some landscape- 

work. I called a friend to get a reminder of what the codes painted on the homes by rescue crews stand for. 

The number at the 6 o’clock part of the X, is where the number of dead is recorded. Zero, in the case of the turquoise home I photographed. My friend looked up my coordinates on google maps and told me it looks like a sea of blue tarps from above. The scarred landscape and homes with boarded up entry points, illustrates Katrina’s story. A telling hole in a roof of one building looks too deliberate to be wind damage. Someone must have hacked the roof open while escaping the rising water.

 I first visited Flood Street in November 2006. The irony of a street called Flood Street, was one too rich to pass by. 

The Battle Ground Baptist Church, closer to the levee where the water went over the roofs of most of the buildings, is still standing. Benches remain inside, but the mud and other rubbish has been cleaned off.

 

At 1806, I went in to reshoot a home I shot in April 2007. More of the contents have been removed and the lawn was now landscaped, but there are no signs any re-building. In the middle of the house was a picture of Jesus, that is no longer behind glass, as I found it in April, looking back at anyone who enters the empty room looking up at them. The most noticeable change since my last visit in February 2008, are the street signs. At that time most were still hand painted on posts. Now the street intersections sport new shinny signs marking Flood Street and its’ recovery.

Bike ride down Desire St.

On Wednesday I rode my bike the length of Desire Street stopping to take pictures along the way. Club Desire, at the corner of Law Street, is in a state of ruin, just as I found it in November 2006. 

There are new signs of life across the street from the club; a crew of volunteers is rebuilding a row of homes. Also new, is a housing development at the end of Desire St, a fenced in community of new homes with fresh perfect lawns, lacking any of New Orleans’ authentic style. The generic bland homes making up the complex could be found in any suburban community elsewhere in America; a bittersweet sign of progress in the Post Katrina rebuilding process.

I got off my bike and chatted with a resident who is happy with the housing development.

Desire Street tells the story of a city on the mend. However, block-by-block one could come up with different interpretations of the same story.

No faded Mardi Gras beads decorating the new housing complex yet, but in a few years I suspect one will find them there as well.

The first picture I shot that day, where Desire Street begins, is of a swan sculpture with a cracked neck adorned with faded Mardi Gras beads. 

Next a graveyard, where when I accompanied the National Guard on their patrols witnessed many drug dealer being picked up. 

Posted here is an image of one of the many ruined houses still standing and a couple of  the destroyed markets with hand-painted sings.