Destination: New Orleans

Video You Must See: Six Flags, After Katrina

Video You Must See: Six Flags, After Katrina Photo by Infrogmation via Flickr (Creative Commons)

An eerie look at Six Flags New Orleans. The park has been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina, and is scheduled for demolition in January.

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Nine Great Stories About New Orleans

new orleans Photo by Wayne Curtis

To mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we've collected stories from our archives that explore the city's heartbreak, passion and rebirth

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Spike Lee and the ‘Bipolar Parlance of Life’ in New Orleans

Spike Lee’s new documentary, If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, is airing on HBO this week. It’s a follow-up to his award-winning 2006 Katrina documentary, “When the Levees Broke,” and Salon’s Billy Sothern, a NOLA resident, says it nails the voice of the city. Money quote:

The people telling the story in this documentary are many of the same people whose names appear in the paper. Some are policy wonks; others, activists or artists; but nearly all are fervent New Orleanians. Some of them speak in a strongly held hyperbole that hints at madness or mania, both about the good and the bad here. There are angry words, never precisely defined, about “the powers that be” and their efforts at “ethnic cleansing” on the one hand, and on the other, references to the Saints’ Super Bowl win that suggest a local belief that the victory was an act of God, as if New Orleans, like the long-suffering Job, had been rewarded for its faith. This is the bipolar parlance of life here, stemming from the widely held belief that the city is vastly better than, worse than, and not really a part of the rest of the country.

(Via The Atlantic)


‘Treme’: TV’s Best-Ever Take on New Orleans?

Slate’s Josh Levin, a NOLA native, thinks so. Our own take on the city, courtesy of contributor Adam Karlin, is here.


On Becoming a Tour Guide

new orleans tilt shift Photo by Wayne Curtis

Not just any tour guide. Wayne Curtis passed the drug test and is now officially licensed in New Orleans. You are now required to believe everything he says -- even that bit about Brad Pitt.

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New Orleans: It’s About to Get Weirder

New Orleans: It’s About to Get Weirder REUTERS/Sean Gardner

After a landmark mayoral election and the Saints' Super Bowl win, Adam Karlin believes the spirit of NOLA is undergoing a tectonic shift.

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Video: Saints Super Bowl Victory Party in New Orleans

I’m not much of a football fan, but as a traveler who got hooked on the Crescent City awhile back I can’t get enough of this video. From the music to the Magazine St. bars to the Mardi Gras-bead-wearing beat cops, it’s all NOLA.

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates)


King of the Road: Five Great Elvis Travel Movies

Eva Holland and Eli Ellison go traveling with The King on his 75th birthday.

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New Orleans: The Tourists are Back

New Orleans: The Tourists are Back Photo by tim eschaton via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by tim eschaton via Flickr (Creative Commons)

With the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina being marked this weekend, and the re-building still ongoing, there’s some hopeful news for New Orleans: Tourism in the city is creeping steadily back towards pre-disaster levels. USA Today crunches the numbers.


Yeah You Right: A New Orleans Manifesto

Yeah You Right: A New Orleans Manifesto Photo by David Paul Ohmer, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

After spending two months in NOLA writing a guidebook, Adam Karlin reflects on what makes the city as indispensable to the U.S. as Yellowstone and Manhattan

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Interview With Allison Chipak: Photographing Katrina’s Destruction, Four Years Later

Michael Yessis asks Allison Chipak about her haunting images of New Orleans and the state of the city for travelers

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The Haunting Houses of New Orleans

New Orleans, LA home in Lower 9th Ward, 4 years after Hurricane Katrina Photo by Allison Fay

Four years later, the city still reels from Hurricane Katrina. Allison Chipak captures some of the destruction and decay that still remains.

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Do Not Demolish

Do Not Demolish Photo by Allison Chipak

Kevin Fay recently joined voluntourists still helping to rebuild New Orleans-area homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Judy's house was waiting for him.

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Site to Watch: Open Sound New Orleans

It’s a soundmap of New Orleans. The directors of the project, Heather Booth and Jacob Brancasi, aim “to make more accessible the authentic, unedited sounds and voices of New Orleans. Sharing the sounds of our city as we hear them, move through them, and create them, is an act of celebration.”

Booth and Brancasi spoke about their project and shared a few sounds yesterday on NPR’s Weekend Edition.


‘How Much are Venice, the Everglades, and New Orleans Worth?’

‘How Much are Venice, the Everglades, and New Orleans Worth?’ Photo by delgaudm via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by delgaudm via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Andrew Sullivan points the way to a Matt Steinglass post about the limits of measuring climate change damage in economic terms:

There will be no Everglades in 100 years. The economic cost of that change to US GDP is marginal. There will be no Venice in 100 years. The economic cost of that change to US GDP is tiny. There will be no New Orleans in 100 years. The economic cost of that change to US GDP is extremely small. ... But the worth of many precious things cannot be measured in money.

Indeed.