New Orleans: Five Years After

This is a love letter to New Orleans.

Five years ago, a not-so-bad storm with a pretty bad-ass name swept through a magical, magical place. Levees broke, people in high places made no decisions & then terrible decisions.

But you know what, the best city in the U.S. (possibly the world) still stands, sways, swings harder than your mama after listening to 3 Marvin Gaye records & downin' strawberry daquiris.

Life would be so boring without purple houses & pickled okra Bloody Mary's (that you can walk down the sidewalk with, or stagger down the aisles sipping while grocery shopping... i can't recommend this enough).

It would be capital L lame without tubas & trombones & men in rabbit suits strutting through the streets a dozen times a year.

And too-rich-for-my-blood gumbo. And park benches littered with crawfish shells. And old men with top hats, languid accents, and catcalls that make you feel impossibly sexy and classy, no matter how attractive you may or may not be.

Don't even get me started on the drummers.
(check out this video.)

New Orleans, thank god you are still here. And THANK YOU to all the people who have stuck out the terrible times and are rebuilding the city, house by house, block by block, dream by dream, school by school, family by family, one street parade at a time.
~Jessie