I rode through Central City on my way home from the gymnasium today, this time on Willow. Now, Willow is only a few blocks from St. Charles, but the difference in what these two streets look like couldn’t be more obscene. I rode by this house and its couch sitting on the curb and wondered where the couch came from. Is this a couch recently (or long ago but ignored) removed from a flooded home? Or is this just a couch on the street, as could be on any street in any city? A couple of blocks down I saw this: 
Another couch on another street. The houses themselves are both in terrible states of disrepair, as are most homes in the area. But again, I cannot know if this is because of the broken levees after Katrina or if this is the sort of blight that afflicts many cities. The man-made disaster that is post-Katrina New Orleans is not necessarily all that different from the man-made disasters in other cities like Oakland and Hartford. In fact, when I first moved here I thought it looked suspiciously like Hartford, with its abandoned neighborhoods and clear lines between rich and poor neighborhoods. It reminds me also of Washington DC, where after you cross 17th Street (ten years ago, anyhow, though we all know how fast gentrification moves…) the trees are gone, the signs of fiscal and ethical abandonment persist. I don’t know the stories of these particular couches, but I *do* know, from what I see riding around here every day, and from riding across St. Charles this afternoon to get home, that something terribly wrong continues to happen here.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 
This is so sad. There is something really depressing about neglected neighborhoods and abandoned couches.
great entry, kate.
I felt the same way upon my first visit to NOLA–like the devastation was both more terrible than we could understand by reading, but also chillingly similar to places that have been more slowly, methodically abandoned, places like hartford, parts of nyc, parts of most urban areas, and I bet rural places that I can’t imagine and haven’t seen because I can’t drive. there’s something here, I suspect, about ‘the event’ and the trouble that comes when we can only see a big thing that happens all at once.
The questions keep coming about that very abandonment as we cruise the rural areas of Idaho. If you want to see rusted cars and farm machinery, come to Idaho. Sometimes people live there but there are lots of falling down trailer homes and no signs of life. People seem to just walk away and my mind always goes to the suspected murder that happened and the body is in the desert somewhere. Too much L&O and CSI I guess.
Oh, but a bird just came to have a drink out of our recycled quart of 7 Up bottom that they just love. My crystal bowl is largely unused. Life on a hill in Boise can be just lovely.
have you lived in oakland , that is where i just came from by train and then bus, and just waiting for my bike to arrive by the soon hopefully running train from chicago h
Nice to meet you, H! Yes, I lived in Oakland for years–LOVED IT. Are you settling down in Oakland for a bit, or leaving there? I will send positive vibes to your bike to get there soon.
Hick, This is Skip, email me at skipworks7@yahoo.com if you get this, I’d love to talk to you.