I’m on spring break and the weather is perfect.  That means bike riding, of course.  Today I tooled down to to the Marigny to meet some friends for coffee and reading.  But I was having such a good time feeling the sunshine and listening to music that I decided to zip up and down all the streets in the Quarter, which were virtually empty, before heading to the cafe.  It felt so good.  Once I hit Rampart, I was ready to turn, but I saw Barracks Street was blocked off.  Now, in my opinion, if a street is blocked off, one should take advantage of the bicycle and see what’s up.  It turns out HBO is shooting the pilot of a new series, Treme, and filming was active today.  So, so many projects are being shot in this town right now, and have been since I moved to town.  I snapped this picture of props set up at Barracks and St. Claude.  Old, dirty appliances, including a refrigerator duct taped shut, stand as part of a post-Katrina set.  I’ve seen this sort of thing before, parts of the city set up to look like the devastation of broken levees just happened.  It’s always a bit funny to see this, because so much time and money and effort is put in to making a particular spot look abandoned, overgrown, broken, and desperate, when literally steps away what is a set here is just the neighborhood.  After I took this picture, for example, I rode just two blocks over where a house stood in total ruin.  I wish all the parts of this city still in dire straits could be cleaned out and back to normal like this corner will be tomorrow.