Today was hot and humid, a little reminder of what we’ll be in for as summer gets here. I love summertime in New Orleans, so I was happy to get out on a bike ride. I headed to Mid-City to meet up with a friend for a ride to the Bywater for lunch. I could feel the sun baking my back, and it sure was. I’ve got a bit of a sunburn, unfortunately. On my way back Uptown I paused to snap this photo of an overgrown lot and decaying doorway at St. Philip and St. Claude behind Louis Armstrong Park. Why isn’t that park reopened yet? Through the bars it looks pretty nice. Shouldn’t we be able to go in, spend time in historic Congo Square? But the Treme, just across North Rampart from the French Quarter, remains in disrepair. Now, I don’t think it took on a lot of water. I think it’s a neighborhood drowned by poverty. This overgrown lot, settled between two houses across from a park, would be prime real estate in another neighborhood, another city. But here it is abandoned. I wonder if the folks shooting the new HBO series, Treme, might fix this spot up. Or maybe it’ll make it in: Total Decay Realness. Parts of the neighborhood are truly beautiful, and people have long lived full lives here. I guess I just wish these areas could be fixed up as homes or turned in to gardens or parks. I got back on my bike and headed to the levee for a ride out to Huey P. Long. Yes, it was a bike-riding day. Many more where that came from.