Part I of today’s ride took me Uptown for a long-overdue haircut and then over to N.’s house to show it off. I stopped to snap a picture of this house at Chestnut and Soniat because it just looked like a postcard, especially with that impressive palm tree cleverly posing to the side of the house. I love the colors of this place. I mean, it looks like a cartoon, or a jigsaw puzzle picture house, or something on a fantasy island somewhere. But it’s just a house, in uptown New Orleans, with a great paint job. Lots of folks do up there houses like this here in New Orleans. It was one of the first things I noticed when I got here, because the color is part of the architecture that makes this place look like no other. It reminds me of flying in to San Francisco for the first time, with all the light-colored houses in rows stretching out for miles. The place just looks like California should, on a postcard. But there’s always something beneath this surface. I mean, that’s why “facade” means what it does, right? In the Bay Area the surface was overpowering and I often felt myself wondering just what the place is hiding. Here, this beautifully painted face will start running soon, and until then we’ve got the rest of the neighborhood to show us the many stages of decay that show the underneath of everything. I guess I like that about New Orleans. At least it’s honest.