There’s nothing like a ride through Central City to sober a girl up. I took Dryades on my ride down to the Treme today. S. goes in for surgery at 5:00am tomorrow, and I thought it best to stay down here rather than bike down in the morning. My main routes downtown include Magazine/Camp, St. Charles, Carondolet, and finally Dryades to Oretha Castle Haley. Those last three routes are just four blocks apart from each other, but they feel so, so different. Dryades is an interesting street, with some brand new contemporary construction sharing space with rebuilt shotguns and decaying condemned properties. I took this picture of this house at Dryades and Seventh because it just seems so out of place in the neighborhood, with its two stories and almost sterile design. It reminds me of some of the designs for Brad Pitt‘s Make It Right project, but I’m not sure who built this one. A few streets down is another one, but it looks like a built out shipping container. Part of me thinks, as I ride down streets like this one, that new construction should blend in with the old, give the neighborhood a sense of aesthetic cohesiveness. Another part of me though thinks continuing to demand we replace what was with what was before keeps us from exploring new ways of organizing our communities. I mean, is historical preservation always necessarily the main goal? I’m not sure. Today I just know that a whole lot more work needs to be done in Central City. It’s only a few blocks from St. Charles, but it’s a world apart.