b.rox

This sculpture mysteriously appeared on the Lafitte Corridor last week, just in time for the Urban Pathways conference tour. I was surprised and touched. It’s worth nothing that Friends of Lafitte Corridor did not solicit or commission this sculpture, though in retrospect I’m pretty sure I know who made it. It is, quite simply, yet [...]

Yesterday afternoon I stopped by the playground on the Jeff Davis neutral ground with my daughter. We approached Serpent Mound at the same time as a trio of kids in elementary school uniforms.
I noticed the youngest child, a girl with a withered arm, was crying. I asked if she was OK. One of the other [...]

Friday night my daughter stabbed me in the eye. Not intentionally — she was just waving her arm around. Her little finger somehow got past my glasses, and her nail sliced right across my cornea. When she realized I was in pain she gave me a kiss. Very sweet.
It was pretty painful, but I thought [...]

Some of my neighbors have been bickering, er, I mean debating about Comiskey Park here in Mid-City. The basketball goals that used to be there were taken down when an television production company made plans to rebuild the park for a reality show. That didn’t pan out in the long run, and the park was [...]

With help from over twenty friends and neighbors we knocked our move out in just over four and a half hours. I’m still totally amazed by that. It must be a new world record.
Many thanks to everyone who lent a hand.
So now we are in our new house unpacking. And unpacking. And unpacking… I have [...]

Here’s a nasty tale of corporate intrigue.
First, check out this editorial from the Urban Conservancy about the Walgreens which is being built at Carrollton and Canal. I used to serve on the board of the Urban Conservancy, as well as Mid-City Neighborhood Organization; I was contacted for input on the editorial but can’t take [...]

Last night for the first time ever we left our daughter with a babysitter and had a fun night out on the town.
Actually it was a double date. We went over to Sue and Steve’s house just as the babysitter Althea arrived. (Not to be confused with my former co-worker, this Althea has done a [...]

It’s been three weeks since the Lutheran Invasion, but there’s still a pile of four-year-old flooded junk in front of the house next door.

Don’t blame the Lutherans for this mess. Blame the Preservation Resource Center. Blame Operation Comeback.
I was so excited when my neighbor donated his house to this program, so looking forward to some [...]

I was surprised to discover this morning that our one-way street had reversed direction overnight.
Well, it wasn’t a big surprise really. The city had sent me a letter explaining the plan and polling our opinion, but I never mailed the form back in. After mulling it over a while I thought it might not be [...]

There’s some 37,000 Lutheran kids volunteering in the city of New Orleans this summer. I was surprised to discover approximately half of them working next door Saturday morning.

I think they were mostly from New Jersey.
Their project: gutting Craig’s house. Craig was our next door neighbor, but he’s now living in Texas. He never returned after [...]

I had just dropped Xy & Persephone off at the house of some friends and run a few errands. I stopped back at the house to take care of a few things. I was surprised to find a cop car parked in the middle of the street and an officer standing nearby.
I parked my car, [...]

My neighborhood organization alerted me to the fact that a bunch of properties in Mid-City were coming up for code enforcement hearings. I noticed that 3016 Bienville was on the list. (I wrote a letter to Code Enforcement about this property back in April.) My neighborhood organization further advised me that “the city is more [...]

This morning I was surprised to find an envelope stuck in our front door with my name on it.
Inside, a card with the following note:

Bart, I heard about the theft of your bike. Hope this helps. You should know that the people who suck are few but the good and kind (like you) are many.

No [...]

When we got back from our trip Sunday, one of the first things I noticed was that damn canister is still sitting there next to the curb just a few feet from our house. The canister doesn’t directly impinge upon us, but it kind of junks up the area. I had hoped against hope that [...]

We were sad to see a bank repo underway at the corner of N. Rendon and Iberville. That’s the site of Hair Ideas, where I sometimes got my hair cut. I forget the name of the lady who was the proprietor. I think she also owned the building, which contains some apartments. She made a [...]

It’s been a little over five years since I started blogging here in earnest. I thought this would be a simple extension of the journal-writing I’d done off and on for years. The main difference, I supposed, was that I would be less likely to write about the minutiae of my life, that I would [...]

My neighborhood is still capable of surprising me every now and again. Such was the case yesterday when we stopped by the Mid-City Community Garden for the first time.

Amazing! Here in the shadow of Tulane Avenue are colorful raised beds full of beautiful vegetables.

We were there for a fundraiser event — a mere $5 for [...]

Dear Mr. Carrere,
Your name was given to me as a good person to contact in Code Enforcement for the City of New Orleans.
Unfortunately a number of homes in my immediate neighborhood remain hazardous eyesores that have not been properly remediated since the floods of 2005.
Today I am writing to you about what I consider to [...]

Our big excitement today came when the New Orleans Fire Department came out to investigate a suspicious canister leaking a mysterious substance in front of the abandoned house next door to ours.

Actually we’re pretty sure it’s just white latex paint. According to a neighbor’s eyeball witness testimony, the canister was deposited in Craig’s yard at [...]

Here we go again, I thought, as I sat down at the MCNO meeting last night. Once again New Orleanians are being asked to engage the planning process.
But, in fairness, this time is different. This is for the New Orleans Master Plan, which will have the force of law. And another thing that’s different: Many [...]