b.rox

I noticed this sign on a house around the corner.

“For rent — Section 8/FEMA only.”
That seems discriminatory. Is this legal?

Yesterday morning, between the hours of 9:00 AM and noon, someone came into our backyard and took a crap.
Yup. The mysterious intruder moved a plank of wood and a cat dish into strategic position and took a big old dump. Then, apparently, he or she wiped his or her ass with some torn up sheet [...]

I didn’t know Nia Robertson. And now I never will.

Nia was killed at Pal’s Lounge Wednesday night. I first heard about it through Think New Orleans and Metroblogging. Then the story was on the front page of today’s paper.
It’s a sad fact that violent crimes and murders happen on an almost daily basis here. Mostly [...]

From an anonymous Mid-City neighbor:

At a Night out against crime gathering tonight an NOPD officer was asked by a neighbor… Why didn’t the police come out when I called after being woken up by a house alarm at 3am? The officer’s reply… “Call and say there is a naked woman on your porch.” He proceeded [...]

While my neighbor on one side faces an unwanted demolition, the house on the other side has been a completely different story.
It was a small little two-story house, divided into two tiny apartments, one upstairs and one downstairs. It had seen better days and leaned slightly to one side. It was under renovation when the [...]

My next door neighbor (now living in Texas) was a little skeptical when I told him that his house was slated for demolition. Where was the proof? An Excel spreadsheet e-mailed to me by a woman I’ve never even met. Sounds a little sketchy. And this list can’t be found on any official websites.
Fortunately Karen [...]

The Mid-City poster contest is now officially over, and you can check out the winners.

I’m all in a tizzy because of the recent news reported by Squandered Heritage. It seems there’s a ton of houses on Bienville that are on the city’s “imminent threat” list for demolition. These are supposed to be houses that pose an immediate threat to health and safety.
And some of them are. Some are clearly [...]

Friday night I was hangin’ with the neighbs across the street. Everybody was joking and laughing and having a good time. I remember thinking it was odd when Debra took off on her bicycle. Where was she going so late at night?
This morning (Saturday) I was awakened early by a knock at the door. It [...]

3319-21 Iberville Street [map]

This building was been proposed for demolition by FEMA. Since it’s in a historic district (Mid-City, my neighborhood) FEMA “requested the aid of the public in identifying alternatives to demolition.”
So I wrote to FEMA back in November and helped them identify some “alternatives.”
And, wonder of wonders, FEMA removed it from their demolition [...]

In April I looked out my window and saw three white kids pushing a white car. They stopped just down the street from our house. I thought to myself, “Oh, they’re having car trouble.” An hour later I noticed they were gone but the car was still there, and it dawned on me: That car’s [...]

The neighbors across the street did it real big for Independence Day: a tent, two grills, and two pools for the kiddies.

The party had a nice “neighborhood” feel. You would hardly guess that the blue house is still uninhabitable from the flood of 2005, or that the red house (a fourplex) is in such sad [...]

A short while ago, Mid-City got a grant from Mercy Corps to do community outreach. As part of that effort, we decided to make our monthly community meeting for June into a BBQ. They say free food is the way to bring people out. We hoped such an event would bring out some new faces, [...]

I’m not sure why, but there seems to be a real uptick in activity in our area lately. People are renovating flooded properties or demolishing and building anew.

For a while there it seemed that progress had ground to a halt. But now it seems to be lurching forward again. Slowly, slowly to be sure. [...]

If you want to live just around the corner from yours truly, consider this freshly renovated shotgun double in the 3000 block of Bienville. Live on one side, rent out the other! I have no idea what it’s like inside, but the paint job is pretty nice.
It’s listed for $175,000. Call Luke Jones at 504-905-9101.

Or [...]

On Friday Xy took some of the neighbor kids to the North Shore for a swim at Fontainbleau State Park. But the lake was closed for swimming, and the swimming pool was closed as well. Fortunately she found a water-based attraction, some sort of bizarre playground where the water squirts up from underneath. It might [...]

Some days I feel pretty gloomy about the way things are going in my little area of Mid-City.
But on other days I feel much more optimistic. Today is one of those better days.
For one thing, Charles is coming back. ACORN gutted his house today, and he’s doing right by Road Home. He’s going to [...]

They’ve finally started work on the house next door to ours, which has been an eyesore for years. They’ve decided to renovate rather than demolish. If they demolished, they probably wouldn’t be able to rebuild according to modern codes and zoning, because of the extremely small lot.

First step: Remove the contents from the upstairs rooms [...]

Xy came home from visiting with a friend yesterday evening to discover that our block was a crime scene. Police had the street blocked off and they were taking photos on the sidewalk, practically right in front of our house. Fearing that I might have been the victim, she parked on a side street and [...]

Here it is eight days later, and my head is still stuck in Easter Sunday.
I keep thinking back to a conversation I had with Debra.
Debra lives across the street. She’s a single mother raising children in difficult circumstances. Her oldest son was murdered in Central City last October. She doesn’t make much money working her [...]