New Orleans: The Magic of the Bywater

               

A neglected telephone booth stands in contrast to a whimsical grid of pastel-colored homes. It would seamlessly blend into many neighborhoods in New Orleans, but on this well-maintained block it beckons curiosity. Sure enough, inside, is a television flashing a collage of abstract images and static. The significance, like most contemporary art, is left to the interpretation of the observer. There’s no title, website or sign. It’s likely unaffiliated with a museum and unregistered with the city, but it’s clearly intentional.

Random tidbits of creativity are dispersed throughout the Bywater; a neighborhood two miles east of The French Quarter that’s become an artistic haven for New Orleans transplants. It’s also at the center of a debate about how outsiders who came to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, and never left, are changing the city.

Shotgun homes with quaint stoops are covered in a mish-mash of repurposed junk that makes them look like the entrances to an amusement park ride for Treasure Island. Rickety banisters are weighed down by fading Mardi Gras beads that have endured countless rainstorms. Porches look like artful yard sales covered in tired floral couches, quirky coffee tables, rocking chairs, fake gold picture frames, potted plants and dozens of other trinkets picked up for free around the city or for a bargain at the thrift store. The only rule about what you can do on your property is that there is no rule.

These creative exteriors are only a glimpse into what goes on behind them. Makeshift theatres serve up cheap red wine and hot toddys, open mics showcase songwriters testing out vulnerability in front of a gentle and attentive crowd, barbeques fill the air with smoke in muddy and unkempt yards of weeds and dandelions, abandoned warehouses are illegally occupied for strange performances of questionable quality, but delivered with powerful conviction. 

The Bywater is a no man’s land. It’s all waiting to be discovered a short walk from the neon madness of Bourbon Street. The entrance lies just beyond the hefty train tracks that carry the heart and soul of our country’s industry to the end of its migration on land and the beginning of its journey down the Mississippi.

"The Rusty Rainbow" --- a bridge on Chartres Street that leads to the Mississippi

Keep walking and eventually you’ll come face to face with what locals call “the end of the world;” a grassy hill that leads to a lookout over the river. It’s where all sorts of unimaginable New Orleans characters go to get away. There’s a rusty metal tower with a precarious ladder at the very tip of the trail. Like a bathroom at a concert venue, it’s been graffitied from the base to the roof with intentions; musings, messages of compassion, desperate cries and dates to commemorate an unknown event. In a crevice behind the tower there’s dozens of cigarette butts and smoked joints. The trail of emotions is fuel for the imagination as steamboats poetically chug by in the distance. This is where I first fell in love with the Bywater; a magical playground of off-beat gatherings, unexpected personalities and creative freedom.

"The End of the World"

Like most arts communities, it first started blossoming about ten years ago when it was dirt cheap. Now, it’s fallen prey to accusations of gentrification. A handful of chef-driven tapas restaurants have popped up in the neighborhood. Booty’s Street Food serves dishes like octopus skewers with Korean fermented chiles along with artisanal cocktails and coffee from the trendy Portland-based Stumptown coffee roasters. Oxalis opened at the end of last year with an extensive whiskey menu and innovative bites from around the world. It’s happened in Oakland, Brooklyn, and, now, New Orleans.

Booty's Street Food

There was an article a few months ago in The New York Times discussing the transformation of the city. A journalist for the paper came to New Orleans to find out what’s seduced musicians, actors and writers to migrate here by the thousands. She mentioned Satsuma Café (a vegetarian-friendly spot that serves $6.00 juices) and Sylvain (a restaurant with a curated rustic feel that features modern Creole cuisine) as signs of the changing times. She failed to capture the essence of what inspires artists, struggling and successful, to call New Orleans home.

This was illuminated by the outburst of criticism that caught the attention of local and national media when her piece was published with a quote saying New Orleans isn’t cosmopolitan, because it doesn’t have kale. As many were quick to point out, New Orleans does have kale. The second Whole Foods just opened in town, but I get the point and that’s not it. The article was intended to get to the core of what so many transplants who enjoyed the luxuries of healthy living in cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco find appealing about a humid town in the south some think is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. It’s true, unbeknownst to many, New Orleans now offers several yoga studios, a co-op grocery store with organic offerings and seasonally-driven fine dining. It’s also true that many newcomers (at least the ones who can afford it) do enjoy the nicer establishments that have opened in previously undeveloped neighborhoods. They’re there – and making money – for a reason.

Most importantly, the artists who move here, regardless of whether they enjoy kale, weren’t attracted to the city’s transformation. In fact, they were inspired by what’s been here for centuries; Creole spices seasoning the air, the timeless seduction of soulful southern melodies, the sweet humidity blurring into delirium, the canopy of overgrown banana leaves and winding vines around the iron gates of canary yellow and coral homes…the New Orleans that has inspired generations of romantics to abandon everything and relocate. The Bywater, post-Katrina, was a haven for the newest generation of creators who fell in love with the city as a place that is largely defined by its celebration of art. The city where in the 1700s, slaves were allowed to come dance, sing and play music on Sundays in Congo Square and where every Sunday hundreds still ceremoniously parade through the streets to the passionate beats of brass bands. The town where talented musicians can come knowing no one and start up a band that gets gigs every night in a few months, jewelers can pay their rent selling accessories at art markets and painters can sell their work to the millions of tourists that pass through each year.

The Antenna Gallery, a participant in the Bywater's monthly art walk on St.Claude Avenue

New Orleans is freedom for artists who have been chewed up and spit out by cities like New York and Los Angeles. It’s also inspirational to those who made it elsewhere, but craved a change of pace. While the Bywater is a classic case of gentrification, it’s not at the hands of people who came here to be “cosmopolitan.” Fresh produce is not the primary draw of New Orleans and it never will be. Artists, of all kinds, come here for the inexplicable magic that one can only begin to understand through intense study of a complex and unique history unlike anywhere else in America. It’s also one that can only be felt by people who immerse themselves fully in the traditions of this city; second lines, crawfish boils and Cajun fais do-dos. There’s also a different kind of magic, not to be dismissed, happening right across the train tracks in the Bywater. Art, theatre and music that’s being created from a genuine place of soulfulness and passion. This perceived counter-culture is not happening with disregard for New Orleans culture, it’s a reinvention of it by people who respect and love all the artists who came before them and made this great city what it is today.