For the past few years my husband has tried to get me to ride bikes in New Orleans with him and I have resisted, due to a fear of local drivers, potholed streets and the lasting image of a black-’n'-blued friend who was knocked out when a car door opened as he was riding in the CBD.

My argument has always been that there is nowhere to bike besides the levee, The Tammany Trace and the Lakefront — and without a car bike rack, it was totally impractical. I would finish my Read the rest of this entry »

New Orleans’ own Save NOLA has partnered with Global Green USA to raise funds for the greening of affordable and sustainable housing in New Orleans, and their tees have made their way to some famous faces. Last month, actor Brad Pitt received a Save NOLA, Think Green organic tee. And this week, Mikhail Gorbachev will receive one as he attends the Green Cross International (GCI) General Assembly being held in New Orleans. Read the rest of this entry »

In his 19th century essay, The Painter of Modern Life, French poet, novelist and critic Charles Baudelaire exalted the life of the flaneur— the idle dawdler, the peripatetic ‘man of the crowd,’ for whom immersion in daily city life provided the utmost pleasure. For the flaneur, he said, a “passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.”

Now whether or not the population of New Orleans qualifies as a ‘multitude’ at the moment is debatable, but there certainly is an Read the rest of this entry »