This is for my New Orleans readers, and especially my Lakeview neighborhood readers, or any readers who have ever lived in Lakeview, New Orleans, or understand the pain of Katrina.
It seems someone, I don't know who exactly, wants to put up a Katrina memorial on top of, and in front of, and in the old bomb shelter in the neutral ground on West End Boulevard:
image by Mathes-Brierre Architects
Lets just say I have a few issues with it.
Let's just say.
For starters, the design is beautiful. And were it being proposed to celebrate a great person, or some noble achievement, I'd say fine. But we're talking about a fucking disaster here!! Do we really need something "influenced by the Lincoln Memorial"?? Was Lincoln a disaster?
Actually, the main building looks nothing like the Lincoln Memorial. A gigantic three-story carousel was my first reaction. I half expected to see 20 foot high painted horses going round and round. (We already have a carousel in City Park, thank you very much. It's very nice.) (UPDATE: Come to think of it, after dealing with FEMA the merry-go-round imagery is rather apropos. You go round and round in circles, you get dizzy, and you want to throw up. Sounds about right.)
The water features are totally inappropriate. Water was the vehicle of the Katrina disaster. It is iconic of the pain, destruction and death, not the most appropriate medium to commemorate what happened. Would one suggest a memorial at Auschwitz made of ovens? Didn't think so.
And what's up with the broken wall and the water. That's fucking a sensitive "reflection". Why not toss in 1,100 plastic mannequins floating face down? That'll drive the point home. Pump some raw sewerage into it for an added sense of reality.
But the best in a long list of kicks in the balls is this: if you look through the plans, on page 13/25 it shows that the museum has a "gift shop".
Yes, that's what I said. A. Gift. Shop.
I don't know what the FEMA you would sell in a Katrina "Gift Shop," but here are some suggestions:
Ponchos made of 'Blue Tarp' material, with the museum logo on it. Include kids sizes.
Little bottles of 'Purell'.
Snack-sized portions of blue cheese. Or Limburger.
Sandbags. And sand.
Copies of "Oops. A History of the Corps of Engineers in New Orleans".
N-90 face masks.
Kathleen Blanco indecision ball (antithesis of the magic 8-ball).
Miniature zen garbage pile. Complete with little rake, shovel, and wheelbarrow.
Duct Tape.
Some scale models of Cadillac Esclades (in blue and white) and Army CH-47s.
Tetanus shots.
New 'Axe in the Attic' game. Patterned on Jenga and Lincoln Logs, you have to cut your way out of simulated roof decking with a toy axe without the roof collapsing and the killing the little plastic family figurines below. DS and X-Box 360 versions available, too.
Barbie's FEMA Trailer Dollhouse. (Formaldehyde test kit included. FEMA-Trailer Barbie and NOPD Ken sold separately.)
'Looting for Dummies'.
MREs and canned water.
Little statues of Sean Penn in his sinking flatboat.
Ray Nagin NSFW excuse generator software.
I don't care how nice the flavor sketches and renderings are, this whole thing just screams inappropriate. It has all the sensitivity and reverence of a fart in church.
So much for the aesthetic sensitivities, now let's look at some practical issues:
Who is going to pay to build this thing? The City's broke; so is the State. The feds call a stainless steel railing (good choice in a salt-water coastal environment) an extravagance - Lord knows what they'd say about this. This is not a three or four million dollar project. I'd say, with all of the site work and all of the work they will have to do to the old bomb shelter, $15 - 20 million plus. That's just a guess, because I have no idea about the finishes. And that spiraling ramp ain't gonna be cheap, either.
So it gets built. OK, now who's gonna pay to maintain it? As before, the governments are broke. Hell, the City can't even keep the current neutral ground maintained, and it's just grass and a few trees. When the water systems for the fountains break, will it be repaired, or will this end up just like the water feature at Bayou St. John and Robert E. Lee, or the Mardi Gras fountain at the lakefront?
And when this does become a stagnant eyesore, will it have to be fenced in and abandoned? Yet another memorial to New Orleans' bad planning and wasting money?
This is a sore point with me because I grew up not 100 feet from where this monster is being proposed. My parents lived there until the flooding, and are coming back. This is my neighborhood. The people there are my friends. Do we need a memorial to this disaster? Damn right, we do. But, this ain't it. We do not need another tourist trap, a disaster disneyland destination for the Gray Line buses - especially plopped smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
Try again, folks.
Here endeth the rant.
4 comments:
A good, manly rant. Well done. Water????? I don't live anywhere near NO or the impact of Katrina, and that just about had me ranting, too.
Copy of an e-mail I sent to the architects of this horror:
Dear Sirs,
I had the opportunity to view the plans for your Katrina Memorial.
All I can say is that you must be from out of town, and I hope this is a wicked joke.
Using water to memorialize that event is the ultimate in insensitivity. Would you have used flame to remember 9/11? Or Hiroshima? What could possess anyone with any degree of humanity to memorialize deaths with the very agent of the deaths? Would you use a gun museum to remember Columbine?
Also, putting the tourists underground in a city below sea level, one that has had three "hundred years" floods in the three decades before Katrina, is rather cruel. Again, would you remember 9/11 with a vertically plummeting roller coaster?
Would your water smell like it did? Would you have underwater features to run into, like my boat did with so many cars on West End and Ponchatrain Boulevards? Why not put in a sauna to simulate the September heat while wearing rubber over 70% of your body? The dehydration and heat exhaustion would add to the "realism". I'm sure the local bad guys can be counted on to "memorialize" the feeling of facing armed madmen. Perhaps you could offer Hepatitis shots.
Please reply that this is just a poorly executed attempt at humor.
With great trepidation,
the point is not a memorial: who will make money from this????
No one will make money from something like this. From what I've seen and heard, if it were ever built I think it would come in around $20-30 million (and I do have a bit of experience with this stuff). Which is far more than the $12 million the main proponent has indicated. Even at $12 million, you're you're never gonna get that kind of return. This ain't a Six Flags...
The proposal is pure pie in the sky. And after a meeting last night, I think the pie will come crashing down to earth, pretty quick, in an embarrasing, gooey mess.
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