Okay well thanks for pointing that out

Frank wants everyone to know that he was not arrested but instead only cited for lewd conduct in the back of an Uber in Los Angeles in 2018.  It is very important that we, as we now recall the various other details of that incident which many of had put out of our minds, that we remember this one fact in particular.

The lawsuit does not discuss or dispute the specifics of that incident, instead focusing on the newspaper’s use of the word “arrest” and asserting that he was never arrested. The allegation that he was arrested “is injurious to Scurlock’s personal and professional reputation,” the suit says.

Tourism is the virus

Nature tried to heal for a little while.  Enjoy it while you can.

The Marais is one of the oldest, most historic neighborhoods of Paris and is known for its quaint village-like charm. But it had become a retail Disneyland where visitors came to spend money, but not necessarily for the history.

I knew the Marais belonged to locals again on the first night of France’s national lockdown, when I opened my window to clap for caregivers. The light had faded and I said to myself, “Paris is no longer the City of Light.”

Sadly, there were few people at their windows, because so many apartments in the neighborhood have been converted to Airbnbs for tourists. But instead of the noise of crowds and suitcases on the pavement, the streets were deserted, and there was an air of enchantment. You could hear the birds singing and the wind blowing the leaves on the trees.

New Orleans can feel like that too; empty and enchanted. The other night I could swear I saw a ghost staring out from the window of this empty Airbnb.



Unfortunately neither we in New Orleans, nor anyone quoted in that NYT story have had a true opportunity to go out and enjoy a locals-for-locals experience of our hometowns. We're only getting glimpses of such places while we commute to "essential" jobs or venture out for "essential" errands or for essential having a few beers on the sidewalk.  A lot like that ghost in the window, New Orleans for New Orleanians is only a momentary mirage. Once we "re-open" the city, it will dissolve before we can touch it.

The short term rentals aren't going to revert to local housing. Yes, there are a lot of desperate sounding Craigslist ads for "furnished rentals" right now.  Some of those could end up staying on the local market. But not as many as you might expect.  Landlords and renters are in a brief period of uneasy detente right now. (In some cases, more uneasy than in others.) But that all goes out the window once the evictions moratorium comes to an end.

Richardson says the city doesn't want people evicted during a health crisis, but it is a short term solution. She says until the economy starts back up, residents won't have a steady income which means both the housing and rental markets won’t be fed potentially for months.

“Eventually rent is going to be owed, eventually mortgages are going to have to be paid, one of the difficult things going forward is the possible, if not probable balloon of payments that people are going to have in the future… it would be a good idea for renters at this point in time to talk to your landlord to see if you can work out even if it’s just a short term deal,” said Richardson.

The sort of small independent landlords with whom you might "work something out" will be under heavy pressure to evict once the CARES Act mortgage forbearance period ends.  Assuming no extension or a more generous round of federal aid, many will be forced to sell out. Probably on the cheap and probably to larger nationally or internationally based mega-landorlds

The proptech industry ballooned following the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, when racist lending practices and government response dispossessed hundreds of thousands of mainly black and Latinx property owners. This era saw over 240,000 black residents lose their homes, erasing most of the gains made since the 1968 passing of the civil rights era Fair Housing Act. Wall Street investment firms such as Blackstone, Invitation Homes, Colony, Waypoint, and Starwood—which have all now consolidated into one mega-firm—swept in to purchase foreclosed homes at auction, ushering in the age of the corporate landlord. Today the conglomerate of Blackstone comprises the largest landowning firm globally and is the biggest landlord in the United States. Hundreds of large investment companies followed Blackstone’s lead, forming massive landlord monopolies in various cities and regions across the United States. These mega-landlords generally acquire new properties through limited partnership (LPs) and limited liability company (LLCs) shell companies, a practice that makes it difficult for tenants to know who their landlords really are, and thus serves to stymie tenant organizing and collective action.

A ginormous private equity firm has no interests in working something out with distressed tenants. Your mayor and councilpersons can talk all they want about finding "balance" between those interests but the future of all housing in your city is going to be about maximum extraction of profit from property by giant ownership entities acting at a far remove from the fate of the people who actually live there.

This begins with vulture firms scooping up distressed properties on the cheap and evicting anyone who can't make rent. A company like Blackstone, whose investments are all but guaranteed by the Federal Reserve, can sit on a lot of unused buildings for a while if it wants. There's no need to shift to a more equitable usage of our housing stock that might drive the investment value down. Better to just subsidize the harsh practices that were already in place. When the pandemic passes, we'll be right back to hollowing out the city of its residents, its schools or its non-tourism related small businesses and replacing anything that resembles a real life community with more of the half-empty resort town we've been building since Katrina. This crisis will only have accelerated that process.

In the meantime, we're already eager to please the architects of that "New" New Orleans in a desperate effort to reopen our tourism economy.  For those willing to don a dining mask and head out for a surreal 25% capacity experience at their favorite restaurant, maybe something like the momentarily tourist-free local-for-locals city really is available.  Or maybe it's another uncomfortable product of the forced march of workers back into the maw of capitalism currently underway.

Mitch McConnell promised House Republicans on Wednesday that the beefed up unemployment benefits enacted earlier this spring "will not be in the next bill."

The Senate majority leader told the House GOP minority in an afternoon phone call that he is comfortable waiting to see how the nearly $3 trillion in coronavirus spending previously approved plays out before moving forward on the next relief legislation. And he told them the ultimate end-product won't look anything like House Democrats' $3 trillion package passed last week, according to a person briefed on the call.

There are over 38 million unemployed nationwide as of this week.  And even though the still raging pandemic guarantees there won't be enough jobs to send them all back to, we're still going to make sure they have to suffer. Why? Well the short answer is, we're trying to make sure we come out of the crisis with a loose labor market full of frightened and docile workers.  McConnell admits as much. So did Louisiana State Rep. Gerald “Beau” Beaullieu this week in Baton Rouge. Republicans are doing everything they can to keep bosses from having to pay a decent living wage.

Beaullieu said hefty unemployment payments could discourage someone from wanting to return to work, and he said the high rate of unemployment was draining Louisiana’s unemployment fund.

“We want to protect that trust fund. We also want to make sure that employees are not disincentivized from going back to work,” Beaullieu said. He said his bill would help “those small businesses get their employees to work."

It's a sad state of affairs that they can be this openly hostile and get away with it. If for no other reason than because they are in danger of rendering all this street theater irrelevant.  

A handful of mostly out-of-state protesters held a small rally outside a Lorimer Street barbershop in Williamsburg on Tuesday, calling on the city and state to end the coronavirus shutdown — so that they can go to yoga and get their nails done!

“My fingernails are breaking, I’ve got hangnails, I’ve been getting my nails done for 14 years … I’m very much into yoga, I can’t go to my Bikram yoga studios, I can’t go get my eyelashes done, I can’t go and socialize with the people that are my friends,” said Mississippian Hillary Angel Barq. “It’s led me to depression, it’s made me not feel sexual — I mean it’s awful.”

The gathering of roughly half a dozen people — outnumbered even by the amount of media covering the event — was organized by the pro-Trump group Liberate America together with the owners of Beard Barberia Cut and Shave at the corner of Grand Street.

The brief time of New York for New Yorkers is ending. Tourism season is back on, heralded by a loudly un-horny Hillary Barq.  This can only bode ill for New Orleans.  There can be little doubt now that the "reopening" of our own tourist business will mean catering to similar organized day trips of death cult protesters coming into town to complain about having to wear masks and whatnot. And with that, will come more intense pressure on business owners and therefore the politicians they influence to take such complaints seriously... regardless of the absurdity of their source.

New York City is one of the global epicenters of the pandemic with more than 20,000 deaths due to the virus, and almost 200,000 people infected, according to the city’s health department data on May 18 — but, when asked whether it was worth risking hundreds of further deaths by allowing businesses to reopen, the protest organizer said it was and questioned the staggering death tolls.

“Absolutely, absolutely. But there’s a difference, it’s what they didn’t tell you is what is the mortality rate that’s already been in place,” said Liberate America’s founder Frank Scurlock, who is from New Orleans.

Nature had a scarce two months to heal. Earlier this week we read that those two months were rather impressive. In April, the emissions typically caused by air and ground travel were down about 40 percent.  Rest assured, though, with Scurlock's group on the loose, the bad air will be back to intolerable levels in no time.

Well that's what we've got What do y'all got?

Step five ga-jillion and seventy two in a never-ending series of steps toward the time when we inevitably just dynamite the old Six Flags back into the swamp is, yep, more public input.

Come September, residents can sound off about the latest plan to transform the old Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East, officials said this week.

City officials are considering a plan to turn the site into a place where people can ride ziplines or hike and learn about the shrinking Louisiana coast.

Those kinds of attractions, which have been considered part of the ecotourism or adventure tourism industries, have grown in popularity in the U.S. and globally in recent years.

That's after the latest consultant to plug the site into a random land use generator came back with ZIPLINES OF RESILIENCE. 

Prior to that it was Cyndi Nguyen's Indoor Water Park For Families Presented By Cyndi Nguyen.

Prior to that it was Tonya Pope and Edwin Edwards's Wax Museum

Prior to that it was Frank Scurlock's Zipline and Katrina Museum featuring John Young and a monorail, maybe?

Prior to that it was Scurlock with a different configuration of ziplines

Prior to that it was Pope with "dining and retail"

umm... here is a different consultant being called in

Prior to that Scurlock wanted to do one of those Noah's Ark amusement thingies.

Box retail!

This is sneakily my favorite episode. These guys went to jail after claiming to investors they had a contract to demolish the park for scrap metal.

More consultants!

We can go further back (all the way to Ed Blakely times, in fact) to find other proposals for movie studios, "advanced manufacturing" outlet malls, etc. Most of these presented by Scurlock, Pope, or Danny Rogers over and over again. But somehow we keep landing somewhere in the monorail/zipline zone. 

So, yeah, maybe everybody really is out of ideas. What have y'all got? 

Can we build a monorail out of wax?

During his final year in office Mitch Landrieu learned for himself something that many others had discovered before him.  Nobody knows what to do with Six Flags.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration has not been able to find anyone to redevelop the site of the old Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East, meaning the property will pass, untouched, from one mayor to another for a second time.

A Landrieu adviser conceded Tuesday that she had no news to share with the public board that manages the site, nearly a year after the same adviser announced Landrieu’s office would take the lead on redeveloping it.

Responsibility for the vacant 140-acre property now falls to the 15-member Industrial Development Board and Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell, who will be sworn in next month.

When Mitch took charge of the proposals last year, it sparked a round of rumors and conspiracy theories about one or another ways a "fix" might be in the works.  Who knows if any of that was true. I suspect none of it was. But whatever he had in mind, it turned out "the timing" just wasn't right for it. Or at least, according to him, in retrospect, this is the reason nothing has happened.

But no such plans have materialized, Conwell said Tuesday, though she said the city still believes the site can be financially successful.

She also hinted that any project that might have come through was complicated by Landrieu’s impending exit from office.

“It is logical that anyone considering such an investment on this site would, given the timing, want to avoid the transition period between administrations,” Conwell said.

So they're saying there's a chance.

But, really, should they even be encouraging anyone at this point? The previous several attempts at this resulted in escalating frustrations at the Industrial Development Board as the same two or three bidders kept coming back with different versions of the same harebrained schemes. It got so bad at one point that the board called the proposals, "an insult to the people of New Orleans." This is also, famously, the process by which we came to know Frank Scurlock. And look how well that worked out.

But it was never only about Scurlock. There were other serial bidders with strange ideas and shoddy financing as well.  Does anybody remember this scrap metal scam, for example?  I think that's the only instance where the foolishness rose to the level of actual criminal activity. But there's always been the potential for that. And, of course, there is still time for more. Which is why it's a good idea to keep an eye out for anything having to do with Six Flags that maybe seems a little off. For example, there is this nugget at the bottom of the above linked Advocate story.

There was at least some positive news Tuesday: Developer Tonya Pope, who has long sought to revive the former Jazzland Theme Park at the site, announced that she will build a $20 million wax museum near the site instead.

That’s a modified version of a plan she and her partner, the now-closed Musee Conti, announced last year to feature the museum’s wax figures as a Jazzland theme park attraction.

Jazzland operated only two seasons before going bankrupt. It was sold in 2002 to Six Flags Entertainment, which had its own financial problems over its three-year tenure and never reopened the site after Katrina.

Pope said her project has received financial backing from former Gov. Edwin Edwards and is expected to be open by late 2018 or 2019.

Pope doesn't have Six Flags but she does have $20 million to build a wax museum near the still rotting site of Six Flags. That seems normal.

Previous to this, Pope has been involved with a company called  TPC-NOLA, a partner in bids on the property going back at least as far as 2011 when it was eliminated in the early rounds.  The next year, the winner of that prestigious contest sank into the swamp after the Riverwalk outlet mall redevelopment basically duplicated what they wanted to do in a better location.

The process didn't begin again until 2014 when IDB had a hard time getting anybody to apply.  Only Pope's group had put together a bid before the application deadline. This time, they claimed to have "spent the last two years maturing the plan and getting a lot more support from the community and business leaders."  What she meant was that they got Ashton Ryan's Money Club to buy in.

Much of the money would come from a $25 million construction loan financed by First NBC Bank and federal tax credits for revitalization projects in impoverished neighborhoods. Paidia is also counting on another $10 million in private financing for equipment, $8 million in state tax incentives and $2 million in corporate sponsorships, according to its proposal.

This is exactly the kind of shaky investment scheme that would go on to cause the spectacular collapse of FNBC. (Please see the Advocate's excellent reporting over the past year and a half.) The IDB seemed to sense a problem at the time. So they extended the deadline.  Only Scurlock showed up to join in the bidding, though. Unsurprisingly, his proposal was even less sound than Pope's and the whole thing was scrapped again.

Throughout this process, the IDB became increasingly uncomfortable with its position as a landlord. It's not really something that board is set up to do. So it was desperate to just sell the property off in 2016 when Pope came calling again.  But it wasn't clear what her plans were for development. Something about "mixed-use" dining and retail or whatever. But evidently not enough to convince anyone of anything.

In 2017, she came back again, along with Scurlock and a surprise last-minute bidder who just jumped up out of the audience.

As the board heard from the two groups making purchase offers as listed on the agenda, Henry Klein, an attorney who said he represents 30/90 Development, said his group wants to offer $5.5 million for the property, while giving no details who's involved in the group or their plans for the Six Flags site. Klein left the meeting while it was still ongoing.

IDB member Justin Augustine said people jumping out of the audience to make an offer is "not a professional process" and urged the board to use a more professional method to receive offers.

It was shortly after this episode that Mitch stepped in saying he was going to find a developer on his own.  Last month, we were not surprised to learn he was unsuccessful.  But, hey, the new mayor is installed now. And maybe we'll see where it goes when she gets back around to dealing with this. In the meantime, Pope will (maybe) be right there in the neighborhood playing around with her wax dolls or whatever. 

"Mental health directives"

Can't imagine what this is in reference to. The guy always seemed so stable.

Santa Monica prosecutor Autumn Rindels said in an email that Scurlock entered the plea to a charge known as lewd and dissolute conduct in public. He was ordered to serve one year of summary probation and "ordered to follow all mental health directives, including mental health counseling and taking all prescribed medication," Rindels said in an email.

Rindels did not elaborate on the mental health order, but said there was "not an official mental health determination associated with this case." Scurlock could been sentenced up to a year in jail.

At least it's not official. That would be way up on Tom Benson's level. 

Uberize

It's fair to say every candidate for mayor has been unseemly in their fetishizing of both the tech driven "sharing economy" and of local law enforcement.  But only Frank Scurlock managed to distill the essence of this in a single word and act.

New Orleans mayoral candidate Frank Scurlock is facing a misdemeanor count of lewd conduct in Santa Monica, California, where he is accused of masturbating in an Uber vehicle in February.

Scurlock, whose splashy campaign ads have pledged to “Uberize” the New Orleans Police Department, was allegedly caught masturbating by a driver taking him to a hotel in West Hollywood on Feb. 10, Santa Monica Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry White said.

If you had been wondering what a candidate might mean when he says he wants to "Uberize NOPD," well, now you know it is even worse than you thought.  What's worse than even that, though, is it's not just Scurlock who wants to go around Uberizing over cops.

Desiree Charbonnet is doing it too.  This absurdly stupid ad even mimics Scurlock's cops-but-with-an-app-or-something premise. Her website puts it in even more alarming terms. There we find proposals to defund consent decree compliance monitoring as well as the Neighborhood Housing Improvement Fund in order to pay for more police. It also doesn't help that her plan has the support of New Orleans's proto-facist District Attorney as well as some of its notoriously corrupt bail bondsmen.

The Cantrell campaign took a few minutes away from promoting prison labor to try and make some hay out of that last point recently. We're still trying to figure out how they ever thought they had any room to talk, though. Anyway, Cantrell is as Uber-enthused over tougher policing as any of these candidates.  Maybe not as intense as her Uberizing over Airbnb but it's close.

Troy Henry is also doing it. At the most recent forum, he indicated his vision for NOPD would involve creating a "strike force" that goes after "bad dudes." He and Charbonnet also criticized consent decree restrictions on paid details. Charbonnet even said that NOPD officers are "demoralized" by the fact that Saints game detail gigs go to Jefferson Parish law enforcement.  We agree. It was extremely demoralizing when a Jefferson Parish Levee Authority officer told us to stop banging on the wall during the Saints-Patriots game last weekend. The way that game was going, we'd have much preferred to have NOPD just come by and shoot us.

And, of course, Michael Bagneris is Uberizing over the police as well. His website features a plan to hire 300 more cops by recruting heavily among military vets, install more surveillance cameras, and create a not-at-all scary sounding "Crime Analytics Department" to  "proactively identify violent criminals."

Yesterday Scurlock said he was going to "evaluate" the status of his campaign after having grossed everybody out this week.  If he drops out, he won't be missed. But we do have to thank him for leaving us this word with which to describe how grossed out we are by the rest of the field as well.

Scurlock is a Sharknado candidate

There are bad movies and there are bad political candidates.  There are big bloated terrible blockbuster movies that everyone has to suffer whether they want to or not. Like Avatar or whatever the new comic book movie is this week. And there are big bloated avatars of institutional political awfulness that everyone has to suffer like Bobby Jindal or Mitch Landrieu.

Then there are bad movies which, yeah, maybe they fail and they make you feel bad but they're also kind of funny and pathetic because of how shitty they are. There's a whole pop culture industry in finding the humor in their failure. Ray Nagin and probably George W Bush fit here. There's a pop culture industry and finding the humor in them too.

And then there are movies which are intentionally bad. There are films now designed to be mocked. They're ironically bad but they aren't satire. There's no good or bad artistic vision to them that fails or succeeds. They're just there as cynically devised fodder for the internet's attention.  We're talking here, of course, about the Sharknado phenomenon.

But for those of us with a genuine love for bad movies, who seek out treasures of terribleness, the Sharknado social media storm was kind of like when everybody discovered rap music via Vanilla Ice. That’s not the genuine article — it’s a plastic, artificial, manufactured substitute.

Because truly great bad movies can’t be made that way, with this kind of snickering, ironic snark-viewing in mind. A genuinely bad movie — a Manos, a Miami Connection, a Hobgoblins, a Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a Troll 2 — is a found object, and intention is everything. The people who made those movies didn’t think they were making bad movies; they were striving for greatness.

There's no there there to Sharknado. Its only purpose is to claim it made you look. Turns out we're starting to get political candidates like that too. 

While floodwaters were still rising around New Orleans on Saturday, mayoral candidate Frank Scurlock entered a social-media debate about the city’s removal of Confederate monuments and suggested that the flooding was result of God’s displeasure with the city.

“God has washed and flooded the City twice in 2 weeks. Maybe he is not happy,” Scurlock wrote around 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5. He added about 15 minutes later, “God gave man Freewill and instructions on how to Live. Perhaps erasing history and not honoring the past is not in liking to him and his ways….”

Does he mean any of that?  Could anybody really? Okay well don't answer that second question. Just know that Scurlock doesn't mean this or probably most of what he says. He's a joke candidate. We've had joke candidates in the past. Actually, I think Manny Chevrolet is on the ballot again this year, in fact. But usually a joke candidate runs as an actual parody of the process, or as a self-deprecating lark, or, well some of them are just nuts. But Scurlock is different. He's a premeditated and manufactured joke. And it's not an especially funny one.

Camera shy

Everybody hates those dang traffic cameras 

New Orleans Mayoral Candidate Latoya Cantrell generated a lot of buzz this week when she made a campaign promise to suspend the city's controversial traffic cameras.

The ticket-writing, photo-snapping, eyes in the sky are certainly unpopular with most drivers.

While some see them as a necessary evil for safer streets. Cantrell isn't convinced.

"We really don't know if it's actually reducing or making us safer," Cantrell said.

Well, OK, LaToya doesn't like them. Or so she says. There was some confusion. 

LaToya Cantrell's campaign went from a pledge to suspend the use of all traffic cameras to a more narrow policy targeting only the several dozen set up in the last year and then back again -- all over the course of a day.

Desiree also says she doesn't like them but, for some reason, doesn't approve of campaigning against them. 

Charbonnet agrees the matter needs more study, but she's not prepared to suspend the program.

"If in fact they are having a positive effect on public safety or traffic safety, if I went in and just pulled them out then that could be a mistake," Charbonnet said. "We need to be careful. We can't just ploy for votes."

Bagneris thinks they are "just a money grab." But, apparently, money grabs are good?

"I still believe the cameras are just a money grab," candidate Michael Bagneris said.

Bagneris maintains the money should be dedicated and not just go into the city's general fund.

"If we're going to grab that money, let the people use that money in a way that they think is necessary and that is fix our streets," Bagneris said.

Scurlock says he thinks they're "unconstitutional" but somehow is still OK with putting them in school zones. Maybe children are exempt from the sixth amendment? Who knows? 

Unfortunately, voters won't get a chance to find out the candidates' actual position on this matter until one of them is elected mayor and presents her first municipal budget. That is... unless one of them presents an idea for coming up with another $25 million between now and election day.

So many Charbonnets

If you are voting in District E you will have the opportunity to double down on Charbonnets this fall should you find that you are so inclined.

Meanwhile, seven new contenders jumped into City Council races Thursday, including a former interim District E council member, lawyer Ernest “Freddie” Charbonnet, who is seeking his old seat.

Charbonnet, a second cousin of Desiree Charbonnet, temporarily replaced Jon Johnson in 2012 after the latter resigned. Johnson pleaded guilty that year to conspiring to funnel federal rebuilding money, which was intended for a nonprofit he owned, to his unsuccessful 2007 campaign for state Senate.

Ernest Charbonnet unsuccessfully sought an at-large seat once his District E term was up and later a Juvenile Court judgeship.

If the Mitch model is any indication, it's important for a mayor to have lots and lots of cousins. It doesn't matter what they do or what sort of spectacle they make of themselves in the process so long as they're there to keep the universe in balance.

Anyway today, the key entertainment at the Clerk's office involves Frank Scurlock and Sidney Torres jockeying to see which of them gets to run out of the tunnel last. Yesterday we learned that Sidney has supposedly prepared a Happy video to go with the Sad one that got.. um.. "leaked."  Maybe we'll be blessed with that this afternoon some time. 

Hey what is Scurlock's position on "Blue Lives Matter" laws?

Because, while the video here clearly shows Scurlock being an annoying dickhead, it does not show anything like an "assault" against a police officer.

City prosecutors on Wednesday raised the ante in their case against businessman and mayoral candidate Frank Scurlock over an incident involving a New Orleans police officer.

Scurlock — who has not yet filed his official paperwork to run for mayor — was charged in a bill of information with assault and crossing a police cordon. Police accused him of bumping Officer Clinton Lawrence, who was trying to maintain order amid protests over the planned removal of the Jefferson Davis monument in Mid-City on May 6.

The municipal assault charge represents an escalation by the City Attorney’s Office, given that Scurlock was initially booked by police on a single municipal count of obstructing a public place.

Since Scurlock's mayoral campaign (should such a thing actually materialize this week) isn't going anywhere, it's probably okay to enjoy the show he and his lawyer (who happens to be Thomas Robichaux, amusingly enough)  are providing now that the City Attorney has taken the bait. 

On a Wednesday conference call with his attorney and a reporter, Scurlock said the new charges against him were an example of "typical Louisiana politics at its finest" before Robichaux interrupted him to say a written statement would be coming soon.

Robichaux added to those allegations in a statement he sent by email.

“This new bill of information amounts to perjury on the part of the city attorney, and a blatant and willful disregard for the truth and the basic constitutional rights of the citizens of New Orleans,” Robichaux said. “Mitch Landrieu is drunk on his own ego and will do anything to discredit my client. It's time for City Hall to focus on real crimes instead of abusing their power.”

As absurd as the entire situation is, this is actually a legit point. Police and city officials have no right to bully anybody like this... no matter how ridiculous that person happens to be.  

We've probably been picking on LaToya too much

It's probably just that she's been the most accessible thus far and so there is so much material. In truth, all of the mayoral candidates are very bad. We'll get to that in due course. But this one, especially is bad.

Scurlock, a businessman who has also pitched a plan to redevelop the Six Flags site in New Orleans East, was arrested May 6 on the neutral ground near the Davis monument. He said he was not at the site as a protester but rather to talk with people on both sides of the issue.

He said he was hoping to alert police to what he had learned when he was arrested.

To be specific, Scurlock is a bad candidate because he is supposed to be the joke candidate who livens up an otherwise boring field but instead he is painfully unfunny. He's not the loveable eccentric he thinks he is. He's more like a cross between a morning zoo shock jock and a racist NOLA.com comments guy. And since everyone is waiting for Torres to swoop in later and be Trump anyway, Scurlock is just a lame placeholder.

The real matter of interest in this item, though, concerns the judge.

Municipal Court Judge Paul Sens recused himself Wednesday from hearing the case against New Orleans mayoral candidate Frank Scurlock, who was arrested last month during a protest near the Jefferson Davis monument on Canal Street.

Sens doesn't know if he, or any other judge, can ethically sit on a case that could affect his former colleague Desiree Charbonnet's election prospects. So if you are looking for a potential get out of jail free card between now and October, consider running for mayor.*

*Caveat: Actually becoming mayor could itself be a ticket directly to jail so be warned.

That problematic Danae Columbus column

This Medium post by Jordan Flaherty is probably going to get some circulation. The attention-grabber at the top is a story about how political consultant and current Uptown Messenger columnist Danae Columbus was fired from her job as a City Council PR specialist in 2006 for using a racial slur.  Not everyone thinks this is a big deal, apprently. Already the social media response has included a fair amount of shrugging. I've seen various iterations of "It was ten years ago and widely known," popping up.  OK. And Uptown Messenger publishes this column anyway.  Is that worth asking about?  A lot of people don't seem to think so.

But before we pretend to be surprised at this, we should remember that the punditing profession continues to employ despicable racists, sexists, and homophobes like David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Ross Douthat, and Bret Stephens.. and that's just at the New York Times!   So let's not flatter ourselves with the conceit that Columbus is violating a professional norm just by being racist.

Flaherty also calls out Columbus's massive conflict of interest given that she often appears to use her column to promote the agendas of candidates and officeholders who also happen to be clients of hers.

Columbus, who also was caught using ethically dubious tactics in a 2012 city council race against LaToya Cantrell, writes for the Messenger while maintaining her job as a publicist for local politicians, and her columns read more like press releases than political analysis. A March, 2017 column about Stacy Head, a client of Columbus, is an uncritical list of Head’s accomplishments. Columbus describes Head as a popular candidate who “soundly defeated” her opponents..

It would be more accurate to say that Head, one of the city’s most racially divisive figures, is popular among white voters and deeply unpopular among Black voters. In her first election, Head likely only defeated Black incumbent Renee Gill Pratt because most Black residents of the district were still displaced after Hurricane Katrina. Pratt, who was under federal investigation at the time, was still more popular than Head among the Black residents of the district. Head won her 2010 election in that same district with 98 percent of the white vote and 30 percent of the Black vote. In Head’s 2012 primary race for the city council at-large seat, Head received 96% of the white vote and 5% of the Black vote.

So the complaint is Columbus is a racist writing promotional material for paying clients to a largely racist audience. To put it another way, she's pretty well in line with the standards and practices of political punditry at large. There are a number of underlying reasons for this which I don't intend to go too far into here. This CJR piece by Farai Chideya on diversity in newsrooms is a good place to start although there is a more expansive power and status analysis to tack onto it. But, like I said, it's more than I want to deal with here.

Instead I thought it was worth pointing out the conflicts and motivations that animate a lot of what Columbus produces in a column which I do read regularly. It's a good source for local political rumors as they tend to surface there before other outlets. And, yes, one supposes that is the brand Columbus sells to the Messenger; Juicy insidery poop with a healthy side of questionable ethics and a dash of racism. Still, if one is willing to wade through it, one is likely to learn a thing or two.

For example, Columbus's latest column is one of her worst. She takes shots at the group, Indivisible NOLA who are hosting the first public forum of the mayoral election this weekend.  It turns out that only Latoya Cantrell and Michael Bagneris are able to make it. Columbus's objection, though, is that pro-monument carnival barker quasi-candidate Frank Scurlock wasn't invited.

In an especially gross turn, Columbus even goes so far as to invoke this week's shooting incident endangering the life of Steve Scalise to suggest that a progressive group's exclusion of the Bouncy House guy from its meet and greet is a furtherance of that violence. Because, of course in such times, it is incumbent upon Indivisible to reach out to the guy who was arrested "defending" the Jefferson Davis monument. This is the only way the healing can begin.  At least he seems to think so. When "reached by text" Scurlock basically told Columbus that they are the real racists here.

Reached by text in Singapore where he is attending an international amusement parks convention, Scurlock said he believes INO’s decision was “all racial.”

Anyway here are the details on that forum, again. Scurlock has made it known that he intends to show up and "protest" whatever that means. So be ready for fun.

Update: Scurlock says he is a victim of "reverse racism" But also, according to Gambit, "Scurlock has said he plans to formally kick off his campaign in early July." Dude has already had two "official kick offs" to his campaign. One was a sort of press conference at Armstrong Park. The other was something he called "Cinco de Scurlock." Is he even going to actually qualify?

Take my swamp, please

Danae Columbus gets a little salty with the mayor here.

Armed with the proper resources and consultants, (IDB Chair Alan) Philipson is quite capable of directing a fair and impartial selection process to identify a well-qualified developer for the former Six Flags site. Instead of providing Philipson with the tools he needed, Landrieu has decided to run the process himself – a la the World Trade Center – and will get one last shot to give a major piece of New Orleans real estate to his hand-selected cronies.

Is it a "major piece" of real estate, though?  It looks more like a rusting junkyard sinking into swamp. We've had three rounds of questionably financed hucksters trying to make far-fetched plays for it all of which were rejected.  Maybe Columbus is right to be suspicious of the mayor's move to expedite matters. But it's just as likely he's motivated by a desire to have this done with as it is nefarious "cronyism."

Unless Scurlock ends up with the property. In that case, yes, something fishy will have happened. 

Setting everything up for the turnover to Mayor Scurlock

According to this, the mayor's office is taking the fate of the Six Flags site back into its own hands.  Sort of.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration officially took over future decisions about the old Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East under an agreement approved Tuesday (May 9) by the economic development board that owns the shuttered 220-acre property.

The New Orleans Industrial Development Board voted unanimously to reject three pending offers to buy the property and instead enter a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Landrieu administration for one year. The Landrieu administration will handle marketing the property and evaluating any proposals, in hopes of finally getting the long-blighted property revived.

I say, sort of, because as we read further we see that the IDB is still responsible for security and maintenance and, apparently, will have the final say on whatever the mayor decides.   At one point in this process, IDB termed a round of bids from potential developers an "insult to the people of New Orleans" Supposedly whatever they've agreed to gives the mayor a heavier thumb on the scale there. Maybe he'll be more forgiving.  We know Mayor Scurlock will, anyway.

Cinco de Scurlock

I don't know. It's a thing, I guess.

The man behind an inflatable jump house empire, skywriting over Jazz Fest and attempts to revive the Six Flags site has thrown his top hat into the ring for the New Orleans mayor's race. Frank Scurlock announced his bid Friday (May 5), which he dubbed "Cinco De Scurlock" on a calendar posted to his website.

Wait. We're pretty sure Scurlock already announced his candidacy back in March. It was in the papers and everything.  Maybe it doesn't count if not enough people notice the first time.  Or maybe Scurlock is just used to repeating big announcements that don't go anywhere. His several failed bids at the Six Flags  property may indicate that.

There was also this announcement of more announcements via skywriting, which also didn't happen.

It's Scurlock who has paid for a pilot to write inspirational messages in the sky during Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras in recent years. He planned for skywriting to take place in three cities Wednesday afternoon until severe weather forced its cancellation. While previous displays have been mostly neutral politically, an announcement previewing the skywriting Wednesday linked them to the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans.

The plan was to fill the sky with hashtag quality slogans meant to "draw attention to the plight of the monuments and calm tensions among residents," which seem like contradictory purposes but whatever.  He's apparently engaged in a very tasteful pub crawl of Mexican restaurants tonight. If you see him out be sure and ask him if he's coming to the march on Sunday. 

#MNOFA?

So Scurlock is gonna run one of those campaigns, I guess...

Scurlock could best be called “The Fun Man.” A 54 year-old Republican, Scurlock coined the phrase “Make America Fun Again,” and selected “Make New Orleans Fun Again” as his campaign theme. Scurlock currently earns a damn good living building floating water parks around the globe. Several weeks ago Spurlock completed a marathon 10-day, 10-city tour to meet with government officials interested in bringing his style of economic development to their regions. Scurlock boasts that he will open 40 water parks “somewhere in the world” during the next 60 days. He would also like to redevelop the Lincoln Beach site in eastern New Orleans.

The guy sure does have a lot of projects on his plate.  Also he apparently owns five cell phones for reasons of some sort. Apparently he has also already been running TV ads though I haven't spotted them yet. Also, much like the other potential novelty candidate Sidney Torres, Scurlock's political career has a brush-with-crime origin story. 

Scurlock says he was carjacked at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon in 2010. After sitting for two hours in the district station to give a statement, “I came to realize that it was worthless to make a police report,” said Scurlock. He plans to change political party affiliation in the near future.

That's funny. The old saw conservatives like to throw around used to say most Democrats are Republicans who haven't been mugged yet. But in heavily Democratic Orleans Parish, Scurlock is going the other direction with that.

Also of note in that Columbus column, Jason Williams confirms he is out of the mayor's race. No surprise there. A bit more of a surprise is that Desiree Charbonnet is leaning towards in. I don't know if we're allowed to have a Charbonnet and a Bagneris in the same race. Somebody should check the city charter. Also LaToysais being squeezed a bit... at least according to Columbus she is. 

Cantrell is passionate and a tireless worker. Not having run city-wide previously, Cantrell had to step out early to build name recognition. Rumors abound that Cantrell’s fundraising is moving slowly, and she is not expected to report more than $300,000 in the next filing, only a fraction of what is needed for a successful mayor’s race. Critics also say that Cantrell has on several occasions flip-flopped on issues and retreated from promises when pressure was applied, making it difficult for those affected to always rely on her. 

It's true that she does try to finesse a lot of things. One could call that "flip-flopping" although one could also observe that all politicians do it. 

It's good to have a hobby

OK now we're getting somewhere!

A would-be developer with his eye on the Six Flags site in New Orleans East is planning to step aside from that effort to launch a mayoral bid.

Frank Scurlock announced his candidacy last week in front of Armstrong Park as street performers danced in the background.

Scurlock is one of three bidders who have been seeking the right to redevelop the former Six Flags site, with plans to turn it back into an amusement park. The Industrial Development Board has been skeptical of all three proposals.

In addition to his multiple failed bids at the Six Flags site (including one that involved a "Noah's Ark" themed attraction) Scurlock is also known for his inherited wealth derived from his father’s invention of the "bounce house" and more recently for his bizarre skywriting stunts during Jazzfest.

During one round of Six Flags bidding, an IDB member called the proposals, including Scurlock's, "an insult to the people of New Orleans." Maybe a mayoral campaign is a way to make up for that by way of entertaining us. Or maybe it's more of the same.  In any case, it's hard to figure that there'd be room for both Scurlock and Sidney Torres in the same field. Maybe that's why the bounce house king is trying to get the.. um... jump on Sidney by getting in early.

What about us brain dead slobs?

The Six Flags endgame may be at hand. And it is looking pretty darn hilarious. The bidding parties, after having failed multiple times to wear down the IDB on their own, have decided to see what happens if they gang up.

Two developers who have made separate offers to buy the abandoned Six Flags amusement park site in New Orleans East are considering making a joint offer for the property.

Frank Scurlock, the owner of Scurlock Entertainment, said Tuesday that he's been talking with Henry Klein of 30/90 Development about teaming up to try to buy and redevelop the park.

“We are in communication ... and are exploring the possibility,” Scurlock said.

Klein confirmed that it was “highly likely" the two men would present a joint proposal to the Industrial Development Board, the public board that manages the city-owned site.

Let's see, if we take your worthless twice rejected bid and combine it with my worthless, rejected bid, well then, worthless X worthless =....   Hey, you know when you've got one Billy Joe at quarterback and that's not working out so well and you think, OK but what if we had TWO Billy Joes at quarterback!  That's kind of what this is like. 

Also what is Scurlock still doing here? When we last saw him he said he was giving up on Six Flags and taking his Noah's Ark or his Zip Line or whatever (his idea has changed several times) and scooting off to Jefferson Parish never to speak on this again. 

Turns out he was just there to pick up a new friend.

Scurlock has hired former Jefferson Parish President John Young to represent him before the board.

During a board meeting last month, he offered $4.5 million in cash for the property but then said he was pulling the offer after board members declined to consider it on the spot.

At the same meeting, Klein said he’d pay $5.5 million but conceded that he didn’t have all of the money available immediately.

Ok well let's welcome John Young aboard to whatever the new scheme is. We also should emphasize that Klein's proposal at the last meeting was basically just him jumping out of the audience and, on the spot, offering the $5.5 million he didn't have. He also didn't have an actual proposal he could describe in much detail.  

As the board heard from the two groups making purchase offers as listed on the agenda, Henry Klein, an attorney who said he represents 30/90 Development, said his group wants to offer $5.5 million for the property, while giving no details who's involved in the group or their plans for the Six Flags site. Klein left the meeting while it was still ongoing.

IDB member Justin Augustine said people jumping out of the audience to make an offer is "not a professional process" and urged the board to use a more professional method to receive offers. Board members noted that analysis of offers will go beyond the purchase price and include a look at what's being proposed on the site and the financial capacity of the developers.

At the time, that struck us as particularly funny.  We're always on the lookout for monorail salesmen when it comes to land use stuff around here. When we read about Klein's stunt, we went and got the meme out and everything.



But that's kind of a tired gag now, anyway. Surely we aren't still dealing with the sort of people who... oh goddammit. 

If the board chooses him, Scurlock said he plans to open what he called the first phase of his project — essentially a preview of the rides that would eventually be open at the park — on Memorial Day weekend.

That preview would include smaller attractions that would be set up in a parking lot outside the abandoned park’s gates, as well as tram rides that would take visitors on a tour of the soon-to-be constructed park, he said.

Well, okay. Good luck to all involved. The next IDB meeting is March 17. 

Noah's Swamp

Is it strange that the growing, gentrifying, It City of New Orleans in 2016 is having trouble developing a site that the declining City of New Orleans in 2004 turned into an amusement park?  Maybe it's more of a weird little quirk. Or maybe it's just that a junkyard in a swamp isn't a very attractive piece of property... even when the real estate market is "hot."

Developers got another chance Tuesday to pitch ideas for redeveloping the abandoned Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East, but the public board that controls the property seemed unimpressed.

The Industrial Development Board, which owns the land the park sits on, had already heard both of the proposals brought up Tuesday and rejected them two years ago.

After an extended discussion of their options, board members voted to simply continuing paying for 24-hour security at the site and to advertise for an appraiser who can give them a clearer picture of the property’s value.

“We’ve sat on this property for 12 years, and we don’t know what we’re sitting on,” board President Alan Philipson said.

Remember, the IDB does not enjoy having been made responsible for the Six Flags site and  is desperate to find someone, anyone, really, who can take it off their hands.  How desperate? Desperate enough to invite this guy back. 

A New Orleans businessman is promoting his vision of an amusement park, resort hotel, international shopping center and Noah's ark replica as the solution for redeveloping the stagnant former Six Flags park in New Orleans East.

Frank Scurlock, whose family invented inflatable bounce houses, said he is presenting his plan for "Festival Park, Spirit of Louisiana" to the New Orleans Industrial Development Board on Tuesday (April 12).

Some of y'all might remember the bouncy house scion from last year when he made everybody ooh and aah at his skywriting.  (He was back this year for Mardi Gras too, though there were fewer comments about it.)  Last year, Scurlock's skywriting campaign was intended to call attention to a Gofundme campaign for a foundation Scurlock called "Noigiler" (That's "Religion" spelled backwards.) It was meant to help him continue his skywriting AND, it looks like, help support his  Six Flags bid.  The Gofundme is down now but I saved some of the text.

This mission is fairly costly as it's not local. It cost approx $24000 for the period rain or shine.  The goal is to purchase the "Sky Magic" plane and keep it at Lakefront airport. If purchased the cost will drop considerably and be easy to maintain. At that point it's just smoke oil and gas,etc. We have had offers of free pilots and hangers which is a great start and blessing. We are based out of Flightline First FBO who has donated services.

This is the beginning leading up Transformation Village which is the rebirth of New Orleans East reserecting Jazzland and the addition of a water park and resort hotels to continue to make New Orleans a world class destination.

Anyway so that guy was back before the IDB this week. His proposal is pretty much the same. He wants to open it as an amusement park and a "beach-like swimming pool" as well as.. whatever this is. 

The full "multi-billion-dollar" plan includes an international shopping center twice the size of the Superdome that leases store space to other nations, rather than retailers. "New Orleans is truly an international city, and we'll be exploiting that," Scurlock said.

Whoah, it's a "multi-billion-dollar" plan to "lease store space to other nations." Does Billy Nungesser know about this thing?  Are his Iraqi contacts going to sell their oil here? Maybe the "meditative space" will sweeten the deal.

Meanwhile, a Noah's ark replica at the Interstate 10/I-510 intersection would serve as a meditative space for people to go and think about life, he said.

That Scurlock's plan would even receive a second hearing is indicative of how desperate the board is at this point. The only other options that day were an even less solid proposal to restore the amusement park and one suggestion that it be scrapped and sold for parts.  In the end they decided to just keep paying for security, which they definitely need to do because somebody has to keep the Instagrammers away.

In just the past month, the site has had an increase in trespassing and vandalism, prompting 23 arrests in one recent weekend, Philipson said. The board is paying $500 a day to maintain a constant watch.

Kids, the little abandoned amusement park art project has been done already.  Sorry.  Go find somewhere else to urban explore. The SELA project is lovely right now if you're interested.

That's OK we've got airplanes

Today Lamar wrote about a bill before the Legislature that would allow the cash strapped state to subsidize "religious theme parks" like this one here. 

If signed into law, HB 771, a bill authored and proposed by Louisiana’s newest and most controversial state legislator, could provide tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer incentives to subsidize the construction of large-scale theme parks by tax-exempt churches and religious organizations.  It’s an outrageous proposal, and what’s even more outrageous, the legislator behind the effort is suing the State of Kentucky for millions of dollars after it pulled the plug on new earth creationist Ken Ham’s ostentatious and delusional Noah’s Ark theme park.

You might remember that a "Noah's Ark theme park" was among the proposed uses for the defunct Jazzland/Six Flags site in New Orleans last year.

The proposed name for the project is Transformation Village.

In addition to re-establishing the Theme Park  at the existing site, they are proposing the addition of a Water Park to be called Atlantis, a Movie Back Lot, a Jazzland Resort Hotel,  a Hospitality School, a Resource Center, a lifesize reproduction of Noah’s Ark and a International Shopping Center.

A release says “the project is a multi-year Vision with a Team of professionals including  Eric McQuiston, of Eric R. McQuiston, LLC, Craig Dennis and Frank Scurlock, of Scurlock Development Group, LLC.”

Scurlock is the founder and owner of Space Walk and Inflatable Zoo and been involved in Themed entertainment for more than 40 years with extensive World travels.

That proposal, along with one other, was rejected by a review panel who found it was not financially viable. Actually, they used stronger language than that. 

A member of the committee charged with reviewing the responses called the two proposals an “insult to the people of New Orleans” because they lack specific details about financing, developer qualifications and other matters.

“This is too big of a project, too massive of a development project not to have meat on the bones,” panel member Jeff Hebert said. The proposals offer “nothing of what we need to be able to review to have intelligent conversation,” he said.

Though no one else on the five-member panel was quite so outspoken, they seemed to share Hebert’s sentiments.

“I’m not looking for a pipe dream,” committee member Justin Augustine said. “I’m looking for viable projects that can go to this community.”

Scurlock seems to have taken it in stride, though.  He showed up again recently during Jazzfest when he paid a skywriter to grace the city with a week of positive, vaguely religious messages and smiley faces. 

Words like hope, faith, and coexist have been inspiring city dwellers and popping up all over social media.

The messages of love were the idea of local businessman Frank Scurlock. He hired Hammond to write the sky messages after being moved by all of the recent violence in the city and across the country.

Apparently that wasn't all he was moved by, though. He also used the publicity to launch a Gofundme site for his Noigiler (religion spelled backward) foundation.  Look what that's about.

This mission is fairly costly as it's not local. It cost approx $24000 for the period rain or shine.  The goal is to purchase the "Sky Magic" plane and keep it at Lakefront airport. If purchased the cost will drop considerably and be easy to maintain. At that point it's just smoke oil and gas,etc. We have had offers of free pilots and hangers which is a great start and blessing. We are based out of Flightline First FBO who has donated services.

This is the beginning leading up Transformation Village which is the rebirth of New Orleans East reserecting Jazzland and the addition of a water park and resort hotels to continue to make New Orleans a world class destination.

While the skywriting was going on a few weeks ago, some of us did ask what the angle was supposed to be.

Did the skywriter finally show us whatever the ad was supposed to be?

— skooks (@skooks) April 30, 2015

And some others of us got all bent out of shape about the cynicism or whatever.

@skooks It's super quaint, and it involves looking up at the sky, which inherently instills a sense of wonder. Like hot air balloons.

— davegladow (@davegladow) April 30, 2015

 Welp.

Anyway, so now I have to wonder if Scurlock has any relationship with this Ken Ham guy.  How big can the Ark-themed religious amusements community really be?