Election malaise

It's been a long hard slog here in post-Ida (and pre-post-COVID.. maybe?... but not really) New Orleans.  October was basically our second "Lost Month" in two years. But worse because I've barely been posting anything. It's not been a great time, okay?  We're just trying to hang on but maybe we are getting somewhere. Halloween was kind of encouraging.. almost normal, even.  You can see here where I tried to render the Superdome on fire (remember that? it was a thing that happened this year!) in the traditional lighted gourd medium. 

 

 

Only moderate success with that, I am afraid. We'll try and do better, though. 

Anyway, if you're anything like me, you're probably still too immersed in the "malaise" to get super psyched up for this weekend's elections.  In which case, it is a good idea to check in with our friends at Antigravity to see if they can pep us up. Let's see... who is running for, oh I dunno.. Assessor? 

Beyond the two name changes, (Anthony "(Low Tax)") Gressett has fairly frequently used the court system to address grievances, including at least two slip-and-fall injuries, multiple altercations with police, an argument with a Southwest flight attendant he alleges threw bagged peanuts at him, and at least three disputes arising from work by contractors or movers at his own home.

According to court records, Gressett hired a Metairie-based painting and renovation company to do work on his home last year. He alleged the company’s workers violated the contract by showing up early, smoking on his property, playing music, using spray paint where the contract called for hand painting, and not properly cleaning up. That included using his “family’s personal residential garbage cans” for disposing of job waste and going into a storage area they weren’t supposed to access, where they took the family’s “private residential broom and dust pan” to clean up. After multiple disagreements with the workers, he alleged they “sprayed graffiti” on his house, applying “unauthorized writings,” and deliberately delayed the job. The situation made it “almost impossible” to have the house ready for Christmas card photos and even caused Gressett concern he wouldn’t be able to raise his tenants’ rent, according to his court filings. The case appears to still be pending in Jefferson Parish court.

In another incident, Gressett and his wife Bam sued a moving company they hired in 2016. When the movers arrived, Gressett alleged in court, they repeatedly claimed services he thought were covered by the contract weren’t, “and these episodes went on from almost beginning to end of the contracted work shift until the defendants finally wrecked the moving truck into the plaintiffs’ home…” The case was ultimately settled, according to court records.

It goes on from there so enjoy that little pick-me-up.  Makes you feel a little bit better about the world for a minute.

Now let's see what our friendly neighborhood comrades at the DSA can do to keep us on that high. 

Take a look around New Orleans in late 2021 and you will find it much worse for all the wear. The pandemic has left our service workers more precarious even as the ownership class of the tourism industry is better funded through public dollars. Housing costs are higher than ever while the real estate interests who fund our politics have even more wealth. There are surveillance cameras everywhere but the traffic signals don’t work. The streets still flood. The intelligentsia speculates about an indefinable sense of “malaise.” If one were to travel the gauntlet of malfunctioning lights along Loyola Avenue from the collapsed Hard Rock site to the collapsing Plaza Tower, one would inevitably pass City Hall along the way. The mayor who goes to work there every day recently said to anyone who might find a reason amid all of this to complain that “maybe New Orleans is not for you.”

But is LaToya Cantrell for New Orleans? There is the question that this election should have addressed. But given the field of challengers, it very likely will not.

Oh man.  Well okay back to bed for now, I guess. 

Re-opening soon

Much like the ol' wash and fold here, I figure it's about time to take the boards back down off the windows of the blog. Didn't mean to be away from it all month but, well, many things happened.  I think the last thing I promised here was a synthesis of the post-Ida notes. So we'll get to that in a few days. And then it's on to the very dismal election season, I guess. 

But for now, all of this is superseded by yet another emergency that certainly no one could possibly have predicted. 

Today @wdsu at 4/5/6PM hear from upset #Saints fans who left the @CaesarsDome Sunday in a packed stairwell, no ramps or escalators open, they say.
Some took 45-50 minutes just to leave the property.
We are waiting on a response from Superdome leaders.
DM any videos or pics.

— Travers Mackel (@TraversWDSU) October 4, 2021

Unfortunate. But there was just no way to know...

Age of vulgarity

What's sad here is there is a lost art of conveying a sense of our decadent stage of imperial capitalism through subtext.  Instead we just hit you right over the head with it so much that it becomes uninteresting.  

Like we've all just given up trying. 

Caesars and Saints executives said the scope of their partnership agreement goes beyond the naming rights deal. They said the plan is for additional joint investments that will use Caesars' leverage in the entertainment and sporting world to bring more events to the Superdome, as well as to enhance Champions Square as a venue.

"This will be their building for the next 20 years at least, so a big part of the discussion has been about how do we get some of the world class entertainment they have," said Saints President Dennis Lauscha. "How do we get some of the big boxing matches into New Orleans? How do we develop Champions Square to take it to another level from an entertainment standpoint? Those are really big investments that we're talking to them about making jointly."

Whose building? The one the people of Louisiana built and maintained for four decades?  The place we've invested not only our public money but our community pride, the place where we welcomed Popes and Presidents, hosted concerts, crowned athletic champions at every level, this worldwide symbol of our collective suffering as well as our (ugh hate to use the word) civic resilience; whose building is this, Dennis?

No, the problem is not a "worker shortage"

This article will tell you what the problem actually is but it doesn't do that until about 14 paragraphs in; long after the nonsense about "generous" unemployment benefits and well overshadowed by the OMG WHO WILL SERVE ME MY $12 BUD LITES AT THE SUPERDOME headline.  But it's in there. 

Worker representatives generally take the Biden view, noting that many of those who lost their jobs weren't eligible for assistance in the first place. Many are not anxious to return to low-paid jobs for a variety of reasons, including lack of child care, worries about their health and better alternatives on offer.

"Calling it a 'worker shortage' makes it seem like there are a lot of people too lazy to work," said Andrew Deibert, chief organizer for United Labor Unions in Louisiana.

"I think it should be framed as an 'ethical-employer shortage,' a shortage of companies willing to pay workers livable wages, provide decent benefits, and improve working conditions," he said. "Companies willing to do this don't seem to be having trouble finding workers."

Despite all the bizzaro world propaganda suggesting the opposite, the bosses have won a more precarious and desperate workforce in the pandemic.  The "worker shortage" manufactured crisis is just about locking it down.

 

Send the bill to Gayle

The Mayor's office is (at least it is posturing as though it is) thinking about playing hardball with the Superdome commission.

After arguing for months that New Orleans’ powerful tourism and sports agencies should shift some of their tax revenues to help fund the city's aging and sometimes crumbling infrastructure, Mayor LaToya Cantrell is demanding $3.6 million in rent from the Superdome's governing body for its use of a city-owned portion of Champions Square.

The city and the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, also known as the Superdome Commission, have been trying for years to conclude a land-swap agreement that would include the 1400 block of LaSalle Street that runs between the Superdome and Champions Square.

Because of a disagreement over the land’s value, those talks have fizzled. So on Tuesday, Cantrell sent a letter to Superdome Commission Chairman Kyle France that said the city is owed $3.6 million in back rent, plus $488,000 in rent annually.

They probably owe significantly more than that, actually.  Take a few minutes and review the original AZ story about this from a few years ago. 

Anyway, I don't know what will come of it. Probably nothing. But it's been fun these past few months to watch LaToya at least try to hold some of these tourism-focused state entities to account for all the money they suck out of the city every year.

Why your stadium sucks

The Fox Sports article cited here is just a clickbait list the object of which was to say the snarkiest thing possible about every NFL stadium. So the Advocate isn't helping to clarify matters by highlighting the snark in the headline they chose to run. Even within the context of the list, there are still 11 "worse" stadiums than the Superdome according to the article. By doing that the Advocate is helping to imply that we're supposed to pony up another billion dollars or so for Tom Benson (or his successor) sometime soon.

Anyway, the whole thing is dumb. The Superdome is a fantastic building and should be revered as such. It's the "last of the true domes" for a reason. It was the one that got done right.

Whose streets? Tom's streets

Last week the NFL voted to allow the Oakland Raiders to move to Las Vegas. The reason, as always: pure extortion.

The relocation feels like the money grab it is. Davis and the other N.F.L. owners said they were impressed with the city’s potential, but what persuaded them most was the $750 million tax subsidy lawmakers in Nevada will provide for a big, modern stadium with suites, fancy restaurants and concession stands, not to mention the prospect of a marquee naming-rights partner and other financial benefits.

Fans might not care about such amenities, but in the money-first N.F.L., the other 31 owners certainly do because they receive a cut of what every team generates in its stadium. The Raiders have been near the bottom in the amount of revenue they have produced in their deteriorating stadium, which is more than 50 years old.

Now, in a sane world, hulking landmarks like sports stadiums probably should be expected to have a shelf life well past 50 years. That's allowing for the occasional renovation or two, which the Oakland Coliseum certainly has had.  But this is professional sports where decisions on such matters are more about what the ownership cabal can squeeze out of the public.  And every franchise relocation crisis brings a new opportunity. 

The owner Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, a power broker in the league who embraced and pushed the move, had an extra incentive. He owns half of Legends, a marketing and hospitality company. Last year, he persuaded the owners to let the Rams move to Los Angeles, and his company won the contract for the new stadium the Rams are building there. Jones pulled off the same daily double with the Raiders.

So the age of any stadium isn't nearly as important as what fortunes can be derived from building a new one. The Superdome is a few years past 40. And nobody is (currently) talking about any dire need to pull the Saints out of there.  The Advocate's Nick Underhill tries to tell us this is because the team's home grown ownership and management "gets it" or some such nonsense. But those of us with longer local memories than Underhill's might disagree.

Take, for instance, this passage where Underhill unquestioningly repeats Dennis Lauscha's assurances that all is well and the good people are working to keep you happy well into the forseeable future.

The Saints have already begun discussions with SMG’s Doug Thornton about how the two sides can keep this relationship going beyond 2025. The Saints have started soliciting proposals from architects for a long-term plan for the Superdome. The goal is to start shaping what the “next generation” will look like for the area around the stadium.

“I can sincerely say that our team and Doug and his team and the state, they’re investing in the future,” Lauscha said. “(All) of us want nothing more than to make that area great and really make it the jewel of downtown.”

He added: “You have two partners who want to dance. We’ve seen when that happens — particularly in our market, but all throughout all professional sports — when that’s the case, good private-public partnerships can exist and work long-term.”

[Before we get too much further into this, let's assume that, unlike Underhill, most of us remember well that Tom Benson was determined to move the Saints out of New Orleans when the city was at its lowest point after Katrina and had to be dragged back kicking and screaming. In case you are like Nick, though, and need a refresher, I always liked Oyster's explication best.]

Anyway, about that "jewel of downtown" public-private partnership the guys are all working on. It's less of a "partnership" than it is a.. well, grift isn't really strong enough a word for what this is. A new post at AZ takes an in-depth look at it. Apologies for the long quotation.

Easy Street...courtesy of Louisiana

The 2009 deal between Benson and the State/LSED consisted of two parts.

The first was an extension of the Superdome lease by LSED through 2025 and an $85 million dollar disbursement to the LSED by the State of Louisiana for improvements to the Dome as well as scaled payments to the Saints pending the amount of money the team generated annually from 2011 to 2024.

The second part of the deal involved the newly acquired Dominion Tower and properties purchased by Benson’s Zellia, LLC. In addition to the State agencies leasing over 70% of the office space in the tower, a state organization called the Louisiana Office Facilities Corporation (essentially an extension of the LSED) agreed to lease the New Orleans Center property which included the Mall and area now known as Champions Square, as well as the aforementioned parking garage for $2.3 million annually. The LSED agreed to take on the operations of the parking garage, mall and Macy’s retail store, retaining all revenues up to the $2.3 million mark (to compensate for the rent to Zelia), then any additional revenues would be split with Zelia 50/50. The agreement called for Zelia to be responsible for any initial renovations and repairs to the properties with the LSED maintaining daily operations and maintenance.

Benson/Zelia agreed to a $10.5 million dollar investment in the property over a three-year period (from 2010) and the LSED committed to making $85 million in capital improvements over the following two years with a completion date of 2011.

Public/Private Partnerships: The Road to Prosperity for the Private

After ratifying the agreement in an LSED Board of Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Robert Bruno stated the deal was (paraphrased from meeting minutes), “One of the most complicated, creative, bipartisan examples of a public/private partnership that could ever be imagined.”

Ron Forman, then President of the LSED Board of Commissioners and CEO/President of the Audubon Institute said (paraphrased from meeting minutes), “Without Mr. Benson’s willingness to invest, it could not have happened.”

How would one not be willing to invest in a multi-million dollar contract that placed any business risk solely on the State of Louisiana? The deal guaranteed near full occupancy rate of Benson Tower on top of a guaranteed 2.3 million dollars a year lease for the Champions Square property and the parking garage in which Zelia doesn’t even have to manage (The management of the properties is contracted to the company SMG by the LSED).

All Benson had to do was purchase the properties and the state took on any and all business risk to guarantee Zelia a financial windfall.

As obscene as all that is, it's pretty well known to most New Orleanians. (Except, I guess, Nick Underill.) Ask anyone to define the boundaries of Bensonville and most probably wouldn't even need to consult the Noligarchs Map.



But a lot of people may not know about the public street Benson's fiefdom managed to absorb for what appears to be zero compensation back to the city.. or scarcely any acknowledgement of the transaction.

An entire city street, the 1400 block of LaSalle which lies between Benson Tower and the Superdome, has been appropriated into the Champions Square venue….sans any contract with the City.

The street has been completely closed to automobile traffic with numerous permanent structures erected by the LSED including gateways  on both ends of the street.  During concerts and events in the Square these gateways are closed to the general public and used as a ticketing entrance for private events.

There are numerous problems with this, as Jason goes on to point out. Most crucially, it's probably illegal in that it violates a state constitutional prohibition on public property being "loaned, pledged, or donated to or for any person, association, or corporation, public or private." It's also just a ton of money the city is leaving on the table for use of the public property. At the same time the mayor is squeezing as much as he can out of ordinary people by raising parking fees, installing traffic cameras, and taxing people for air, he's doing this multi-million dollar favor for a billionaire.

Here's something else from the AZ report that would make you spit out your $12 Dome Foam.

If the City of New Orleans is as cash-strapped as Mayor Landrieu suggested when I interviewed him, why have we left millions of dollars on the table in respect to 1400 LaSalle?

When I asked the LSED if the City has received any compensation for the use of the street from them or Zelia they replied:

"The City of New Orleans has received the economic benefit of (i) the improvements that were made to LaSalle Street, (ii) the ongoing maintenance, repair, etc. of LaSalle Street, and (iii) increased tax revenues derived from events that occur at Champions Square. "

It’s kind of hard to understand how shutting a city street off to the public, taking it out of commerce (including parking meters and fines), installing permanent fixtures....all to generate income for a private venture...is an “improvement” or benefit to the City. 

If I fix the potholes on my own street, can I put up two gateways on each end and charge people to use it?

No. No, you can't do that with your street. These Newcomb Boulevard residents found that out the hard way a few years ago. Also, this is pretty much the same argument advanced by defenders of the city's Confederate monuments now scheduled for removal.

Led by the Monumental Task Committee, the monument supporters argue that the upkeep their members have done over the years at the statues of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard gives them an ownership interest in the statues and therefore a say in what happens to them.

Of course that wasn't a winning argument for the Monumental Taksers. But it's remarkable that the city (or LSED on the state and city's behalf) would turn around and make that case now.  It's especially dubious for anyone to argue that Benson has gained some sort of property right to LaSalle street simply by virtue of presuming to collect rent from it.  On the other hand, stealing public goods and purposing them to enhance the profits of billionaires is what the NFL was built on. So who could expect anything different?

And this does seem to be the way we treat our public spaces now be they streets, parks, or federally protected wilderness. If it isn't being monetized and "put back into commerce" we no longer recognize its communal value.  But as long as Mitch Landrieu and the neoliberals are applying the privatization model to New Orleans, they probably shouldn't just be doing it for free.

Monumental task

My favorite building in the entire city has been singled out for special recognition and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

The Superdome, a 40-year-old landmark on the New Orleans skyline, has been named to the National Register of Historic Places despite an objection by the state, which owns the stadium and is concerned the designation might slow down future projects.

The 76,000-seat home of the Saints, known as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome since 2011, was launched in August 1975 with an open house attended by 45,000 people. It has since served as the host site for seven Super Bowls, the Sugar Bowl games, college football championship games, Final Four men's and women's college basketball championship games, and more.

Ok neat. Wait. What does that mean, exactly?

The Superdome's owner, the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, opposed the new designation during the selection process last year. In a letter to the review committee, Ron Forman, the district's chairman, said additional requirements imposed by being a historical place could slow maintenance and capital projects on the building.

"While we are greatly honored for the consideration, we believe that a National Register of Historic Places designation could potentially adversely impact our ongoing obligation to ensure that the Superdome is maintained as a world-class multipurpose venue," Forman wrote.

Well, alright, Ron Forman is against it so that's probably good. But what if, maybe he has a point?  Does this mean we will now have to go through some extra layer of legal mumbo jumbo just to get them to take Bronze Tom down?  Because if so, then I think I'm against it.  The article says the designation is "honorary" but this language still gives me pause.

The Superdome's listing in the National Register doesn't block any future attempt to demolish it. For the publicly owned building, the listing is mostly honorary. The register provides an incentive to preserve buildings by giving private developers access to federal historic tax credits.

The Superdome cost $134 million to build in the 1970s. It is the largest single-span dome in the country. After Hurricane Katrina, the dome underwent $200 million of repairs and upgrades in a project led by New Orleans firm Trahan Architects.

If that means that, in order to take the Benson statue down, we're gonna have to go ahead and demolish the whole building just to get at it then I'm definitely against that. Also note the availability of "federal historic tax credits" which sounds an awful lot like more corporate welfare for a contractor like Centerplate or whoever the Bensons or the NFL choose to gift with some make-work job.

Why is this a good thing, again? 

There is no such thing as a service tiger

Do not try and bring one to a football game if it doesn't want to go.

There'll be one fewer massive, hairy, intimdating LSU fan in Tiger Stadium for the rest of the season.

LSU announced on Mike VI's Facebook page on Saturday morning that he won't be attending any games for the rest of the season.

"Will reevaluate next season," the announcement said.

LSU’s live mascot attended the season opener, his first home football game since 2013. Mike declined to show at any of last year’s home games, refusing to enter his mobile trailer.

Good for Mike.  I like Mike The Tiger. He seems pretty happy and well cared for. If the veterinary staff responsible for his well being determine that he is uncomfortable sitting in a cage for 3 hours while 100,000 people scream and yell, well then it sounds like they are doing their jobs properly.

Meanwhile, Superdome security is bracing for the inevitable onslaught of companion animals at the next Saints home game.

Pumilia said he brought the 2-year-old Calico with black and gold fur named Zoey to the game for the companionship she provides as a certified service animal. He said he called Mercedes-Benz Superdome officials beforehand to make sure the cat would be allowed in the stadium.

"I don't go anywhere without her," said the 14-year season ticket holder with two seats in section 624.

Pumilia said he realized the attention his cat received the next morning "when I woke up and I saw the messages here, there and everywhere. ... I had no clue."

The game Thursday was the first to which Pumilia brought the cat. With the Saints at 1-0 with Zoey in the building, Pumilia said he planned to bring her to future games.

His only requirement would be to show proper paperwork at the door, just as he did Thursday.

"She's going to go to every game," he said.

OK so I guess I have some questions.    First of all, can a cat actually be an ADA certified "service animal"?  It looks from this as though the answer is no.

Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

The ADA specifically limits its definition of "service animal" to specially trained dogs.  These are the only animals required by law to be allowed access to public facilities.  Neither "exotic pets" like  Mike VI nor even regular house cats like our friend Zoey enjoy this legal privilege.

She's probably certified, instead, as an "emotional support animal."  

While Emotional Support Animals or Comfort Animals are often used as part of a medical treatment plan as therapy animals, they are not considered service animals under the ADA. These support animals provide companionship, relieve loneliness, and sometimes help with depression, anxiety, and certain phobias, but do not have special training to perform tasks that assist people with disabilities. Even though some states have laws defining therapy animals, these animals are not limited to working with people with disabilities and therefore are not covered by federal laws protecting the use of service animals.  Therapy animals provide people with therapeutic contact, usually in a clinical setting, to improve their physical, social, emotional, and/or cognitive functioning.

Zoey's certification as an ESA could come from any number of sources.

Some who work with animals, however, see the ESA situation as a growing problem because of the pet owners who fib about their infirmities (or stretch the truth) to get their pets better access. "It's not right," said Nikki Reagan of Pacific Palisades, who is known in local hospitals as the owner of Tank the therapy cat. Animals can do wonders for people, Reagan said, but too many pet owners are gaming the system.

Several companies sell ESA evaluations, letters, registration cards and other accessories on the Web, sometimes requiring telephone interviews, sometimes operating on the honor system. But there is no federally recognized registry for any kind of companion animals (service, therapy or emotional support), so consumers should expect no guarantees from these vendors.

Emotional Support Animals are recognized by federal law under the Fair Housing Act which requires landlords with "no pets" rules to make exceptions for them and the Air Carrier Access Act which permits ESAs to travel for free on passengers' laps.  But, again, they are not afforded the same status that "service animals" are under the Americans With Disabilities Act.  Louisiana law provides for ADA compliant access to "service dogs" but limits its definition to dogs only.

Outside of these stipulations, ESA access to facilities is all up to the discretion of the venue. The Superdome's official policy, as written, adheres very closely to the ADA guidelines. 

Trained guide dogs, signal dogs or service animals assisting guests with disabilities are welcome inside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Please alert a ticket taker that you have such animals. If you are requesting a seating relocation after entry into the building, proceed to a Guest Relations Desk located within the Superdome.

Any decision Dome officials make regarding animals not covered by ADA would happen on a case by case basis.  Why would they let a cat in?  Probably just staff unfamiliarity with the law, a desire to keep a customer happy and "play it safe" legally.

In any case it should be clear that Zoey the "service cat" is not, in fact, a service animal as multiple media outlets defined her while clickbaiting over her LOLcatz-at-the-game appearance Thursday.  She likely is certified as an ESA which tells us very little about her other than that she provides some sort of therapeutic support to her owner (although, it may not even tell us that much.)  She seems pretty chill but, much like any cat you may have in your home, or even Mike the Tiger, for that matter, it is reasonable to assume she does not want to spend an evening sitting in a confined space during a scary loud football game.

Apparently she can barely even handle a trip to the grocery.

The #WhoDatCat meet up at @BreauxMart ended a bit early for the sake of the cat. pic.twitter.com/DyVEh2c5Y5

— Scott Colesby (@SoCalledSomeone) October 17, 2015

Which, I guess, is why they made it worth her while.

@skooks yep. Paid. Also saw that Zoey was ready to go, so we cut it short.

— Breaux Mart (@BreauxMart) October 17, 2015

Where the Saints of football play

I don't know if this story is apocryphal or not but Dave Dixon made sure to tell it enough times that it gets included in anything anyone ever writes about the Dome. It's a great story either way.

As the story goes, then-Gov. John McKeithen was uncharacteristically silent while he was considering businessman and sports visionary Dave Dixon’s proposal for a domed stadium in New Orleans.

Then suddenly, McKeithen brought his fist down on his desk and thundered, “My God. That would be the greatest building in the history of mankind!

“We’ll build that sucker!”

And, by God, McKeithen was right, as this Advocate retrospective well demonstrates. 

Maybe it was for a Saints game. There have been 370 of them — and, remarkably, the locals are dead even in the building at 185-185.

Or maybe it was for Endymion. Or a Sugar Bowl. Or the papal visit. Or the “No mas” Leonard-Duran fight. Or the Essence Festival. Or a high school game. Or maybe even a high school prom.

They still have those in the ballroom-sized quadrants that have been converted into club lounges.

Or maybe one of the hundreds of other events over the past four decades, some successful, some not.

The Rolling Stones drew more than 80,000 fans to a 1981 concert. But a closed-circuit fight that also was being broadcast on HBO attracted just 83 paying customers. That’s believed to be the all-time low turnout for a Dome event.

While the flexibility of the Dome is what has made all of those concerts, boat shows, flower shows, trade shows and conventions possible, major sports events are what it does better than just about anyplace else.

McKeithen built our city a 70,000 seat "living room." (Doug Thornton calls it that in that article.) We all hang out there from time to time. It's our favorite place to host visitors. Before Tom Benson was allowed to sell the "name" of our building to a sponsor, the state legislature had moved to name it for Governor McKeithen. That would have been appropriate, although most of us prefer the original Louisiana Superdome. It was built by the people of the state. It should carry their name.

When you think of New Orleans and its famous architecture, you're likely to picture wrought iron balconies or Greek revival mansions.  But the Superdome is our greatest building. Sure, it is first and foremost a sports arena, but over 40 years it has functioned as a civic space, a landmark, a shelter (for better and for worse) and a piece of genuine local identity and even pride.

And unlike the glass and steel imitators billionaire sports owners extort from taxpayers around the country,  this is actually a beautiful building. Despite its enormity, the Superdome manages to convey a kind of understated elegance. Whereas Dallas has built a "Death Star" of surreal post-modern excess, and Atlanta is currently constructing, "Megatron's Butthole" the Superdome looks and feels like a real place.  It's no easy trick to design a welcoming, human sort of monolith but that is what our Dome is.  It's almost gotten to a point where people take this transformative and, yes, iconic structure for granted.

Sure, we've stupidly allowed Tom Benson to suck a bunch of money out of it he doesn't deserve. And, yes, the naming sponsorship is egregious. But that doesn't change the fact that this very well may be the "greatest building in the history of mankind" or, at least, in a very localized conceptualization of that.

Post-mortem but not post-racial

Richard Campanella has a feature column today about the legend of the Girod Street Cemetery.  When I was a kid, people used to joke that because the Superdome was built on top of this abandoned graveyard the football team who played there was cursed to forever play football poorly because the spirit world cares greatly about such things.*

Later I learned that the field didn't actually lie on top of the old graveyard but it wasn't until seeing this article that I realized neither did any part of the building, actually.  According to Campanella's graphic, the nearest the cemetery's boundary comes to the Dome is a portion of present day Champions Square and the Dome parking garage.

Anyway, the important thing for any of the still superstitious among us to note is that the process of decommissioning the graveyard did involve moving the bodies as well as the headstones which is, you know, probably good.**



But Campanella also points out that the removal process conformed to certain mores of the day.

On a dreary morning in early January 1957, a small group of religious leaders gathered inside the Girod Street Cemetery to witness the Right Rev. Girault M. Jones, bishop of the Archdiocese of Louisiana, revoke and annul the Sentence of Consecration that, according to Episcopalian canon, had made this ground sacred.

Workers then began extracting thousands of cast-iron and cypress caskets and readied them for their final journey. Racial segregation persisted even in death: black corpses went to Providence Memorial Park on Airline Drive, and the white dead, including the skeletons unearthed in the so-called yellow fever mound, went to Hope Mausoleum on Canal Street.

For some of the bodies, this was their second cross-town move, the first having occurred between St. Louis No. 1 and Girod 135 years earlier.

So, not only does gentrification hound us even beyond death so too does redlining. Or at least, in 1957 it did.


* Many of the superstitious among us could not help but notice also that the Saints, who moved into the Superdome in 1975, did not achieve their first winning season until 1987, only a few months after Pope John Paul II visited New Orleans and celebrated a Mass in the Dome.  Undoubtedly this must have exorcised whatever restless malevolent spirits still lingered.

** They missed some. Read the article. 

NOLAmercial

Like most of New Orleans you probably just watched CBS's NOLA infomercial that ran this morning ahead of its Super Bowl coverage. The piece... which ran approximately 8 hours long.... featured interviews with the same recycled club of what passes for our city's spokesmuppets in the national press. John Goodman, Wynton Marsalis, Mitch Landrieu, Chris Rose, James Carville, Leah Chase.. you know the drill. It was a beautifully shot, well researched, and well thought out presentation.I think we've passed the point where national media outlets who put in even a little time don't know how to present our city accurately.

I enjoyed the segment on Roots of Music. Here they are on St. Charles during Mardi Gras 2010.

 

Having just come from loading a float myself this morning, I was particularly interested in CBS's treatment of Mardi Gras. I thought it was perfect. Well... almost perfect. The Krewe Du Vieux footage was heavily edited to keep out certain unpleasantries.



Also I had to chuckle a bit when Mayor Landrieu referred to himself as a "street rat" while talking up the joyous experience of watching parades from ground level.  If he really cared about such things, he'd perhaps put a bit more muscle behind efforts to keep that experience enjoyable for everyone.. but that's an issue for another time.

I very nearly cried during the segment where they talked about how important  a symbol the Superdome is and has always been to New Orleans.  Everything in there was spot-on.  It's a shame that we've allowed Tom Benson and Mercedes-Benz to desecrate our this publicly financed civic monument so many New Orleanians obviously think of as a sacred place.



Also, CBS talked up the post-Katrina reopening but somehow neglected to show us the Gleason blocked punt. That's so wrong, I've  taken the liberty of including the missing footage here to correct the error.



Remind me again, why we never got around to putting a Falcons jersey on that statue.

So the problem with all of this isn't that the New Orleans brand isn't being kept out there in a way that locals can appreciate.  Not most of the time, anyway.  Do yourself a favor and don't go read the terrible copy about New Orleans attractions that was posted on the SuperBowl Host Committee's Website.  It's too embarrassing.

The problem is that this infomercial wasn't produced for your benefit.  A lot of money went in to making this advertisement.  A lot of money has come to New Orleans this weekend but most of that isn't going into your pocket. It's going into Tom Benson's pocket and into the hoteliers' pockets and into the pockets of people like Mitch's krewe of talking muppets CBS just had dance across your TV set today. 

Sure some of us pick up some of the loose change that gets thrown around in this process but by and large we deserve better than what we're getting which is basically an inconvenience and an insult. Some suggest there are ways to push back against this sort of thing, but I have my doubts. Not while all the people who claim to represent you are working so hard at selling you out.

The bottom line is CBS isn't doing that because they love you. They do it because they and the money interests they represent want what you have. So when I see stuff like what they produced this morning or what HBO presents in its NOLAmercial as well I think, ah, they have figured out something of ours that we've always known was good. And now they are here to take that from us and sell it to one another.  And soon it won't be ours anymore.

Hospitality zoned

Tom Benson's empire just sucked up $7 million meant for flood victims.

Homebuyers get Hospitality Zoned

All well in keeping with the priorities.

Storm relief intended for home buyers is redirected to Superdome

The Superdome money comes from about $75 million that was earmarked for soft-second mortgages, loans that are given to first-time homeowners that can be forgiven if the resident stays in the house for a set amount of time.

"If it comes down to sending money to the Superdome or putting people back into their homes, that's an easy call to me," said Sen. Edwin Murray, D-New Orleans.

The exact use of the money was contested during the meeting. Peterson and Murray said they'd seen documents saying the money would be used for operations, but Forbes maintained that the money would go to paying off the cost of repairs to the building that was not covered by FEMA.

Which leads us to wonder if these specific "repairs not covered by FEMA" might have been paid for by this fund.

Crews spent the weekend sketching and painting a Mercedes-Benz logo on top of the Superdome roof. A spokesman for the Superdome said Sunday there will be a Mercedes logo painted on the center of the top of the roof, along with "Mercedes-Benz Superdome" printed on both the east and west sides of the dome.

Update: Cedric Richmond has asked to have this stopped.

Also, somewhat related, we find this from The Lens

A legal notice in Monday’s Times-Picayune announced that the public is welcome to peruse and offer comments on a draft year-end report that explains how the city spent tens of millions in federal money in 2011. At issue is a regular annual report from the city’s Office of Community Development, called a Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, which goes by the unfortunate acronym of CAPER.

“The document is available for public review,” the notice reads.

But rather than being given access to the lengthy report, a Lens reporter who went to the office left empty handed and later was told to route the request through Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s communications office.

Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni has not responded to a request to provide the report – or to explain why the public report wasn’t immediately available to a member of the public who asked to see it.

It’s unclear whether people not identifying themselves as a reporter would get the report or the runaround.

So I suppose, if anyone wants to make a field trip down to Poydras Street and ask to see the CAPER report, this is your cue. Who knows, maybe they gave all the money to the Superdome.

Just stop it already

This was a nice story I read over the weekend from the Flint (Michigan) Journal about Michigan native Mark Ingram's rookie season in New Orleans. What I thought was particularly nice about it was the clean, unassuming, factual way in which it referenced the stadium where Ingram plays his home games.

Mark Ingram said the hardest tackle he took this season was from Atlanta Falcons defensive end Ray Edwards, who Ingram said shook him up when he hit him on a run play.

“It is a difference as far as the hits now, and usually every time he gets hit, just like before, I’m a little uneasy,” Shonda Ingram said. “I wait for him to pop up, but it is a difference because the guys are real big and they’re grown men.”

The unease, however, has not kept his mother away from her son’s home games.

She still maintains her job at Northwestern High School as a general education social worker but has made it down to Louisiana for every one of her son’s home games at the Superdome.

Mark Ingram's mom comes to see her son play at the Superdome. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe we don't really need to name the building at all in that sentence but since we're writing about a landmark in a faraway city it helps to throw that in, I guess.

Meanwhile, this morning, I flip on the ole NOLA.com super special Saints page and find this headline.

New Orleans Saints beat Detroit 31-17 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome

What, why? Why do Times-Picayune/NOLA.com writers and editors continually feel obliged to pimp the Dome's naming rights sponsor even in places where its inclusion is burdensome to a phrase or, in this case, a distraction from the main point of a headline? As far as I can tell, they're under no specific obligation to do this unless Benz is paying them directly.

#Occupied by Hollywood South?

While relating the events that led to her arrest this week, Naomi Wolf provides the following fact about NYC permitting as it relates to use of public space.

On our exit, I saw that the protesters had been cordoned off by a now-massive phalanx of NYPD cops and pinned against the far side of the street – far away from the event they sought to address.

I went up and asked them why. They replied that they had been informed that the Huffington Post event had a permit that forbade them to use the sidewalk. I knew from my investigative reporting on NYC permits that this was impossible: a private entity cannot lease the public sidewalks; even film crews must allow pedestrian traffic. I asked the police for clarification – no response.

Wolf writes extensively about the abuses of the First Amendment freedom of assembly and speech and the subtle ways in which municipal permitting presumes to limit these essential rights. But apparently in New York, even big money events such as film productions aren't allowed to block public access to sidewalks as that would constitute a First Amendment violation.

So my question is, given that New Orleans is also technically part of the United States, shouldn't the same be true here? Film productions regularly cordon off public streets and sidewalks to the great annoyance of nearby residents, business owners, or just people trying to pass through. A few years ago, the NBA All Star Game was allowed to assume the entirety of Jackson Square for what was quite likely an illegally private party.

New Orleans is scheduled to host a number of high profile sports events in the next few years which may desire the same special treatment granted the NBA. We've just had our Superdome sold out from under us. Will the rest of our publicly owned assets... our very streets, in fact... be far behind?

Whoops!

Ernst Lieb, Former Mercedes-Benz USA C.E.O., Was Reportedly Fired for Misuse of Funds

According to a report in Wednesday’s Handelsblatt, Mr. Leib leveraged his position within the company for private expenditures. The article said he paid golf-club fees through Daimler and granted rentals of vehicles in exchange for flight upgrades. The report also said he used corporate funds to build his house in the New York region; the corporate headquarters of Mercedes-Benz USA are in Bergen County.

“Ernst was repeatedly warned, but he did it again,” said the Daimler executive.

Leib quite recently used Mercedes-Benz funds to fly to New Orleans and sign the deal to rename the Louisiana Superdome a few weeks back.

It wasn't an easy sell.

"Within the U.S. organization it was a very easy sale, to be quite honest," Lieb said. "But with a deal like this we have to go Germany, and we have to have certain approvals there. That was a little bit more difficult. That was a hurdle, but we took it.

Apparently Lieb wasn't as good at getting "certain approvals" as he thought he was. Now I'm wondering about that New Orleans junket expense report. Did it involve a trip to Visions? Usually Aaron Bennett is your man in New Orleans if you need to catch a plane to a football stadium. Maybe we should ask him about this.

Note to reporters

Just because Mercedes Benz is paying Tom Benson for naming rights to the Superdome does not mean they are also paying you. You aren't required to call it that.

Looks like we're doing it live

I think the Bears game re-cap is just gonna have to get thrown together with the Texans game re-cap next week. I know everyone loves it when I do that. Meanwhile get back on the Twitter and try and come up with some Superdome naming rights proposals.

I may have blown my load of these already but just for posterity's sake, my best ideas are:

1. The CRN Initiatives Disaster Consulting Dome



2. The Kevin Houser Tax Shelter Dome



3. Beyond Superdome (Payment for this would obviously only be available once the Restore Act passes)



4. The Deuce McAllister Nissan Dome



5. The River Birch Robinette Dome and Art Studio

Update: Jesus didn't we just get finished punishing Jay Cutler for exactly this sort of thing?



Begs the question, how does one get reimbursed for immolated living room furniture anyway?

Keep on TIFing

The special privileges built into our tax system are more complicated, regressive, and untenable than Ancien Regime France. Of course that doesn't stop our elites from figuring ways to slice out more parts of the pie before it explodes.

Under current agreements with the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District that control the Dome and the New Orleans Arena, where the Hornets play, there is no sales tax on food or drinks bought at either facility. This means that without a way to lure crowds out of the arenas for food and drink, the city loses millions of dollars a year in potential tax revenue. A new district could potentially help with that conundrum, though such sports districts have not been as successful as hoped in other cities and the development itself could cost billions. The only developer other than Benson who has stepped in, Domain Cos., has already said that “public support” will be needed to realize its vision.

Where that public support will come from is unclear. Domain has suggested a “payment in lieu of taxes” agreement or a tax-increment-financing plan, both of which would dedicate tax revenue to private development.

I'm sure Saints fans in Champions Square would love to pay an extra 3 or 4 percent on top of their $9.00 beer price so that these guys can get their kickback.