“Infrastructure” is defined as the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise. When most hear this term, they think of building and maintaining the many things that are necessary for a functioning city, state, neighborhood or country.
In New Orleans, our infrastructure is in obvious horrible shape: roads have potholes that take almost three months to repair. Sidewalks are sinking and are being broken apart by the shifting swampland on which the city is built. The situation at the Sewerage & Water Board—that controls the pumps which divert water from flooding the under-sea level city—are inadequate, antiquated, or are easily damaged by something as trivial as a mylar balloon that broke the system (this just happened last week). Daily “boil water” warnings are commonplace all over the city, sometimes on a weekly basis. So many neighborhoods flood, causing auto and home damage on a regular basis (parking on neutral grounds being allowed is also commonplace in New Orleans in the event of a heavy rain…not a tropical storm or a hurricane: a heavy rain).
Yet, the residents of New Orleans love the city so much that they continue to tolerate all the different pain-in-the-ass situations. Not only do they tolerate it, but there’s such a combination of crumbling infrastructure and political corruption—coupled with citizen apathy to demand services be modernized and upgraded—that it’s causing many folks to question why they put up with living in a third-world environment. NOLA continues to lose population at a steady and rising pace. At some point when it continues to get worse, we’re also going to experience a drop in tourism and conventions in the future. But hey, that’s in the far-distant future…so who cares about fixing it now?
Yet, we get unfulfilled promises and plans that aren’t implemented by local government, and most citizens are just too dmaned apathetic to do anything but complain.
New Orleans has been described as the “City That Care Forgot,” presumably because it’s ruled by what’s been described as the “Mardi Gras mentality” that totally focuses on partying in the here and now, scooping up those important tourism dollars—rather than thinking long-term: making the city a superior place to live, to make a living, to have well-educated happy kids, to being safe for all: a place where we can live together and celebrate our community, culture, food, ambiance and music in an other than third-world milieu. Right now, New Orleans continues to be the “City That Doesn’t Care.”
I was born and raised in New Orleans and have lived the majority of my life here. However, I’ve also lived in several other cities and I have seen what can happen and how the quality of everyday life is far superior to the bullshit you have to endure when you live in NOLA. So don’t give me that “if you don’t like it leave” crap that people say when someone complains about the deterioration of New Orleans. If I didn’t care, there would be no OffBeat. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t voice my concerns about the future of New Orleans.
The ”Mardi Gras mentality”—live for today’s party and who cares about tomorrow—has got to be modified or tamped down or we are going to become even more decrepit, infrastructure-wise. People have to get more involved in change for the common good and plan for the future. Many people who live in New Orleans are addicts—they are addicted to the party ‘til you drop mindset. And you know, addicts are notoriously people who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. That’s a big problem.
I recently read a post on Reddit/NewOrleans from someone who was unfamiliar with a situation because they just “didn’t keep up with politics.” If you’re not involved with what’s going on in your community, then you’re jeopardizing your own future and that of your city. Throw away that go-cup and wake up to reality—or leave.
All of the last few paragraphs focus on a sorely-needed mentality change on the part of caring citizens and also should be mandated from business owners, festivals and corporate citizens.
Otherwise, this city will ultimately become even more crime-ridden, filthy and a more difficult place for average people to live.
The same mentality also persists in the music community. Very soon the city’s Office of Nighttime Economy (ONE) will release the results of the New Orleans Music Census that was recently commissioned to help determine what needs to be done to improve the city’s music scene.
One of the issues that raised its head is that many people refused to complete the survey because they’ve been asked for similar info before, but have never felt that the results led to anything different happening—like that fatalistic viewpoint ever helped improve anything! Musicians are being paid less than ever before. They are not respected in the community overall. They feel that are constantly taken advantage of. There were several entities who volunteered to help to get the word out about the importance of taking the survey (OffBeat being one of them). The only way anyone can get input from the group of people who will ultimately benefit from the results of such a survey—is to ask them to identify what the problems—thus pointing opportunities for solutions—to plan for improvements.
Typically for New Orleans, one non-profit entity refused to help get the word out because its leaders felt that since its organization was not in charge of developing the questions, it was not worth promoting to its community. How short-sighted and anti-productive is that? I can never understand this type of reasoning that seems very common in New Orleans and Louisiana; it smacks of power politics and turf protection, which is not what our music community needs to thrive and improve. Other entities dropped the ball, in my opinion, because they just didn’t care enough to contact their constituents. Same-old, same-old New Orleans-style: apathy and turf protection.
The developer of the survey, Sound Music Cities, is gathering info from cities/cohorts of music scenes across the country. This is valuable in aggregate because it compares music scenes across the country to identify commonalities in the success of a music scene, as well as to identify opportunities that can potentially be addressed to make a music scene better, based on the opinions of the actual participants (musicians, bands, venues, festivals, educators, music businesses). In other words, what infrastructure changes and additions do we need to improve the situation for local music, its creators and the entities that nurture and promote it? The survey was vetted by many people to determine major issues relevant to New Orleans, and each survey was tailored to individual communities.
In a few words, we kind of know overall what needs to be changed and improved in the city’s physical infrastructure. All of us are affected by flooding, boil water advisories, terrible roads and potholes, and such things as inadequate policing. These are evident to any citizen that lives in NOLA. It’s past time for New Orleans to have better information as a guideline on what we need to do specifically to help our music scene. Hopefully the Sound Cities Music survey results will provide a starting point for improvements, based on what those members of the music scene identify.