on the way to mrs virgin's house, you drive down a street caled claiborne, that turns into judge perez. it goes on for miles and miles into the suburb chalmette. it's the street uncle tommy and laine drive past twice a day. every day.
here are a couple pics from the view:





anywya- on this street i noticed a house that somehow i hadn't noticed before.

it was next door to a mechanics shop, i suppose the area could be classified as the 9th ward, but the north 9th.
so the mechanic approached me and at first i thought he was getting aggressive so as to kick me off his property, but in fact he asked if i could help him by taking pictures of his shop so he could put them on a website to try to get donations or grants of some sort because no inusrance money is coming through to repair the damages to his business.
-his name is mr. smith.

(that's not him)







smith auto sales and body shop.
211 N robertson St.
new Orleans, LA 70017

he could use some help, if anyone reading knows of any way to help :)




when i finally made it to mrs virgin's house i could see they were not working on it so i stopped and talked to her neighbor for a while (the one who called and told her they were tearing it down, because ti is not their policy to notify homeowners.)
she has 2 kids and after floating around a while they decided to move into a trailer in front of their own house so the kids could have some familiarity.
they seemed happy and adjusted enough. although she said during the time when all the schools were "unified" into one school, and at all the temporary intermediate schools, they had some problems with bully's.
now they ride their bikes up and down deserted streets, a few trailers in front of h omes to be repaired, but at least 12 scheduled for demolition (mrs virgin's will be the first to actually have anything done to it)
she very sincerely expressed that watching other poeple's homes hadn't gotten to her, but every time she thinks about mrs virgin's home being gone it makes her sad. i guess mrs virgin really took the young couple in when they moved to the neighborhood and she considers her family and misses very much the neighborhood being intact.
she wants to video the dmeolision just in case mrs virgin and mr dick ever want to see it.



...then i went to the maple leaf again. this time to paint.
i didn't intend to, but i stayed on the hood of my car accross the street, painting under a streetlight, until 3am.
all of frenchy's posse (he rules the block fo sho) would com eup and say hi. (they're all artists visiting from out of state)
and the tourists, and vendors, and even musicians playing the club came over to see what i was up during breaks.
great way to meet the neighborhood.
heh.



i guess we'll call it an exc ercise in painting on burlap.