A big update today with a ton of pictures I took when I went to board up Crescent City Comics yesterday.

A load of stuff happened yesterday. I was called to go by my friend Dre's dad's apartment because he got a report that it looked like the buildings were about to be torn down. It wasn't the case, fortunately. I'm supposed to go move stuff from his apartment into a storage unit tomorrow morning.

I found out that it's becoming more unlikely by the day that the printer I use for AG will reopen. That's not good news because the price they gave me was the only thing keeping the magazine afloat. I can maybe use an outside printer they have a deal with for whatever we wind up doing for Voodoo, but there aren't any more web printers in the N.O. area. I'll have to think about a format change if our printer doesn't come back online. I'll figure something out, though.

I think something new started to sink in yesterday. Once the shellshock of seeing all this destruction passes and the actuality of it all is realized...it's hard for your brain not to just shut off. It might sound weird, but seeing my house destroyed was one thing, because I only lived there since February. (Of course, seeing my stuff destroyed was a million times worse because I've had it for such a long time). If it was my parents' house destroyed, where I grew up, obviously it'd be a hundred times more difficult. Seeing the area around the comic shop destroyed, now that the shock of seeing it all the other day has worn off, may be worse. This is an area that I go to school in and have since 1996. I've eaten lunch thousands of times in the area, driven it even more than that.

It hit me, when I was looking at some abandoned cars in the Wendy's parking lot next to the shop, that this whole thing is like a Twilight Zone episode and we've been transported twenty years into the future only to find our civilization empty, old and broken down. Those cars look like they haven't been touched in so long...

After Les picked me up and we got near the shop, I began to notice some things that I hadn't the last time I'd been that way.

Like the sign from Burger King on a car three blocks away.



Later I took this photo for reference. You can see where the sign should be.



We got down to the shop and Les took it all in. Even after I sent him the photos I took the other day, he was still impressed with it all. It really is something, as vivid as pictures can be, that creates a whole new meaning for the word "damage." After we took a few of the more important things from the shop we explored the area a bit.

The inside of the nail salon we'd walk past on our way to the shop.



Again, it really is surreal to visit the places you've been so many times and to see them look so different. How many times have we eaten lunch from this Wendy's?



We walked around to Robert E. Lee and looked around. This can't be safe.



When I went to the shop the other day, Les requested that I look for his keys. He'd misplaced them in the mayhem of evacuating, and while he had his brother's keys, which allowed him to get into the shop, their house, etc..., he still wanted them. I couldn't find them then, and when we were in the shop we still couldn't find them. Still, when I walked around the parking lots, he said to keep an eye out for them. Walking around the back of the shop, Les wanted to check on a door in the alley that leads up to a storage area in the shop. Sure enough, there were his keys, still in the door from when he locked up. They're nice and rusted from being submerged in water for two weeks.



We also realized that in the alleyway of a nearby bar, the Wendy's outdoor cooling unit sat, propped on the building and a neighbor's porch.



And from the back angle.



Also in the back parking lot sat a box of glasses, obviously from someone's house.



The Ferrara supermarket didn't do too well. I didn't want to go inside so I just stuck the camera in the side of the building and snapped a shot.



Phone calls are still 25 cents, though.



I wonder why they made the Ferrara "Camp Lucky," but I'm glad somebody took the dog.



After that exploring, we headed back towards my place. On Robert E. Lee I saw someone watching over me. The picture's fuzzy since I took it while moving.



We tried to get to another friend's house to check on it, but couldn't because the roads were still flooded. We did see this on the way, though.



And the airfield on the lakefront.



After all of that was said and done we wound up at Les' house Uptown. It was after curfew then, and he didn't have power at his house, as he expected, so we went around to our friend Brian's house. He runs the Landmark theatre at Canal Place. He was home, working on his roof. I think he's the first person I've seen other than those in my close circle of friends that I really care about, and the first person who has something to do with AG. Landmark sponsors our film reviews, and we sponsored the Midnight Madness movie series there. The theatre took on a bit of damage, but the good news is that it will open again, probably in November. That's actually some of the best news I've heard yet. I can't wait to see a movie there, even if it's a crapfest.