One more time (in a second line)

This article will take a bit of your time to read, but I really hope that you find a few spare moments and take the time to read it.

Surprisingly heartfelt and thorough, it's an ESPN.com profile of the journey the New Orleans SuperDome has taken over the past year, from hell-hole to monument of renewal. It's extremely well-written and gets an angle on the story that we haven't heard yet (incredibly difficult at this point) - that of the Construction Workers and Engineers.


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New Orleans is a city that seeps into your soul.

It can be slow. It can be backward. It can be hotter and more humid than anywhere I've ever been. It can be welcoming. It can be familiar. It can be home.
Despite it's difficulties, regardless of the slow pace to get back to "normal" I think I can honestly say I'd move back there in a minute.

There are some places that you just have to really and truly experience for yourself. Pictures, books and stories don't do them justice. Neither does only visiting the tourist hot spots.

New Orleans is one of these places.

New Orleanians are a fiercely proud. They are incredibly self-aware. They never want to leave. It's not like Texans, who are incredibly proud to be from Texas, but are spread Worldwide. New Orleanians - they don't leave. They're so incredibly proud of New Orleans that they can't imagine bothering to go anywhere else.

Despite the poor school systems and the often backwards politics. They wouldn't have it any other way.

A hurricane doesn't change that.

I think maybe a lot of locals would say I'm not enough of a New Orleanian to talk about this place like it's my own. But the city inspires a sense of ownership. You don't love New Orleans in spite of it's problems, you love it because of it's problems. I'm not sure if that's ok, or correct in this day in age, but it's the truth.

For long before Katrina, New Orleans was a city of shortcomings. It's long been the city that people forgot. As long as Bourbon Street still provides tittilation, people don't care about what else is going on. So even though we know that their public education is a joke, or the police are corrupt, or racism is rampant, we kind of just don't care. We act as if those are just odd, unusual quirks - the strange things we accept, because that's what you do with the things you love - you accept their faults.

I mourn the New Orleans that was because that's the New Orleans that will never be again. I'm not enough of an idealist to think that things will ever go back to the way they were - and I'm afraid that's going to change the very composition of the city.