My first hurricane!

This city kind of feels like a giant playground to me since noone is here. It's all been really fun and cool actually. I don't think my cats enjoyed it- they hid in the bathroom in a cabinet or behind the toilet the whole time. The storm itself was really high wind that I love the sound of and rain. Lots of branches are down, power is still out in my apartment and parts of town but really everything is A OK, considering what it possibly could have been. There was some water over the industrial canal. Also initially Monday morning there were 2 ships and a barge loose banging against the levee which is the most preventable stupidest fucking thing that could've gone wrong. It appears other parts of LA are not doing quite so well though. Plaquemines parish had a breach in the levee and the rivers in Covington look like they're going to flood.

Last night I went to a bar on St Charles and drank a lot of beer, listened to the juke box and ate free barbecue. People are so nice here, especially in times of pooling resources. He had the grill and chicken, we brought the charcoal and bread. Apparently the bartender, Elvis, doesn't even actually work there, he was just sleeping inside to watch place for his friend the owner and decided to open once power came back on. He was really funny and it was nice to relax and hang out after being glued to local news and wondering for two days.

Now I'm in the quarter at a coffee shop. The man on the computer next to me is on manhunt.com. Almost nothing is open and there are so many more cops and military here than residents. They're talking about not letting people back till Thursday bc of power outages and clean up. Kri and Cory are you still coming?!

I was talking to my friend, Justin, who used to live here about whether it's all worth it and feasible if this is just going to keep happening to the city every August. He said he feels there's way more at stake here than just the physical city in terms of grassroots organizing and challenging racism, which made me feel better and I'll try to think about for the next hurricane. I'm really glad that I stayed and had this experience and it was all fine. I feel a little more prepared for possibly working in disaster relief, I had to start somewhere.