jazzland: where dreams come true and then are flooded and abandoned

"King of Swamp Castle: When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."

This past weekend Breonne and I went to Jazzland.

The park opened in 2000 as Jazzland, and became Six Flags in 2002. It closed before the storm hit in August 2005, and has been closed ever since. There have been plans to redevelop it and plans to demolish it, but when it comes down to it, the park will almost certainly just sit, abandoned, until it gets swallowed up by the swamp it was built on....

...because, um, it's roughly fucked.

This was easily one of the creepiest experiences of my life.

If not for the nearby highways, it would be completely silent there. There is a neighborhood nearby, but _maybe_ half the houses are occupied. Jazzland is also one of the only places I've seen water lines for the past year or so.

The debris around the park is probably the weirdest part. To think that less than five years ago, these stuffed animals were highly sought after prizes for silly games, and now they are simply disintegrating mold colonies.

But really, like so much other shit in New Orleans, despite the impending and totally evident doom that this place has seen and will endure, there's still a strange, calm beauty to it.

It made Breonne very happy that we were there, for a little while...

...until we realized we were in New Orleans East - which, if not for the Vietnamese food, would be the most depressing place I have ever been, hands down. (It still kinda is anyways.) So we got some Vietnamese food and got the fuck out of town, but not before snapping this gorgeous photo.

JAZZLAND!