Tim Murphy

Pittsburgh: What's Platinum LEED certified, flood resistant, and looks like an elephant? One of Brad Pitt's new houses in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward (Photo: Tim Murphy).New Orleans, Louisiana—I touched on this briefly in my last post, but one of the stranger (if not totally unexpected) things about post-Katrina New Orleans is the extent to which the city's worst-hit areas have become a primordial stew for all manner of idealists. It's a bit like the early American frontier in a way, where religious entrepreneurs and land-happy dreamers plotted out their own utopian communities and would-be empires on the uncharted Eden.

Partly this is due to the fact that there are no Daniel Burnham, Chicago-after-the-fire, big plans to be found. If the federal or city government is actively trying to lure displaced residents back, they deserve credit for at last stifling a leak. Once you get off the main drags of St. Claude or Claiborne (or Brad Pitt's construction zone toward the canal), the streets feel like they've been paved with fun-size volcanoes, pocked with craters big enough to have their own potholes. You don't pass through intersections so much as you overcome them. Absent the land's original tenants, much of the real estate has returned to nature. Stop signs (the ones still manning their posts) are often blocked from site entirely, as are a few intersections, to the point where you have to roll down your window and listen for oncoming cars, rather than look both ways.

Overgrown: (Photo: Tim Murphy)Telephone wires are down, irreparable buildings (including a few churches) are lost in the overgrowth, and from the street you can find dozens of boarded-up buildings that still wear the spray-paint scars of the first-responders—noting the date the house was searched, the group that did it, and the number of dead found inside.

So that's the bad news. The good news, depending on how you look at it, is that the relative vacuum of activity has made it a hub for the aforementioned pioneers. Walk around for a bit and you'll find a Mennonite aid organization, various church groups from as far off as Atlanta, community gardens, and, invariably, tourists (architectural and otherwise) who've come here to see Brad Pitt.

[Read more in the Road Trip Blog blog]

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READ ALSO: MoJo's Josh Harkinson on San Francisco's family night and Celia Perry on why she's been waiting for this ruling since the third grade. Plus: Does Judge Walker's personal life matter?

Outside Lockport, Louisiana—As you've probably heard, a federal court in California just overturned the state's ban on gay marriage. It's a pretty big win for progressives and human decency (read MoJo's Celia Perry's personal take here), but how is the news being received in the more conservative parts of the country? I spent an hour today outside a grocery store in Lockport, an hour southwest of New Orleans on Bayou Lafourche, talking to everyone who came in and out to get their take on Prop 8 and gay marriage: Do they know any gay people? How do they feel about gay marriage? Is it really the government's role to ban marriage?

"They need to make up their minds and leave people to live their lives," says Darlene Verdin of Lockport. "If it's alright with your religion and everything—this is America! Leave 'em alone. It's not something I would choose, but it's a choice."

Darlene's is a common refrain. "I think if gay people want to get married, they should get married," says Sandra Moore of Lockport. "The world's changed a lot, and I think you should change with the world. I've had a gay friend since I was in high school. I have nothing against gay people. They're normal people like anyone." And here's Kissie Landry of nearby Gaines: "I guess it should be allowed. It doesn't really matter to me. People can do what they wanna do."

Gary Benoit of Lockport (he's moving to Thibodaux, though) pays the bills by capturing live reptiles and amphibians—snakes, alligators, you name it—and sells them to zoos and pet stores. "It's not as exotic as it sounds," he says. "I don't think the government should be involved," he says of gay marriage. He knows a few gay people, a lesbian couple—"and they're extremely dysfunctional. This pair is very dysfunctional." But then again, he notes, aren't a lot of couples? "I've stayed pretty open-minded."

Only one man I speak with, in a "United We Stand" t-shirt and a "Speak the Language" straw hat (the language in question is Cajun French, I think), seems adamantly opposed, but even then there's some nuance. I ask him if he's been following the case, and he says "No, I ain't been paying to attention anything." His friend Earl seconds this: "He doesn't even know if he's alive or dead!" "I'm just like you, Earl. Just like you." Here's how he explains his position: "I just can't see that. There are too many women on the street, bro! Any man can get a woman; it ain't that hard." 

Clearly, he's never listened to any country music. But does he know any gays? "My brother-in-law is gay." So do you think he should be able to get married? "I don't care what he does. Like I said, I don't deal with him, he don't deal with me, man. Alright, I gotta go now."

And so he does. He's the exception, though, although nearly everyone else I talk to seems to think they're nonetheless in the minority ("There are a lot of old-timers here," as one woman, herself something of an old-timer, explains to me). Either way, it's encouraging to drop into a rural, conservative town on the bayou and find a tacit endorsement of San Francisco values.

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