I was flipping through some old posts of this blog and stumbled across this SCRAPBOOK post from six years ago. In it, I featured Google Maps Street View snapshots of old haunts of mine from when I'd lived in New Orleans back in 2003 and 2004. But the pictures were from a then recent Street View capture from 2008, three years after Katrina had changed the landscape of that city in so many ways.
It got me thinking... How does it all look now? Well let's see. Pull up the link above in a second tab and flip between this tab and that to get a comparison (saves me the hassle of having to copy all those pics from the old post, TVM).
We'll compare them in order.
All in all, almost a decade later we can see that the impact of Katrina on the Big Easy has had varying long-term effects depending on where something was in the city and the perseverance of their owners. Some like the houses and stores in Gentilly have risen back to their former "glory," as it were, and appear to have undergone a complete recovery of sorts. Most, like the first few locales, mainly in the Garden District which underwent only comparatively minor damage due to the 2005 storm and flood, look almost exactly the same. And then there's Six Flags. Deemed "too expensive" to repair or re-purpose by its greedy owners, it will inevitably rot away to the elements.
It got me thinking... How does it all look now? Well let's see. Pull up the link above in a second tab and flip between this tab and that to get a comparison (saves me the hassle of having to copy all those pics from the old post, TVM).
We'll compare them in order.
Here again is Regan and Jay's. Hmm. Looks pretty much the same.
Here's the Grants place. Very similar too.
Ah, the Magazine Discount Market. No change. Sensing a pattern here.
The boarding house on Dorgenois. New version even has an beater in front like the prior pic.
Spain St. Well this looks a little improved. And to think, this was one of the hardest hit by Katrina.
And here, Albert has refurbished his little blue house. Looks almost exactly like it did pre-Katrina.
This is a big change. The desolate lot where that neighborhood supermarket stood is now a brand-new Wendy's.
But alas. No improvement for Six Flags. Pictures available online show that it has really become an eerie deserted park replete with weed covered roller coaster remains, dank, empty concession stands and graffiti-tagged ride and attraction buildings crumbling not-so-gracefully back to nature.
All in all, almost a decade later we can see that the impact of Katrina on the Big Easy has had varying long-term effects depending on where something was in the city and the perseverance of their owners. Some like the houses and stores in Gentilly have risen back to their former "glory," as it were, and appear to have undergone a complete recovery of sorts. Most, like the first few locales, mainly in the Garden District which underwent only comparatively minor damage due to the 2005 storm and flood, look almost exactly the same. And then there's Six Flags. Deemed "too expensive" to repair or re-purpose by its greedy owners, it will inevitably rot away to the elements.