New Orleans Boom & Blackout: One Hundred Days in America's Coolest Hot Spot

NEW TITLE N O W AVA I L A B L E

978.1.62619.860.9 { Paperback, 224 pp, $19.99 } JANUARY 2015 the history press • charleston, sc www.historypress.net

John Amos at his apartment on Bourbon Street. Photo by Zack Smith Photography.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu joins the parade on Loyola Avenue. Photo courtesy of New Orleans Regional Transit Authority.

I am pleased to announce the publication of New Orleans Boom & Blackout: One Hundred Days in America’s Coolest Hotspot by Brian W. Boyles.

Against the backdrop of the 2013 Super Bowl, Boyles enters the multiple worlds that exist in this historic city, and he narrates New Orleans citizens’ ongoing struggle to restore their way of life in the face of unprecedented changes. From street vendors to politicians, cab drivers to millionaires, the Crescent City’s people fought their own battles while tourism officials struggled to maintain the victorious image projected by the New Orleans Saints and city government battled numerous entrenched challenges. As the city’s first post-Katrina Super Bowl approached, Mayor Mitch Landrieu observed, “The idea is to make sure that New Orleans shines its brightest light at this particular time when we are on the world’s stage.” When the Superdome lights went out one hundred days later, prime time audiences caught a glimpse of the contradictions and complications still unfolding in “the new New Orleans.”

“I’m confident that any stretch of randomly selected one hundred days in this town contains uncountable stories. Pick three months and see what happens.

The conflicts in the new New Orleans were visible before October 25, 2012, and after February 3, 2013, from consent decrees to Bourbon Street. Still, I’m glad I paid attention during the approach of Super Bowl XLVII, a tumultuous, exciting time when so many people sought to answer that question: How’s New Orleans doing? Not for the first time, I heard the city answer: Listen,” writes Boyles in the book’s introduction.

Boyles’s New Orleans Boom & Blackout will appeal to Louisiana natives, football fans and American history buffs alike.

Join Brian W. Boyles as he uses vivid personal experiences, stunning images and countless interviews to describe the Big Easy’s ongoing comeback. New Orleans Boom & Blackout: One Hundred Days in America’s Coolest Hotspot will retail for $19.99 and be available throughout Louisiana and online at www.historypress.net.

Many thanks, Sarah Falter

Sarah Falter Publicity at The History Press

Handsome Willy’s Patio Bar erupts in the moments following the Saints’ 2010 Super Bowl victory. Photo by Rachel Leifer.

Frances Swigart. Photo by Zack Smith Photography.

Keen minds have the ability to detect interesting and important stories where everyone else sees either mere news, normalcy or nothing at all. Brian Boyles demonstrates this talent by shining light on a remarkable one-hundred-day period…and finding within it revealing insights on New Orleans’s complex culture, bemusing idiosyncrasies and ongoing journey from post-Katrina to post-recovery.

—Richard Campanella, geographer and author, Tulane University

A

s the 2013 Super Bowl approached, New Orleans rushed to present its best face to the world. Politicians, business leaders and tourism officials declared the rise of the “new New Orleans,” a thriving city brimming with hope and energy. But as the spotlight neared, old conflicts and fresh controversies complicated the branding. The preparations revealed the strains of the postKatrina recovery and the contrasts of the heralded renaissance. The watershed moment culminated in darkness when the lights went out in the Superdome. In a stunning portrait of the breathless one hundred days before the game, author Brian W. Boyles unearths the conflicts, ambitions and secret histories that defined the city as it prepared for Super Bowl XLVII.

The History Press is proud to present this new title: N ew O rleans B oom & B lackout : O ne H undred D ays in A merica ’ s C oolest H ot S pot

by B rian W. B oyles

978.1.62619.860.9 { Paperback, 224

pp ,

$19.99 }

JANUARY 2015

A B OU T T H E AU T H O R

B

rian W. Boyles is a native of Pittsburgh and a graduate of Tulane University. Since 2007, he has directed public programming at the Louisiana Humanities Center in New Orleans, including oral history projects with local brass bands, piano players and politicians. A founding member of East Village Radio, he was named to Gambit Weekly’s “40 Under 40” list in 2011. He serves as creative director for www.thepeoplesayproject.org, a website about culture and money. His work has appeared in Oxford American, Vice.com, The Classical, Offbeat, The Lens, The Brooklyn Rail and SLAM. Boyles lives in New Orleans’ Thirteenth Ward with his wife and son.

Excerpt from New Orleans Boom & Blackout

Introduction

How’s New Orleans Doing?

I

f you live here, you’re accustomed to the question. Curious strangers, concerned family members, close associates from other coasts—people care about New Orleans. They want to know if it’s as good, as bad or as different as they’ve heard.

How’s the food? What about the levees? Can you get shot? Is it the heat or the humidity?

As a resident, someone who deals monthly with the Sewage and Water Board, you have permission and, it sometimes seems, an obligation to sum up the conditions of 340,000 or so people, not to mention the ghosts, cockroaches and politicians who prosper within the boundaries of Orleans Parish. How is it down there, anyway?

The real answer: When and for whom? Like any city, New Orleans is better and worse than it was ten, one hundred or one thousand years ago, depending on whose porch you sit and at what time. The point, it seems to me, is to sit on as many porches as possible in as many neighborhoods as possible for as long as possible.

That’s where you can find answers—and other things, too.

In recent years, however, a strain of answers coalesced into an emerging, adaptable brand: the new New Orleans. In November 2010, Travel & Leisure magazine published “Exploring the New New Orleans,” a feature by Thomas Beller that encouraged travelers to discover “the eclectic characters, strange beauty, and authentic local experience.” The city was “gorgeous and cheap,” Beller wrote, with a booming “Hollywood South” film scene and a “sort of improvised communal happiness.” The brand was not reserved for passing travelers. The Wall Street Journal ranked New Orleans as its most improved city for business in 2011. In January 2012, Inc.com urged readers looking for a “supportive start-up community in which to launch your venture” to hurry to New Orleans before it was too late.

Fueled by a curious national media and an engaged tourism industry, the brand gained traction. The outside world began to take note: no longer was this a recovery story. New Orleans was hot.

The 2013 Super Bowl offered a prism for understanding the brand and its means of distribution. The game, we heard, was a time for New Orleans to shine. I accepted the premise expressed by the mayor and others that the Super Bowl would show the world how far we’d come since the 2005 federal levee failures. Like the world, I wanted to know the answer. I also wanted to know who would provide answers.

Other questions arose as the game approached. If the post-Katrina era was finally over, I wanted to understand the decades prior to Katrina, particularly the evolution of the city’s postwar economy and politics. Who had articulated earlier visions for the city’s future? Their successes and failures might help us evaluate the promises of the new New Orleans.

Tourism has played a fundamental force in the development of New Orleans since the nineteenth century; indeed, as a river town, it never didn’t have visitors.

Today, the tourism industry appears particularly robust and more sophisticated; the pace of its successes seemed to quicken in recent years. What changed? How do tourism and politics intersect?

The intersection of tourism and sports also interested me. Between December 2011 and March 2012, New Orleans hosted the New Orleans Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the BCS College Football Championship, a Saints playoff game and the NCAA Men’s Final Four, an unprecedented succession of major sporting events for one city. Now came Super Bowl XLVII, with promises of more than $400 million in economic impact. Professional sports and big games are vital to the local economy, but their history and operations remain opaque. What were the origins of the venues, teams and politics? Who made money off the games?

Finally, I continue to believe that service industry workers know more about the city’s byways and conflicts than most politicians and visiting journalists. Behind every nationally televised event, refurbished hotel and photographed second-line parade, there are people who support their families and habits by driving cabs, pouring daiquiris and changing linens. I wanted to know what they thought about the Super Bowl and the new New Orleans.

One thing I know: the minute you think you’ve figured this place out, your car will be stolen. In this Creole city, never let anyone tell you something is simply black and white; the solidest of truths can vanish into the lake. By focusing on the one hundred days before Super Bowl XLVII, I hoped to show how, even within this narrow sample, New Orleans continues to be a complex, protean landscape that resists the very generalizations it so often attracts. During a period of heightened visibility, I wondered what contrasts would emerge. To maintain this focus, I set some parameters.

Wherever possible, I included only the information that was available at or before 11:59 p.m. CST on Super Bowl Sunday 2013. When, for example, I saw David Hammer’s April 2014 WWL-TV coverage of the Loyola Avenue streetcar line, I did not insert those revelations into this history. I wanted a record of the things people said during those one hundred days, a diary of this brief period that drew from the city’s past. Substantial new facts emerged in the months following the game, but for the most part, I’ve used only what was known in late 2012 and early 2013.

Second, I concentrated on a specific area of the city. From my office in the Central Business District, I’ve traversed the territory of this book—Calliope to Elysian Fields, North Claiborne to the river—for almost eight years, marveling at the diversity of the commercial structures and their mutating usages. Within these borders are city hall, the Superdome, the French Quarter and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the main linchpins of the Super Bowl period. Many other neighborhoods are equally important, but this was my postage stamp of land.

I’m confident that any stretch of randomly selected one hundred days in this town contains uncountable stories. Pick three months and see what happens. The conflicts in the new New Orleans were visible before October 25, 2012, and after February 3, 2013, from consent decrees to Bourbon Street. Still, I’m glad I paid attention during the approach of Super Bowl XLVII, a tumultuous, exciting time when so many people sought to answer that question: How’s New Orleans doing?

Not for the first time, I heard the city answer: Listen.

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If you would like to schedule an interview with the author, please contact:

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Publicity 843.577.5971 ext. 227 sarah.falter@historypress.net

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