Mia Backon entry 6

Entry 6: What sort of urban form is this? Based on what you see, what characterizes social relationships here? What sorts of relationships are encouraged/discouraged by this urban landscape? What are major centers for community activity, if any?

When I met the two people (Wally and Kathy) at the bar we discussed a wide variety of information about Algiers. I asked them about the kind of people that lived in Algiers, and if there was a strong and/or visible ethnic mix. Both of them responded saying that in Algiers everyone is accepted, it does not matter who you are or where you came from it depends primarily on the personality that an individual has. Yet, I do not know if they were 100% convincing to me that there was no segregation between whites and blacks because they constantly kept referring to Opelousas street as the barrier between the good/safer part of Algiers (Algiers Point) and the more dangerous part of Algiers. When we briefly discussed the impact Katrina had on Algiers, Kathy interrupted saying “You wanna know where the guy lived who shot the girl down on Opelousas street… he lived right next door to me and you know what I did I stared him down!” When I met the first woman at the flee market (the woman who was running with her dog) and when I asked her the same question her response was slightly different. She said that it was a mix between blacks and white, there were a lot of musicians, artists and writers that also lived in Algiers.

When driving through Algiers we first stopped at local convenience store, this convenience store seemed like any other local convenience store, a place were everyone new each other that walked in (The people kept stressing that every one knows every one here). I did not get much of a feel for the environment or the kind of people that would usually go to this food/convenience store but the only two people (besides Emma and I) were black. The next location we stopped at was a flee-market however nothing was actually going on. The flee-market takes place on weekends and from the opinions of the people at the bar, they reacted to the flee-market as being “bogus” but to me it seemed very historical, rich with culture and a place that was worth returning to see. Then we stopped at the bar (refer to field notes) the dynamic was obvious, whites dominated the bar, they did not seem overly racists but I sensed that not many blacks walk into this bar on a day-to-day basis. The last place we went was Mardi Gras World. These huge warehouses sat along the end of Algiers parallel to the river. This very open and spacious area is where all the floats for Mardi Gras are built and stored. It area seemed uneventful probably because Mardi Gras ended recently.