Treme Season 3, Episode 1, “Knock With Me – Rock With Me”

Sam Wilkinson

According to a faithful reader, I'm Ordinary Times's "least thoughtful writer." So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

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9 Responses

  1. Josh Randall says:

    Right on review! – Now… What was the end credits song – been searching everywhere???Report

  2. Willie Shallies says:

    It is Kerwin James, not Kerwin Williams.Report

    • Sam Wilkinson in reply to Willie Shallies says:

      I am an idiot. I have the right name in my notes. I had the right name to find the video. And yet I still wrote a name that rhymes with a paint company. I corrected it in the text and noted my mistake. Apologies.Report

  3. Mark Folse says:

    Simon has to delve into the issues of corruption in city goverment and in the police force (I’ll post up a link to the Justice Department report on the NOPD if you like) because those were critical factors at play in the recovery of the city. The realignment of neighborhoods, who lives where, gentrification, were creating conflicts with old traditions. The police here (as opposed to the significant story line about police shootings) were just answering a call, a call that would not have come five years earlier. That’s probably why the Treme Two were released. (Recall Colson’s dressing down of the officer who arrested a man for dropping his pants but not his drawers; “let Bourbon Street be Bourbon Street”).Report

    • Sam Wilkinson in reply to Mark Folse says:

      I certainly wasn’t objecting to Simon getting into any of that. That doesn’t mean though that a city’s post-disaster levels of corruption aren’t depressing as all get out, especially when the people getting entirely screwed over either have no idea or are generally powerless to intervene.

      As for Colson’s sympathetic view toward (some) of the city’s traditions: that push will presumably come to shove going forward, especially as attitude’s like that banker’s run into the city’s defenders. Just last night on Twitter, Wendell Pierce (Antoine Batiste) went on at length about the current government’s desperate desire to abandon the city’s traditions.Report

      • BlaiseP in reply to Sam Wilkinson says:

        Cities evolve. NYC cleaned up Times Square. Chicago cleaned out Streeterville many years ago. Wendell Pierce is carrying on about how NOLA is trying to tax the vendors and all the marvellous tradition of the Second Line, well good for him, but NOLA is still in serious trouble.

        Tradition’s a trap and a treasure both.

        The woman who cleaned my hotel room yesterday here in NOLA was a Katrina refugee. She came back after years in Houston, where she was perfectly happy, she said, to deal with the death of a cousin and the six kids she left behind. She doesn’t want to be here. Born and raised in this city, now cleaning fourteen hotel rooms on a Sunday. This burg is still a wreck. It’s still losing population.

        The gods answer the prayers of the stupid, promptly and literally. Ninth Ward is in trouble because nobody should never have built on that ground. Graffiti covers the walls of the French Quarter. The town is literally sinking into the mud. I’ve just moved to New Orleans because Louisiana lured in GE Capital with all sorts of incentives.

        People like me love to find abundant culture in a town but let me tell you of another town, Galveston Texas, once a great port city, also wrecked by a hurricane. The town moved heaven and earth, put in a huge seawall, jacked up all the houses — and everyone went up the river to Houston anyway. Now Galveston is little more than tourist trap, not much goes on there. I loved going down there and driving on those long beaches in my little truck, loved the Bishop’s palace and the seafood, but it’s only a shadow of its former self.

        The fate of Galveston is the eventual fate of New Orleans. The Mississippi River wants to go down the Achafalaya River basin and for all of the levees and the titanic works of the Army Corps of Engineers, the river’s going to have its way, eventually. It will leave New Orleans. The vast artery of the river, flowing out into the sea will silt up, as it has before, many times.

        The tragedies of Katrina and now Isaac (which destroyed the top two floors of the hotel where I had reservations) revealed a culture of neglect which had permeated Louisiana for many decades. I know and love this state. I know Baton Rouge and Lafayette far better: most of the world’s most beautiful places are also its poorest.

        Truth is, I don’t know NOLA at all beyond several visits over the years, 2003, 2008 and 2010. But from what I see now, out here in Gentilly, it’s still a wreck and nothing short of a serious rehab is going to save it. People need a reason to move back here and the old reasons are largely gone.Report

        • Sam in reply to BlaiseP says:

          That comment about tradition – that it is a trap and a treasure – is an entirely worthwhile theme to consider in regard to this show. After all, what is celebrated in the short term (the city’s vibrant, enthusiastic traditional activities) don’t seem to be paying dividends in the long term. The city is still poor. The politicians are still comically corrupt. And that’s before we delve into the nightmare of the city’s ongoing exposure to natural disasters made worse by man.Report

          • BlaiseP in reply to Sam says:

            A city’s an organic thing, each with its own raison d’être. New Orleans is the northernmost Caribbean city and that’s the truth of it, with all the attendant problems of the Caribbean. Miami is another such city, there’s some money around the town but I’ve spent two weeks there and never spoken a word of English. NOLA might have been a wealthy city, long ago, when sugar and cotton were so profitable. Now it’s just another down at the heels port city, trying to put together yet another modus vivendi.

            As for corruption and bad government, NYC, another touristic burg, had a long streak of bad luck on that front, too. NYC turned that situation around in the 90’s — and gentrified beyond recognition in the process.

            Jeebus, you wouldn’t believe how screwed up NOLA is just now. Driving in this morning, seems like the entire length of Canal Street is under construction, Poydras, too. Jostling along 18th century streets, driving up eleven floors of the Capital One building to find a parking spot, no I don’t foresee a whole lotta driving to work, nossir.Report