Gentle Readers,   I am back in my customary spot on Magazine Street in the Rue de la Course coffeehouse, amongst the tattooed, the pierced, the dreadlocked, and the tragically hip. I feel right at home. THESE are my people. I shall never sleep again. I shall never move from this spot. [Much to YHN's dismay, the Rue de la Course closed down for renovations a few years later and never reopened on Magazine Street. Their new location is Uptown at Carrollton and Oak but I haven't been in yet.]   So, after my report yesterday I hooked up with the folks back on St. Charles and went out to a classical music recital at Tulane. It was the first post-Difficulties event presented by the Friends of Music, postponed from the original starting date of the series in October of last year. The Enemies of Music are having a thing tonight but I'm going out to dinner with the Commodore instead—those EoM events tend to be a bit confrontational. The Acquaintances of Music opened their season last week but I understand it was rather a lukewarm affair.

Coming to you from a coffee house on Magazine where all the young hipster/slacker/yuppie-types (plus the occasional old fart like myself) hang out and surf the internet on the free wifi. One thing I'll say for the City That Forgot to Care, it still has its share of fabulous babes. I see more attractive women in this place in any given hour than I do in Santa Fe in an entire week. But then I don't get out much. Makes me pine for the olde dump—this dump, that is—a bit.   Yesterday was the day that your intrepid reporter girded his loins, loaded his Polaroid SX-70, grabbed his brand new Casio digital, and set forth upon the Grand Tour. The expedition was led by the Commodore his own self with the invaluable aid and moral support of Brother Danny Dog. I had dinner with Brother D and Nona and the kids on Saturday night—the Commodore was supposed to be in attendance but was suffering from a severe case of alcohol poisoning from the exertions of the two previous evenings and was unable to muster much more than a groan down the beleaguered phone lines from Jefferson Parish. Down for the count.

Gentle Reader(s), as many (?) of you are certainly aware, this Saturday, August the 29th, marks the 10th anniversary of a very dark episode in the history of this country and of Your Humble Narrator's benighted hometown in particular. The events that led up to and followed the landfall of Hurricane Katrina have been examined and agonized over in excruciating detail ever since. What really did and did not happen; what could have, should have and did not happen to prepare the city for the calamity; who was to blame for the critical lapses that resulted in the loss of the lives of over 1,800 citizens; the nature of the victims and the varied nature of their victimhood—all of it remains in heated debate to this day. The same is also true of the recovery from this unprecedented disaster. How real is the recovery and who has benefitted from the billions of dollars of aid money that have poured into the city since 2005?   Debate aside, one real thing that I can offer to you is a firsthand account of the city and its environs reported during mid-January, 2006, when the situation in New Orleans appeared to have stabilized sufficiently to make visitation reasonably viable. Mayor Ray Nagin had given his (in)famous Chocolate City speech on MLK Day, just a few days prior to YHN's arrival. The Chocolate City Report was written over the course of a week in the form of three extended emails sent out to fellow native New Orleanians, Brother LowRent and Brother JB, living in far-flung locales. The Chocolate City Report is here offered in its three original installments with additional commentary and updates where deemed appropriate and/or necessary.