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Ghetto Jogging
I was glad that my DC area friend, my best buddy from childhood, showed up unannounced at my doorstep Saturday morning. He had jogged from Convention Center Blvd. up about twenty blocks of Canal Blvd., which is no small feat, but one I had seen him do in my imagination months previous. He survived it then and now. Saturday or Sunday mornings are probably best for it. I told him he was forever off the sissy list. That jog is a dangerous one but one that I've seen other non-urban oriented people do, and survive. I think surviving that jog without any altercation is possibly a thing that would happen as much as ninety percent of the time. The angle I'm still not accurately addressing is how the good times here roll parallel to the depravity and murder, without much of the latter bringing harm to the former. I think that is the story from here I'm trying to get but not getting right just yet. I had a great time with friends, moving around town freely and safely, drinking and eating well. But all around us people were committing the ultimate crime of killing their brothers. Not really a threat to those around them because almost exclusively the young men and occasional woman who die on the streets here die of point-blank gunshots to the head. Not that many stray bullets really and a person here who minds their own business has remarkable survival chances. Overall crime is down in NOLA, but murder is up 56 per cent. Just a reminder, old news, just a reminder, our urban youth are surgically assassinating each other at alarming rates. Still. This Jazzfest weekend set attendance lows records and you almost wish you could blame that on a fear factor affecting prominent whites--too much murder let's stay away (then of course somebody would take the problem seriously, smirk). But mostly people come here with the accurate assumption that everthing will be fine and some might even be completely unaware of how close they are to the real thing. Six murders over three days during Jazzfest. Two of them very local to Jazzfest commuters. And several more specific to the area over the previous month. I don't have a point about it, I just like lining the disparate possibilities up next to each other. As for jogging in or near the ghetto--surviving real threats may be good for the heart. Exercise some caution.