Benachi House New Orleans

Benachi House New Orleans
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

The Great FiveHead lived in the Ninth Ward when we met her, in a little shotgun house -- called 'shotgun' because they're so narrow that if you fire a shotgun through the front door it'll go straight out the back door. When she and PD moved in together, they moved to a neighborhood called Bayou St. John, near City Park. But they always went back to the Ninth Ward, or the Merigny or the Tremé, to have fun.

When PD was being thrown to the vodka wolves at his bachelor's party, the rest of us went to the Ninth Ward, to the wonderful Vaughn's, a club where they put the band in one corner and the red beans and rice in huge pots in the other. It was so hot, even in May, that most of us sat on the porch outside, eating and listening to our down-home food and music, at 3 o'clock in the morning, thinking that if this wasn't paradise, it was sure enough all we'd ever need.

And when they got married, they got married at the Benachi House, a few blocks from the racetrack where they hold the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival every year. This is the Benachi House. Or...this was the Benachi House.

Plotnik was in New Orleans in August once, and the heat was hard to believe, the air dead still and a vague smell of natural rot in the air, and that's when the streets were not filled with black water. Today, The Ninth Ward is under water. Bayou St. John is under water. The Fairgrounds are under water. They're breaking into stores in the Merigny and the Tremé to steal cokes and diapers and candy bars. They are out of food in New Orleans, and there is no water to drink, and the flood waters are rising. And: it's August.