And then, on Sunday morning, the French Quarter, while not completely restored, was still alive with street jazz musicans, bohemian guitarists on the corner, and revelers getting their Sabbath long-necks in before the Saints/49-er’s game. Walking down Royal Street, there were an inordinate number of decorative fine art and antique galleries openm with opulent kitsch and French Art Nouveau trinkets for sale, and I wondered wy there would be a market for any of this in such a ravaged city? Of course, there is the requisite number of rich tourists and antique buyers, but what I find more disturbing is the idea that there might be a market for these things amongst the natives. This is a rhetorical statement, because there is certainly a market in New Orleans, because despite the disaster, the disparate third-world culture of gluttony vs. poverty has just shifted to include new throngs of oppressed. I find this unconscionable; as having diamonds and baubles in New Orleans while people are still living under leaky sheets of plastic is like going to a funeral in a sexy little red cocktail dress. It’s just rude. To my friends from Mexico who have come to New Orleans for opportunities in reconstruction, let me tell you that from my experience with New Orleans hegemony, you are now the new Blacks (to put it gently), and you are in for a world of oppression. Welcome to the US amigos, and I am sorry that you will have to endure. Enough said. For all this rambling, telling you about my time in the Big Easy, there is one thing that is obvious. There is a travesty in the United States, far more important than the Iraq War, and that is epitomized by a mise en scene I experienced this morning. I was driving down devastated Rampart Avenue past the old Sanger Theatre, and there was a lone empty beer bottle in the median. New Orleans is America’s whore; the first one you’d love to party with, and the last to call when she’s pregnant or in jail. And even though she is in a slow revival, understand that her underclasses are not rebuilding as fast as the other parts