Banksy in New Orleans??

Rumors and evidence of possible Banksy work (or closely derived from his work) seen in New Orleans, on the 3rd anniversary of Katrina. Small photoset here.

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Know-Nothing Politics

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

via Paul Krugman / New York Times read article

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Must be a New Orleanian.

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Muddy Waters

Jul 24, 2008

(The Politico) So why exactly did Sen. John McCain cancel an event yesterday on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana?

According to the McCain campaign, the event was canceled over weather concerns.

However, that explanation is not sitting well with Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who claims McCain canceled the event because of a nearby oil spill that dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Mississippi.

“Look up ‘irony’ in the dictionary and you will find a description of this turn of events. Having to cancel your big oil drilling photo op because of a massive oil spill is like canceling a crime safety photo op because the house next door just got robbed," said Menendez.

"In selling his absurd coastline drilling plan to the American people, Sen. McCain has time and again pointed to advanced technology that would supposedly eliminate the threat of massive oil spills. As he can now personally attest, even with the most modern technology, we can’t prevent massive oil spills like the one currently devastating the Mississippi, just as we couldn’t prevent 7.7 million gallons of oil spills after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This is the type of straight talk about oil drilling the American people deserve to hear.”

On Wednesday, a 600-foot tanker and a barge loaded with fuel oil collided near New Orleans, breaking the barge in half. While there were injuries, more than 419,000 gallons of thick oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long.

McCain's critics also pointed to the forecast, which according to weather.com called for scattered showers with a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms in the New Orleans area.

Menendez has authored legislation to permanently ban drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, however, McCain has come out in favor of expanding offshore drilling.
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Geauxbama!

Check out the killer Geauxbama shirts & stickers from Dirty Coast!

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Rainbow in Marrero

A Rainbow In Marrero from ballzack on Vimeo.

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2008 MS Walk April 5th.

The 2008 MS Walk is coming up, and we've got a big team going! The Muddy Waters Walkers have participate for the last 8 years, both in the San Francisco area and here in New Orleans. You can Register here to sign up and/or pledge money.

The walk is Saturday, April 5th at 8:00 in Audubon Park.





















Muddy Waters, by the way, is our dog. Also one of the great old bluesmen, and a reference to the mighty Mississippi River. We're working on 2008 T-shirts. Contact Peter for more information about the Walk and joining us!

You can comment below to let us know you're coming, or to ask any questions!!

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BarCamp New Orleans

BarCampNOLA Conference Set to Gather Gulf Coast Technology Experts for a Good Cause

BarCampNOLA, a technology conference that aspires to bring Gulf Coast digerati, entrepreneurs and those interested in them together in order to connect with the local community, socialize and learn, will be held on February 16th and 17th at the Voodoo Ventures, LLC offices at 757 St. Charles Avenue, Suite 301 in New Orleans.

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences that was born from the desire of people to share and learn in an open, participatory environment. BarCamp conference content is provided by participants and often focuses on early-stage web applications and other open source technologies. Participants interact in the form of discussion, demos, and collaborative projects. The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California in 2005. Since then, the BarCamp movement has gained momentum as hundreds of BarCamp conferences have been held in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and Asia over the past few years. BarCampNOLA is one of over 30 BarCamp conferences that have already been scheduled to take place in the United States this year.

The main focus of BarCampNOLA organizers is to help a struggling Gulf Coast-based small business or nonprofit by participating in a “hack day” style project over the course of the conference in order to produce or modify a needed technological service such as a new website or enhanced Web services. Organizers anticipate the attendance of participants with expertise in relation to code, design, creative concept production, and a variety other technology-related specializations.

BarCampNOLA is free to attend, and active participation is all that is asked of attendees. Wireless internet access will be provided by the conference. Also, individuals who attend are simply asked to share information regarding knowledge gained and overall experiences of the event via public web channels such as blogging, photo sharing and wiki-ing.

Like previous BarCamp conferences, BarCampNOLA will rely on securing sponsorship and donations ranging from food, beverages, and media advertising to monetary contributions of $250 to $400. BarCampNOLA organizers are actively soliciting sponsorship from local businesses interested in supporting the local tech community. Sponsors will have their organization’s logo printed on the back of the official BarCampNOLA T-shirt and are more than welcome to participate in the conference itself.

Local press will also be invited to the event, and are encouraged to assist in the promotion of BarCampNOLA. New Orleans-based organizations and groups that are able to spread the word about BarCampNOLA to their membership are greatly encouraged to do so.

For more information regarding attendance or sponsorship of BarCampNOLA, please contact Chris Schutz, CEO of Voodoo Ventures, LLC by phone at (504)581-6446 or via e-mail at cschultz@voodooventures.com. Also, visit BarCampNOLA’s official website at http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampNOLA.

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Shive on the Scene.

These crazy bastards are too funny. The NSFW Dirty Coast jingle reminds me a little of one of my favorite local NOLA commercial jingles, for Broad Warehouse furniture.

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Old-fashioned Vandalism.

The guy across the street got TP'ed over the weekend, and it struck me that this expression of juvenile mischief seems a lot fewer and further between than it used to. I enjoyed the art of heaving Charmin back in the early eighties, but don't see it much anymore. I suppose everyone gets TP'ed virtually on Facebook these days. Yeesh.

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NOLA BarCamp

There's talk of organizing a BarCamp here in NOLA this coming January. Details to follow!

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

The name "BarCamp" is a playful allusion to the event's origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only participant driven conference hosted by open source publishing luminary Tim O'Reilly.

The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, from August 19-21, 2005, in the offices of Socialtext. It was organized in less than one week, from concept to event, with 200 attendees. Since then, BarCamps have been held in over 31 cities around the world, in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Australasia and Asia. To mark the one-year anniversary of BarCamp, BarCampEarth was held in multiple locations world wide on August 25-27, 2006.

UPDATE: I believe the date is narrowing to the 5th and 6th of January. Please visit the wiki that has been set up for up-to-date info!

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Legal (and delicious) Crack.

I've been drinking obscene quantities of this stuff lately. Delicious - and a methamphetamine-like buzz to boot. A 64oz. jug of heaven will cost you, though - $8.79 at my neighborhood Canseco's. Figure on getting at least 15 hiwatt megaton-strength coffee drinks out of it, though, which beats the hell out of punk Frappacinos up and down the street. Highly recommended, seriously good iced coffee. If you manage to drink the entire 64oz., let me know how it goes. Been there.

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Faub.org Meets the Public

We had a launch party last weekend for the creative group we formed about a year ago here in New Orleans. Lots of fun, see some of the pix going up here. Thanks to all who came out and signed in to keep the independent creative community talking. Special thanks to Andy at Barrister's Gallery for hosting the event space on St. Claude. The weather was perfect, the DJs were rockin, and the hazy recollections suggest people had some fun...

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Faub.org Party Time.

Faub.org creative Aid and Pleasure Club PARTY!!

Saturday, November 3rd 7pm - til

Barrister's Gallery
2331 St. Claude Ave at corner of Spain St.

DJ Joey Buttons and DJ Brice Nice spinning
Psssst..Pass It On plus other multimedia

For more info, pls visit www.faub.org

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The Kingfish

Who took on the Standard Oil men
And whipped their ass
Just like he promised he'd do?
Ain't no Standard Oil men gonna run this state
Gonna be run by little folks like me and you

Here's the Kingfish, the Kingfish
Friend of the working man
The Kingfish, the Kingfish
The Kingfish gonna save this land...

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Faub.org Wants You.

Faub.org is celebrating its official formation and public launch with a bash at Barrister's Gallery Saturday, November 3rd. Food and drinks at 7pm, and DJs Brice Nice and Joey Buttons will fire it up into the night. Multimedia piece Pssst. Pass It On by Grow Design Work's Brian Dougherty-Johnson will be shown, along with Faub.org original works.

Join us, bring some wine, meet working artists, designers, developers, and folks running the creative and tech gamuts. Download the press release.

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NOLA Brand Mayhem

Malcolm passed along this cartoon from SF Gate. Sad but true. Or hilarious. I can't decide. After losing a few friends here, probably just sad.

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Faub.org is Alive.

Kudos to Ness & Erik, who went deep and gave us faub.org. We've graduated from temp splash page to this wonderful and fun interim site, which will someday give birth to the full site, which has been an ongoing labor of love since the early days.

What's Faub.org? A growing handful of New Orleans-based creatives and techies, feeling a bit thrown to the winds post-Katrina, bound together in spirit and spirits. We design. We develop. We drink, and more often than not, we talk a lot. Check it out. Play around w. the site. Dragging stuff around encouraged. We're having some sort of launch party this Fall. More to come.

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Ignition.

We launched a local non-profit's site recently, with a nice custom PHP content management system.

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Please Don't Shoot.

There's something very strange and unsettling seeing your hood get militarized. After Katrina, NOLA was flooded by machine gun-toting Army, National Guard, and Blackwater personnel. Despite the media saturation in the weeks and months surrounding the storm, I just can't get used to seeing gangs of these nuts strolling around. If you zoom to the large image, you'll see that at least one of these guys' rifles is unloaded. Perhaps they felt that the sheer power of their camo outfits would serve as deterrent enough.

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Sign the Declaration.

Annunciation is working with Trumpet for Idea Village, a New Orleans-based non-profit. They're looking for the vanguard, and are developing great programs to facilitate innovative growth in the city.
Sign their Declaration of Innovation to hear more about the movement.

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Habitat

My mother came in from San Francisco today to work with Habitat for Humanity, building new homes for hurricane evacuees in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.
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How Vitter got Busted

This is a great story on how Larry Flynt's investigators tracked down (married) Louisiana Republican senator David Vitter on phone database records, showing that he frequented a D.C.-area escort service while vilifying adulterers and those not espousing "family values"...

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Local Wildlife

I don't know where to start with this one. I'm a vegetarian. Love the illustrations. This struck me as really bizarre initially (I'm a city-dweller at heart), but this stuff's probably healthier and safer than most of the mass-produced food product sold in chains. Still - muskrat?

So Far Ahead, We're Behind.

I had the pleasure of visiting the folks at Dirty Coast the other day. If you don't know of them, they've got some spectacular NOLA-centric apparel and merchandise for sale here. The above tee is among my favorites. Get yourself one for $20.

If you don’t understand this shirt, you don’t understand New Orleans. The rest of the country has torn down neighborhoods and built strip malls and sprawl to the horizon till they have lost all their quality and character. Not NOLA. By default, we are behind the curve and ahead of the pack.






It’s good to be backwards sometimes.

We're Behind was designed by Mitch Paone, who's got a badass design site.

Constance 02

Constance is now accepting visual art and writing submissions for Issue 02, Delicate Burdens.

Delicate Burdens seeks work that confronts the everyday experience of making New Orleans home. Bring honest and uncompromising portrayals of yourself, your city and of those that look on or even look away. There’s a double meaning to everything in New Orleans – an anger in the devotion, a pleasure in the pain – and we want you to define it.

Inquiries/Questions: inquiries@weareconstance.org

Annunciation Interactive

I'm pleased to announce that I have partnered with Jonah Langenbeck and Annunication Interactive, a little design and technology studio in New Orleans. We are in the process of launching the company while serving existing customers.

Fauborg Collective

March Against Crime

A bunch of us at Trumpet walked downtown and joined this march of several thousand to City Hall to protest the rampant gun violence in the city. Check out the video below, or see more here.