My neighborhood

My neiborghood is a half-square-mile chess board of streets cutting each other on straight angles bordered by Canal Street, Tulane Ave, Jefferson Davis and Broad. Most of the inhabitants are latin people who work on construction and moved here after Katrina.

I live in Banks, a wide street with two driving directions separated by a median strip. Live oaks (an evergreen kind of oak typical from Lousiana), line up in both sidewalks, forming a vegetation tunnel over the street. They have just painted bike-lanes.

Banks Street, with its live oak alley before the bikelanes were painted

A typical Mid-City shotgun house (mine)

My house is the very typical Mid-City shotgun house. Although it´s very long and narrow, the name refers mostly to the interior, having shotgun houses a clear hallway that runs along one of the sides. If you shot a gun, the bullet would run freely from the begining of the house to the far end. Although my house interior isn´t like this anymore, I think that it continues to be a real shotgun.
As all houses in the neighbourhood, mine is lift over pillars that keep them away from the floor to prevent flooding. You need to climb the stairs to get to the porch.

house lifted over pillers (mine)

The house was built in 1904. It had just been renovated before Katrina and the huracane destroyed it, therefore it had to be renovated again. The house was also lifted up to 4 feet (it was 2 feet), to prevent future floods.

When I ride, I only have to pass four blocks before getting to Jefferson Davis Boulevard, a linear park with paths for pedestrians and bikes that leads to Bayou Saint Jonh and City Park, probably the number one park in new Orleans, with a hectic activity from early morning, live oaks, ponds, pathways and huge extensions of grass where people play soccer, lacross, frisbee, or the like.