let’s revisit that [...]]]> 64 days after the deepwater horizon rig blew up in the gulf of mexico, the oil continues to gush. people all over the world, and especially in southern louisiana, continue to feel helpless, and even those who are doing their best to fight the good fight feel like they are in a losing battle.

let’s revisit that oil spill ticker i posted early on in this crisis:

divide that number of gallons by 42 and you get the number of barrels per day that have leaked into our beautiful gulf. and that’s just an average of all the best-guesses of how much is leaking out every day. i find this beyond comprehension.

i personally continue to feel like there is little i can do, save for spend a few hours every day posting articles and photographs and reports from grassroots groups on the ground to my facebook profile in a desperate attempt to keep others far and wide in my social circle informed and enraged. i have a few-day break from the census (the phase i was hired for is now over, but the next phase that i’m getting rehired for starts next week), but have to condense everything i’ve been wanting to do for the past two months into a few days. plus i have to get ready for the craft mafia’s 5th year anniversary party on thursday. and fae leaves for michfest work in a week, so we have to get all our ducks in a row for my eventual departure later in july as well.

it’s all a whirlwind to me.

so i guess i’ll just continue to do what i’ve been doing here on the blog, which is highlight some of the visual creativity that’s come out of this horrendous nightmare, in an attempt to both vent our collective anger and/or also help raise funds for some of the grassroots groups and first responders to the situation.

today, i’d like to point your attention to sticker robot, a silkscreen sticker company out in california. some of you may remember back when i was stenciling-for-obama, sticker robot kindly donated a huge whack of stickers of my obama stencil design for me to give out, to help the campaign. zoltron and sticker robot are good people, and here they go again, donating their brilliant work to the cause:

click the picture to get all the details. basically, you just have to send them a self-addressed, stamped LEGAL-SIZED envelope and they will send you a free sticker. i personally think this is one of the best graphics i’ve seen come out of the creative community in response to the disaster, and i can’t wait to get one onto my car. (maybe i’ll get lucky and get 2 in the mail so i can put one on the scooter too!)

a fresh batch of oil disaster response t-shirts coming soon. stay tuned.

first of all, i wanted to update that it appears dirty coast’s make wetlands not oil [...]]]> ok, so here’s another oilpocalypse t-shirt roundup. at this point, 21 days into the crisis, lots of folks are hopping on the t-shirt-as-response bandwagon. of course, not everyone is donating proceeds to responding organizations, so do your due diligence when shopping.

first of all, i wanted to update that it appears dirty coast’s make wetlands not oil shirt is back up on the site, ready for your orders. once again, proceeds from this shirt will go to support the united commercial fishermans association. as soon as my first census paycheck is deposited into my account, i’ll be buying one of these.

second, my pal chris reams over at skip n’ whistle on oak street (uptown) finalized his shirt design only yesterday, with proceeds going to benefit the humane society.

back of shirt

front of shirt

and lastly, for now anyways, my favorite bp-response t-shirt i’ve seen anywhere does not come from a local t-shirt maker. it comes from west coast designers us versus them. it’s two-sided and is called “lube job,” which i love. i had just been brainstorming on ideas for a stencil and/or t-shirt and had the thought of doing a “fuck you, bp” design with the flower logo in shades of grey/black… but it looks like us versus them had the idea first – and no doubt executed it far better than i could. might just have to get me one of these, too. they say they are donating 50% of the proceeds to the clean-up effort and mention a few organizations in this rant on their site. it’s a little vague, but i trust that they will get the $ to some deserving organizations. it’s a great shirt. i can’t decide if i like it on white better (for contrast) or on black (for more of a tone-on-tone effect, and reinforcing the blackness of the oil itself). anyways, pre-ordering is now available – just click the pics above.

i’m sure there will be many many more shirts coming down the pike, but generally speaking, i’m mostly only interested in the local ones… unless it’s as fabulous as the one above. i’ll keep looking and letting you know when i find good stuff.

no, it’s not a “spill” or a “leak” when we’re at 4 million gallons of oil spewed into the gulf and counting…

ever since the deepwater horizon oil rig blew up on april 20th, and then sank on the 22nd, i’ve been trying not to spend too much time thinking about all the ways in which louisiana, [...]]]>

no, it’s not a “spill” or a “leak” when we’re at 4 million gallons of oil spewed into the gulf and counting…

ever since the deepwater horizon oil rig blew up on april 20th, and then sank on the 22nd, i’ve been trying not to spend too much time thinking about all the ways in which louisiana, the gulf coast, and the life of every person and creature contained therein is now screwed. jazz fest was a good distraction, but now that it’s over and the crisis only gets worse and worse, it’s hard to put it to the back of my mind anymore. also, it smells bad in new orleans whenever we get southerly winds. when that happens, every time you walk out of your house (and sometimes even inside your house), you are reminded again about this clusterfuck of a disaster.

i won’t go into all the latest updates or any more of a rant, cuz there are many others who are far more eloquent and have much more of a grasp of the details and scope of this disaster. if you want news, you can check nola.com’s coverage which is pretty decent. there’s no shortage of coverage in the news online, on tv/radio or in print. details are ever-changing about the status of the effort to contain the oil and where the slick in the gulf has spread. i am not a news reporter, so i will not attempt to cover that kind of territory.

i am, however, an artist and intermittent t-shirt designer. so what i would like to pass along is some of the early response from my more successful peers, all of whom are donating proceeds of their oilpocalypse-inspired designs to organizations helping with the disaster response.

the first shirt i saw was from shultzilla, called “built to spill” and featuring a play on the “drill baby drill” stupidity of certain boneheads on the far-right end of the political spectrum. i think it’s clever but it doesn’t resonate graphically with me personally, though i appreciate the visual and word play involved. he says he’s donating proceeds to some local organization involved in the response, but he hasn’t figured out which one yet. (he’s taking suggestions.)

the second one i saw was fleurty girl’s “rescue me” sea turtle shirt (above). the graphic is cute while still making its point very effectively; she printed them using soy inks, so as not to utilize any petroleum products; and she’s donating 100% of the profits to the Audubon Institute’s Louisiana Marine Mammal & Sea Turtle Rescue Program (LMMSTRP). i follow her on twitter, where i read that she got 500 pre-orders for the shirt almost immediately after putting up the web link, and she’s already sold 1000 of them, adding up to a $10,000 donation (so far) to LMMSTRP, which is frigging amazing. all in just a few days this week. i have to be honest – i haven’t always been the biggest fan of fleurty girl’s designs, graphically, but as a business she won me over during the whole “who dat” controversy and i was genuinely glad for her that it ended up being the best thing that could have happened to her business. and now this. this is pretty amazing, to have raised so much money so fast for such a great cause. it’s a wonderful example of how one person – or one very small business – can make a huge difference. and, well, validates the power of design via the t-shirt. i tip my squeegee to you and your entire team, lauren thom. keep up the good work!

but then thursday, i saw blake haney of dirty coast tweeting their new design. that day, it looked like this:

i LOVED the appropriation of the familiar tobasco hot sauce label logo to read “fiasco” (which several bloggers and tweeps have been using as their icons in the past few days). and i loved that it was a take-off of dirty coast‘s own make wetlands not war design that was popular post-katrina. (i always wanted to get one of the prints of this design to frame for my walls.) but then friday, as i was starting to write this blog entry, when i went to pull up all the reference pages including theirs, this is what i found:

so i guess something made them change it between thursday and friday. i still like it, though, despite the loss of the “fiasco” cleverness. and since i never got one of the “make wetlands not war” shirts, i’m happy to pick up one of these. this oil disaster isn’t going to go away anytime soon, and i’ve long been a critic of the oil industry and our continued drilling off the coast of louisiana (and elsewhere), so it won’t go out of fashion. dirty coast is donating proceeds of this design to the united commercial fisherman’s association, too, which makes me feel even better about indulging in a t-shirt purchase. (update: as of sunday afternoon, none of the now three variations i’ve seen of this design are available on the dirty coast website. i have an email into blake to find out what’s going on over there, but haven’t heard back. will update again when i know what the status is.)

i started writing this post on friday. yesterday, i decided to head down to the rally in lafayette square put on by the sierra club in response to the oil disaster. i heard about it via facebook but worried that the word hadn’t really gotten out about it. also, it was scheduled for a saturday, which in this town is never good for a protest/demonstration/rally. we woke up late yesterday after a big night of movie-watching (iron man 2) on friday night, so i didn’t actually arrive until about an hour into the event, which was scheduled for 12pm – 2pm.

these gals were standing out on st. charles across from gallier hall, getting motorists to honk in support. a handful of various environmental non-profits were set up, getting folks to sign petitions and handing out literature to educate people about what their organizations were doing in response to the disaster. there was a stage set up on the st. charles side, but i missed most of the music and all of the speakers. eventually, mardi gras indian big chief monk boudreaux did come on stage for a set.

i’m not really sure how much of a crowd was there earlier in the proceedings, but by the time i got there, it was dwindling. i’d say a hundred at the most. aside from the non-profit tables, there was this huge banner laid out on the ground and folks were asked to sign it with their thoughts on the disaster. the banner read “this is your crude awakening.” i didn’t really catch what they were going to do with the banner, or which group was sponsoring it. but i liked the idea, nonetheless.

i stuck around for about 45 minutes, long enough to hear the opening number by the big chief and to get my free “clean it up” t-shirt from the sierra club, after signing their petition.

simple. to the point. and i like the color. now if i can just get my noggin to thinking so i can come up with my own t-shirt design about all this. i feel like i’d rather go in a more positive direction, like the “save the coast,” “defend the coast,” or “save the wetlands,” but all i keep thinking is something along the lines of “when are we ever going to learn?” i’m mad and sad – heartbroken, really – at the same time, so i’m not really sure how to capture that in a t-shirt. but i’ll keep thinking.

when last i wrote, it was a few days before the mayoral election and the superbowl, and much anticipation was in the air. well, obviously, a lot has happened since then in new orleans.

first, rachel maddow came to town do a live broadcast of her show from the french quarter, the [...]]]> wow, what a whirlwind it’s been.

when last i wrote, it was a few days before the mayoral election and the superbowl, and much anticipation was in the air. well, obviously, a lot has happened since then in new orleans.

first, rachel maddow came to town do a live broadcast of her show from the french quarter, the friday before the superbowl. i went down with d to check out the scene, only to find there really wasn’t much of a scene at all. when we arrived, there were about 20-25 folks hanging out on the corner of iberville and dauphine, chillin. there was a big boom camera in the middle of the street, the traffic was blocked at the corner so only iberville was passable, a big flat screen tv was set up showing the live programming on msnbc, and a small table was set up in the entrance of the ritz-carlton with many cocktail fixins on it. it took us a while to figure out that the majority of the show was actually to be shot on a balcony above us; they were shooting out the balcony doors with an msnbc logo projected onto the building across the street as the backdrop.

rachel did come out to take some photos and check out the set downstairs before the show went live, but she didn’t really address the audience. she is, however, just as dorky and cute as she appears to be on tv. when the show started above us, the crowd had grown a bit, and we all began chanting “who dat” and screaming rachel’s name; at the beginning of the show you can see she is amused and bewildered by our revelry below. every now and then they’d cut to live shots of the crowd down below via the camera on the street. i did manage to make it onto the screen a few times, as i was standing up on a ledge in front of the hotel across the street. (my friend diane in atlanta made this cute, silly video where you can see me and some of our other friends!)

at the end of the show, rachel came downstairs and did a segment with ti martin, proprietor of commander’s palace, on how to make a sazerac. that’s them above, in the pic. that was my view of the segment from the back of the crowd. i’m glad i made it down there for it, though it didn’t turn out to be what i expected at all. i got nowhere near rachel herself, but it was still fun to hang out with all the other dorky rachel fans and drink beer while watching the show. it was a great kickoff to superbowl/mardi gras weekend.

saturday of that weekend, fae rollerskated with the big easy rollergirls in adonis, a parade on the west bank. i had to drop her off at 9:30am way the hell down general de gaulle, and then kill a few hours before going back to watch the parade later in the afternoon. poor thing – it ended up being an eleven mile slog on a cold, windy, sunny day. she was so exhausted by the end, and got incredibly sunburnt. but it was fun to take in a west bank parade, something i’d never done in all my years here.

saturday was also our mayoral election, which largely got lost in all the superbowl/mardi gras hoopla. as everyone now knows, mitch landrieu won with a commanding 66% of the vote, winning all precincts except one in the city. though i knew my progressive candidate, james perry, wouldn’t probably win, i was sad and a little disappointed he didn’t get more votes. (he came in fifth.) but i am happy to know mitch is looking to bring james in to his administration. though i didn’t vote for him this time (i did the last two times he ran!), i am happy with mitch being our new mayor. i think it signifies a new era in the city’s political landscape, and i look forward to seeing what he can accomplish.

sunday was, of course, the superbowl. two weeks of raucous anticipation all came down to this day. after a quick (and cold!) scooter ride out to old metairie to eat some etouffe at my friend theresa’s tailgating party, fae and i headed to ponce de leon stadium to get our places for the big game. we arrived two hours before kickoff, so the game is a bit blurry to me, frankly, except the bigger plays and the last few minutes. when tracy porter intercepted manning for the touchdown that sealed the deal, i think we were all in shock. the last few minutes of play i was in disbelief, and then, it was over. we won!

after screaming and running around outside for ten or fifteen minutes, we finally managed to collect everyone in the back of my friend heather’s truck and we followed mac in her convertible, also filled with friends, downtown to join all the crazy who dats. we started down canal but soon turned around because traffic was at a standstill, heading back to claiborne and winding through the treme to get to the marigny. it was so much fun to drive through all the neighborhoods and see everyone out on their porches and in the streets, screaming “who dat!” and high-fiving and hugging. folks kept running up to the truck to high-five all of us, sometimes hanging on to the tailgate of the truck, riding with us for a while.

that pic above was actually on our way out of the quarter, but was pretty representative of our night. i shot some really short videos of us on canal street, on bourbon street, and when we were leaving the marigny that night, that do a decent job of capturing the energy. it was magical and beautiful and i’m so glad i was here and able to witness it all.

amidst all this chaos, the new orleans craft mafia was afforded an amazing opportunity to do a one-week pop-up shop at 2038 magazine street (former home of winky’s, which abruptly went out of business and pulled out of that space). nocm members unique products have their permanent shop in the upstairs loft of that building, and so offered to the rest of us to do the one-week market in that space for mardi gras/valentine’s shopping, as the new tenants wouldn’t be coming in until the 1st. so monday morning, after the superbowl win, with hangovers, of course, we all schlepped our stuff down and set up in the space.

today is actually the last day we’ll be open there, 12pm – 5pm. i’m heading over there in just a bit to help out. i was there a lot at the beginning of last week but haven’t been back since thursday so not sure how it’s been through the busy mardi gras/valentine’s weekend, but the beginning of the week was slow but steady. makes me wish we had a retail outlet all the time.

back to the recap: tuesday night was the saints superbowl parade, which was absolutely crazy. i went with our friend dave who was in town from louisville for a few days; he got to be here for the superbowl and the saints parade, but missed out on muses due to the weather-induced rescheduling. he and i had to park on canal street at galvez and WALK down to girod at st. charles in the cbd to watch the parade. the traffic was insane (estimated at 800,000 in the downtown area for the parade), but i was sure glad on the way out that we had done that. as parades go, the saint parade wasn’t much to speak of – not many throws, nothing exciting, borrowed floats from all the other crews. but it was exciting to welcome our football heroes back to town after gracing us with that spectacular win, and it was just yet one more magical moment in a season of magical moments that i was glad to be part of. (i forgot my camera that night, and cell phone pics didn’t come out, so no photos.)

we skipped the wednesday night parade due to exhaustion, and then everything was cancelled on thursday due to the bad weather. i was actually relieved to have a night off from the cold and some down time at home. but then friday night was a marathon. four parades! i dropped fae off uptown, as she was walking with BERG again in muses, early around 6pm; came back home for a while to kill time and then headed back down when the parade tracker told me the first parade was nearing our girod street location. the parking gods smiled on me and i got a spot two blocks from our viewing spot. despite the biting cold, it was a fun evening of parades, with hermes and d’etat being great lead-ins to muses. (morpheus kinda sucked, but three outta four ain’t bad.)

saturday was endymion. it’s been a long time since i watched endymion over on orleans, but this year, thanks to d, we had a private yard that was fenced in to hang out in, on the corner of david street. so fae scootered and heather and i rode bicycles and we had our lawn chairs and some adult beverages and a port-o-let and it was all very civilized. i didn’t catch a whole lot but it was still fun and nice to not be stepped on by the crazy mobs of parade-watchers and bead-catchers.

we skipped parades on sunday in favor of a relaxing valentine’s day devoid of mardi gras.

and that brings me up to date. today i must go work a bit in the shop and then break down my stuff and bring it home, and also figure out if i’m to have a costume for tomorrow. (it’s not looking like it – no time!)

thanks for reading, and i’m sure i’ll have a post-mardi gras update in a few days. happy mardi gras everyone!

i’m a little late in posting this, as saints-fever kinda took over on sunday and i forgot to finish this post. but i’m gonna post it anyways, since there doesn’t seem to be any other coverage of this forum i can find online.

saturday, i attended my first mayoral forum.

i’ve followed many of them either on tv, [...]]]>

i’m a little late in posting this, as saints-fever kinda took over on sunday and i forgot to finish this post. but i’m gonna post it anyways, since there doesn’t seem to be any other coverage of this forum i can find online.

saturday, i attended my first mayoral forum.

i’ve followed many of them either on tv, on radio or via twitter, but this was the first one i managed to actually get to in person. entitled working families candidate forum, it was sponsored by several area non-profits, including: stand with dignity, the new orleans workers’ center for racial justice, and members of first grace united methodist church, where it was held.

the topics ranged from homelessness, affordable housing, local hiring, day laborers’ wage theft, nopd priorities, racial and economic equity and others.

only four candidates were in attendance: nadine ramsey, james perry, rob couhig and troy henry. mitch landrieu and john georges did not attend. (surprise, surprise.)

the first half of the forum was in a question and answer format, with questions coming from various community members and answers limited to two minutes each by the candidates. the production of the forum was kind of low-tech, with candidates having to share one microphone between them, and a spanish-language interpreter sitting in the pews translating rather loudly, which was distracting and made it hard to hear. (i’m supportive of the fact that there was a translator, but there needed to be a better way to do that so everyone could actually hear what was going on.)

i can’t say i heard anything new from any of the candidates, frankly; at this point in time, those who have been following the campaign season and forums/debates have pretty much heard it all from the candidates. the audience seemed almost asleep throughout the first half of it, with only james perry getting any applause or reaction out of the audience. when the format changed to a yes/no answer format, the crowd seemed to wake up and started clapping for every answer by every candidate that they agreed with.

my overall impression was that there wasn’t any clear “winner” amongst the candidates. certainly perry was well-known by many there, as the head of new orleans’s fair housing organization, and his answers were largely in line with what the audience was hoping to hear. surprisingly at least to me, so were nadine ramsey’s, and many of troy henry’s, as well. and while rob couhig should at least be commended for showing up – his republican core values not very much in line with this audience’s – much of what he said could probably be categorized in the “pandering” department.

henry and couhig also spent a lot of time taking swipes at landrieu in particular for not being there, and a few were lobbed in georges’ direction as well (particularly about him having to pay volunteers to wave signs on street corners). couhig repeated a few times his favorite attack on landrieu, about how the taxpayers are footing the bill, paying his salary as lieutenant governor, so he can run for mayor. and even perry called them both out for being absent, when a question about race and equity was asked, saying that dialogues like this one were the first step to changing many issues that plague our city and that landrieu and georges should have been there to partake.

all in all, it seems it was one of the tamer mayoral forums that has happened. and as best as i can tell, there was no substantial coverage of it in the mainstream media, probably due to the fact that it happened on saturday afternoon, before the big saints playoff game. but i’m glad i went, and i hope i can make it to a few more before the election.

as for my personal opinion, i remain committed to the feeling that james perry best represents my own personal political views and vision for the future of the city, and i am satisfied he has enough managerial experience to pull off the position of mayor. i am not someone who believes you necessarily have to have political experience to be in politics, and frankly, i find the concept that he is not a career-politician refreshing. i do still have questions about how he thinks he can accomplish some of his goals, but i am willing to trust he can find a way and see what happens. i will absolutely be voting for perry in the election on february 6th. should it come to a run-off between landrieu and anyone but perry, i will vote for landrieu. but if it’s perry vs. landrieu, i will likely stick with perry. i don’t dislike mitch as a person, but i do think his lifetime in politics is more of a con than a pro, and i generally do not support the concept of political dynasties, even if they are democrats.

as for the other candidates, from the first time i saw troy henry speak, he seemed smarmy to me – and it’s only gotten worse through the campaign. it has been my experience in my lifetime that i am a very good judge of character and am almost always right when i have a gut feeling about someone, particularly negatively, and henry just gives me that “stay away from him” vibe. i don’t really need to say anything about rob couhig, except that he is a republican and that that is enough reason for me not to vote for him. he seems like a nice enough guy, but no. and please don’t even get me started on john georges; there are a million reasons why i don’t like him, but my one and only personal interaction with him was enough to cement the gut feelings i already had. (he basically “squatted” in my booth at the elysian fleas market in december with his body guards, and aggressively inserted himself in the middle of a transaction fae and i were trying to make, selling one of my handmade goods to a customer, to try to talk us into voting for him. he literally got up in fae’s face to try to engage her, even after she said she would not be voting for him. arrogant, ignorant and rude is how i would describe him based on that one interaction alone.) as for ramsey, i will say that i actually agreed with much of what she said at the forum on saturday, but her constant god and jesus references and reliance on faith-based communities for everything is just not for me. nothing inherently wrong with it, but too much jesus for me.

i’m sure i’ll have more to say on the mayoral race before the election, but this is a good start. and don’t forget, you can vote early until saturday if you are worried about not being able to vote on election day, what with all the mardi gras and super bowl hysteria.