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Get Lost, Gustav

CHN » True Hoop
August 28th, 2008 by CHN
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We're just about to get to the third anniversary of Katrina, and sure enough New Orleans is poised to evacuate once again, this time for Gustav, which is a tropical storm reportedly threatening to become a hurricane by the time it hits the gulf coast. Get lost, Gustav. New Orleans doesn't need this. TickTock, from the blog HornetsHype, has a must-read rememberance of three years ago. It might be a tad PG-13. Here's part: ... three years later, and this is the important thing, this is more than a story of a hurricane. It's a story about the resilience and grim humor of people who learned they had to rely on themselves. It's a story about stereotypes: about people who heard they were supposed to be an inhuman bunch of looters, who were told they were stupid for living in a place that was their home (sometimes, ludicrously, by people who themselves lived above a fault line or on a tornado-prone plain), who were accused of stealing FEMA money from taxpayers. They said, "Good riddance." <8:00 PM and you're in the car, forehead leaning on the glass, rain collecting in ominous puddles along the side of the highway, car headlights stacked to the horizon, gas running low.> Then this winter they said, "New Orleans doesn't care about the Hornets. New Orleans doesn't want the Hornets." And you know what I say to that? I say, "F--- you. Don't tell me what I want." Don't tell me what my city needs and does not need. You weren't there. You came to party, but you didn't want the baggage. You weren't there with the doors hanging open and banging in the wind, up and down an eerily empty street littered with debris. You weren't there when the traffic lights didn't work for a year. You weren't there when the Saints scored a touchdown 90 seconds into the first home game after Katrina, and a whole city leapt up in unison, and it meant something. You didn't see all those little kids dressed in Chris Paul jerseys. You weren't there the night I heard an indescribable roar, and I looked up from the court, and realized New Orleans Arena was full, from bottom to top. The Hornets are selling tickets. The Hornets are making New Orleans feel good about itself again. The Hornets, and New Orleans, don't need Gustav to screw all that up.

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