Alan Gutierrez

Wandering out of 910 Esplanade today with Becky Houtman in tow, off to see the opening of the new Farrington Smith Gallery, when, to my surprise, I encoutered a letter carrier, with my letter box opened. I have no mailbox key, so this was an fleeting opportunity to check my mail. I produced my driver’s license, the one recently aquired for the sake of domestic travel, the one that says that I live at 910 Esplanade Ave Apt 5, New Orleans, LA.

She begins to extract letters and magazines, compacted into the bin for apartment. They’d been mashed down, the letters at the bottom were soaking from today’s rain.

Nothing had my name on it. My motor voter registration did not take apparently, as I expected to at least have recieved my new voter registration card. The only message I had that belonged to me was, in fact, addressed to resident. It was to inform me of the arrival of a new neighbor, a sex offender.

The letter carrier asked that I give her the letters that were not addressed to me. Becky and I fretted, and tought to get a plastic bag for the dripping wad of mail, but my carrier was ready with a rubber band. She inisted that first class mail be returned to the post office to be forwarded to the indended recipient. The letters were flattened and banded. As I handed her a particularly soggy magazine, she addressed my quizzical look by saying, “We know how to dry them out.”

And so we parted, our representative of the United States Post Office having given us a sense that all was right with the world. The rules attached to a particular class of postage were being adhered to strictly, in the lower French Quarter or New Orleans.

Mark Folse has written an article called The Firebirds which you all should read. On Wednesday a similar sight as two Blackhawk helicopters in civilian livery of some sort, shuttled over the French Quarter, to the Mississippi, and in the direction of the Treme. It appears that is was a [fire on N Rampart].

Empty cities tend to burn. This was the experience of Detroit, Michigan which would burn for the foreign press, annually on [Devil's Night].

Flood damaged wires, squatters cooking on open flame, or arson; the threat of a sweeping fire in the dense, wood-structured neighborhoods of New Orleans is intense.

I’d like to direct you to the high concept of my new project French Quarter Confidential. Those of you who hover around here, start hovering around there. I’ll make it worth your while.

Coming in from Envie, where I purchased a cup of coffee, I’d been gone thirty minutes, to find a neighbor standing at the door of 908 Esplanade Ave, and a young dog sitting in the doorway. The dog is barking with a bark that yelps. A loud squeal of a bark. This is not the retreiver that yelps so in the next courtyard. It is an abandoned mutt. Coo at it or scold it, it continues to bark. The neighbor goes into his condo to call the SPCA. I go into my courtyard apartment to write you with the remaining electricity.

There was a door hanger on the main door to 908 Esplande Ave, the slave quarters of which are home for me. It was from the city. It said that power would be shut off in 10 days. The reason given. Many faulty wires.

Waking up on time is never a problem for me at my place on Esplande Ave in the French Quarter. Windows run all along one side of my narrow slave quarter apartment. The morning sun fills my apartment with light. I’m always awake before nine. I do not own an alarm clock.

Tomorrow (today) at the corner of St Phillip and Decatur at 4:30 pm. By 5:30 the parade will arrive at Mulate’s at 201 Julia St where Erma Thomas will be performing. So says Jimmy Delery. I’ll be there.

Here are some photos of the Farrington Smith Gallery.

The approach to 832 Royal St.

Application of Farrington Smith Gallery logo on signage.

Separate signage, a logo resting on a bench in gallery.

A boquet of Farrington Smith Gallery business cards.

A full fuzzy photo set of Farrington Smith Gallery photographs is available at Flicker.