(Image: The front of Charity Hospital, abandoned nearly 14 years after Hurricane Katrina) By Kiki Prager   Since Katrina in 2005, New Orleans has been struggling to recover its preexisting care programs and to provide aid for post-traumatic stress symptoms of those who witnessed the tragedies the storm brought. Mental health beds dropped from 487… Read More A Quiet Calamity: The Crumbling Mental Health Care System in Louisiana

By Maria Sweitzer   After two particularly deadly months in the spring of 2013, New Orleans’s murder rate was the sixth highest in the United States. After joining forces to combine the Upper 9th Ward’s G-Strip gang with Central City’s notorious 3NG drug clan in 2009, the 39ers gang presided over the complicated drug distribution… Read More New Software Seeks to Stop Crime Before It Happens

Robi Gilmore and his sister Tessa pictured in their family’s authentic Vodou shop by Elizabeth Vidrine   Outside, the building looked abandoned, a brick shed with garage door-style windows. It was dark, the only light coming from a street lamp on the empty lot next door.   Inside, the walls, ceiling, and floors were painted… Read More The Truth in the Lie

By Amanda Kraus   “Music is a language, and in New Orleans, that language is jazz. The people here, they get it, and it makes it easier to communicate,” said Josh Mosier, an Austinite who moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane University. In seventh grade, he visited New Orleans for the first time with… Read More Sustaining the Age-Old Tradition: Rising Artists in New Orleans

by William Potts   For many people, flooding is a rare occurrence. For Andrea Baudy, who grew up in Gentilly and has lived in New Orleans all her life, it’s the way things go.   The 21-year-old Tulane student has witnessed firsthand the devastating effects that storms and rainwater can have on a city which… Read More Rethinking Water: A New Orleans Story

by Dominic Frost While driving from New Orleans to their native Florida, Jonathan Traviesa and Christina Molina – partners in both artistic endeavor and life – stop along their coastal route to photograph kitschy Florida ephemera. “We don’t need the state border sign to know we have arrived. We only need tangerine-colored Honda Civics with satellite-looking… Read More Tristes Tropiques

By Alexis Martin Not unlike most things in New Orleans, the recent history of its school system champions the city’s legacy for institutions as unique as they are complicated. Following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city’s schools experienced a full reconfiguration, shifting from its “failing” system of traditionally-operated public schools, to one comprised of… Read More Band-Aids on a Bullet Wound

By Sophie Sklar The story of the crime, incarceration, and drug use in New Orleans is not unfamiliar to its inhabitants. It has, unfortunately, become one of the defining features of many areas of the city. The story that many people aren’t quite as familiar with, however, is how this deviant behavior affects the children… Read More The Cycle of Kids and Crime

By Amanda Kraus (Buchanan, left and Klebanoff, right) Photograph by Luke Fairbairn On the corner of Zimple and Hillary sits your average uptown New Orleanian house: an expansive porch featuring string lights, lounge chairs, and a railing strung with Mardi Gras beads. House residents Johnny Buchanan and Ben Klebanoff, who you can usually find sitting… Read More Zimpo Porch Sessions Makes its Debut

By Sophie Sklar The year was 1983, and Ella Brennan had gathered famous faces from across the food industry to speak at the American Cuisine Symposium. It had been 14 years since the Brennan family had taken over Commander’s Palace, a renown New Orleans restaurant, and Ella was eager to bring people from different ends… Read More Commander’s Palace Celebrates Good Food and Good Service