Redux Pictures just sent me a tearsheet from a story that appeared in Gioia Magazine last year. From what I can tell, Gioia appears to be a higher-end women’s publication a la Marie Claire or Vogue, and like Marie Claire, they sneak some real journalism into each issue through feature stories and photo essays.

Two images from my This is Home series appear in a story about LGBTQ homeless youth. I worked on this story in San Francisco over the course of an entire year during grad school, and grew pretty close to several of the traveling kids who let me hang out with them when they passed through town. It’s always nice to see older personal work take on a new life through publication. Redux Pictures does a great job of distributing my stock archive and finding venues for pictures to live while keeping their original context. I’m happy to be working with them, and pleased to contribute some pictures to illustrate this story. I just wish I could read Italian.

Six Flags New Orleans was devastated in 2005, when the federal levee system failed after Hurricane Katrina. Since the park itself is surrounded by a six-foot flood berm, it retained several feet of brackish water long after surrounding areas had been drained. In July 2006, Six Flags Inc. concluded their damage assessments and declared the park to be an effective total loss of $32.5 million due to the damage caused by long term saltwater immersion.

Three years later, the City of New Orleans fined Six Flags $3 million and ordered the park to vacate its lease on the property. The corporation has effectively scrapped the site for parts, and relocated the single salvageable roller coaster ride to their San Antonio, TX location. The park in East New Orleans presently looks like something out of a doomsday sci-fi movie, with alligators, cottonmouths, shattered windows, and graffiti amidst the encroaching swamp.

More recently, a company based in California called Southern Star Amusement has introduced redevelopment plans that will fully restore the existing park area and double its size, with the addition of a water park and a movie studio catering to the burgeoning film industry in the New Orleans area. The corporation has posted a letter of intent that outlines a lease agreement with the city and their ideas for utilizing the property, but for the time being they are tasked with a huge clean-up and repair initiative. Six Flags New Orleans continues to stand as a grim reminder of Hurricane Katrina’s toll on the Gulf Coast.

On November 21st the Nine Times Social Aid & Pleasure Club rolled through New Orleans’ Upper Ninth Ward in their 12th Annual second line parade.

Born from the benevolent societies of the mid-1800s, traditional social aid and pleasure clubs supported their dues-paying members by defraying health care and funeral costs and financial hardship, and by organizing larger community projects and events. Nowadays, the clubs exist as a unifying presence and source of pride for some of New Orleans’ oldest neighborhoods, and their members still take to the streets in amazing threads and parade with some of the city’s best brass bands.

NPR featured the Nine Times Club back in 2006.

This year, they were joined by The Stooges and the To Be Continued Brass Band — five hours, nearly six miles, 90º heat, one hell of a time.