This we have learned: Extraordinary tragedy begets extraordinary generosity. Listen to the story of one couple's dream, wiped out by The Flood, then resurrected with a random act of kindness.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Chris Rose
Luis Bernhard and Sandra Bahhur, husband and wife, were chasing a dream. He is a retinal angiographer in the ophthalmology department of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which, translated into English, means he's a highly specialized photographer of the eyes. She is an operating room nurse at Tulane Medical Center.
That's what they do for a living, and a good living it is. But it's not their dream or their passion, really. What they really wanted out of life was to be New Orleans restaurateurs.
They're foodies, Luis and Sandra. They eat out a lot and they talk about what's good and what's bad and what they would do if they could have a real New Orleans restaurant of their own.
“Any time we go out to dinner, we critique everything," Sandra says. "We talk about things we could do better. It's been a dream of ours for 15 years. It was something I really wanted to try before I turned 40."
They took small steps toward their dream many years ago, when they opened a lunch and breakfast joint called Arabesque in the medical district of downtown New Orleans, next door to their day jobs.
But that was just eggs, sandwiches and Middle Eastern appetizers. It wasn't the dream -- a bustling, eclectic destination bistro with daily specials and cool furniture, fancy lighting, art on the walls and all that intangible stuff that makes a restaurant great, gives it that magic, sensual allure of the fine dining world.
They got real close to the dream in the fall of 2005. A year and a half earlier, they had bought a funky, dilapidated shotgun house on Carrollton, right by Canal, the site of a former sign shop.
"Truth is, it was ugly," Sandra said. "It didn't say 'restaurant' at all." Nevertheless, they bought the place and poured all their sweat, energy and savings -- and loans -- into it. Luis, a very capable carpenter and artist, did all the physical renovation himself.
They were set to open in November of that year. But then.
But then, in one afternoon, the new restaurant, the old restaurant, their home in Lakeview and their jobs were wiped out. You know the deal. "It's the same miserable story everyone else has around here," Sandra says.
Luis was transferred to the VA in Miami. The dream -- just one of a million dreams around here, really -- was over. They bought a place in Miami. Started over. Moved on. But then.
But then that uncanny and imperceptible New Orleans virus bloomed in their blood, their brains, their souls.
"How do we leave?" Sandra asks. "We had unfinished business here. I mean, Miami is gorgeous; really gorgeous. But when we'd go out to dinner, we'd realize how much we missed New Orleans, how much we missed the friendly environment of the city's restaurants, and the variety of life here. In Miami, every restaurant is high-end Italian. And, truthfully, Miami is pretty high strung."
So they came back. They got their old jobs back. Took out more loans. Gutted the house and the new restaurant; lost the lease on the old one. Started over, moved on -- sure. But started over and moved on here.
"We wanted to be part of the rebuilding," Sandra says. "We wanted to be pioneers."
Luis rolled up his sleeves and renovated the building at 127 N. Carrollton Ave. for the second time in two years. They developed an eclectic menu that merges Middle Eastern, Cuban and Louisiana cuisine. They got cool furniture and fancy lighting and nice art on the walls. They poured what was left of their physical and emotional selves into the dream, a one-of-a-kind bistro called, again, Arabesque.
But then.
But then they ran out of money. And this time for good. They had maxed out their loans and tapped their in-laws for everything. This fall, just weeks from opening their restaurant, still refurbishing their Lakeview home and still sitting on a fat bank note in Miami, they hit bottom. Flat broke and busted.
They were desperate. "We got laughed out of four banks," Sandra says. "We began to feel pretty stupid for thinking we could do this."
But then. A quick back story:
In September 2005, Dr. Toney Russell and his wife Gina, residents of Houston, had heard about everyone in trouble over here in New Orleans and decided to do what they could to help. Toney tracked down Dr. Kyle Dickson of New Orleans, a colleague in arms, who along with his wife Susan had been wiped out by the storm. The Russells wrote a check to the Dicksons for $10,000. No strings attached. Rise up and fix yourself, with a little help from a stranger.
About six weeks ago, just when Sandra and Luis had reached the end of their road, the Dicksons tried to repay the Russells. But Tony explained that it wasn't a loan, it was a gift. He advised the Dicksons, now back on their feet, to pass it along to the next guy who might need it.
Kyle and Susan had once lived next door to Luis and Sandra. And I think you know what happens next.
At the very moment Sandra and Luis pondered closing down the whole New Orleans operation and going back to Miami with their tails between their legs -- what were they thinking when they tried this, really? -- Sandra showed up with a check. For $10,000. No strings attached. Rise up and fix yourself.
In truth, $10,000 doesn't get you far in the restaurant business. But it bought Sandra and Luis a month and that's all they needed. With the help of a local printer who refused to take their money, they ran off their menus and dusted off the tabletops with enough capital to open 10 days ago, enough capital to get butts in the seats and start serving meals, start being real New Orleans restaurateurs.
"He decided to give it to us because he heard that we were helping rebuild the city," Luis says. "And it came at such a desperate time. We didn't know how -- or if -- we were ever going to open our doors. We were despondent."
And folks have been pouring in the door ever since, and with the cash register ringing and capital coming in, they have survived, so far, thanks to the kindness of strangers, a strange pipeline begun by a man in Houston who simply gave a damn and then a couple in New Orleans who clearly understand the concept of karma.
And the story doesn't end there. Or, at least, hopefully not. You don't break a chain like this.
Sitting in his hip new bistro a week ago, Luis acknowledged that, ultimately, the survival of his restaurant is up to market forces -- and whether the food is actually any good. But he smiled and said: "We're going to make this happen. And we realize what a helping hand we had. And when we get an extra $10,000 -- whenever that may be -- we're going to pass it along. We're going to pay it forward to the next person who might need it."
And somewhere down the road, a dream awaits salvation, Katrina-style.
. . . . . . .
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com, or (504) 826-3309, or (504) 352-2535.
Showing posts with label Chris Rose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Rose. Show all posts
Friday, November 30, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The Advocate: Why Harry Shearer Has Become a Tireless Spokesman for New Orleans
"The Advocate" by Chris Rose for the Times Picayune, Sunday, November 11, 2007
Harry Shearer is one of those multifaceted personalities whose career has always been characterized with lots of dashes and slashes; he is an actor/writer/comedian/political satirist/ broadcaster/commentator/blogger -- among other job titles.
Perhaps his greatest fame -- and best pay -- has come from his role as the animated voices of Mr. Burns and Ned Flanders on "The Simpsons." But for residents of his adopted home of New Orleans, his preeminent job for the past two years might best be described as: cheerleader/truth teller/banner waver.
Since the fall of 2005, perhaps no celebrity has matched Shearer's steady, visible and insistent support for and defense of the city. At risk of alienating fans who'd rather not think too hard or too much about it, Shearer continues to use all forms of media to challenge Americans to remain dialed in to the battered physical and emotional landscapes of the Gulf Coast.
How Shearer ended up as one of the city's chief spokesmen, sometimes assigned the exalted position of "The Voice of New Orleans," is as multifaceted as the man himself. One motivation, he admits, was guilt.
"I was off making a movie during the first two months of the disaster," he says. "I was suffering, but at long distance. And when I finally came back for the first time, in November, everyone was telling me how lucky I was to have missed the worst part; that I had gotten in after the smell had dissipated a little bit."
Shearer and his wife, chanteuse Judith Owen, have had a French Quarter condo for 12 years. It started as a vacation getaway but in recent years has served as their home for up to half the year. It was undamaged by Katrina.
"So, yes, I felt lucky," he says. "But yet, I still felt: When it was all so much worse, I was off making a movie. And I realized that I wasn't going to be spending my next six months or a year doing what everybody else was going to be doing -- plunging into their insurance companies and Road Home and all the rest -- so I figured that energy should be used for keeping -- no, getting -- the story of the city out and keeping it alive."
Another motivating factor, he says, was the abdication of support from other celebrities with New Orleans connections, folks who had the power and influence to get their voices heard and make things happen -- but who didn't.
"Seeing certain people of certain fame trash the city publicly just made me more determined to try and balance the scale in the other direction," he says. "I don't hold anything against anybody who got whacked and split, but people who had nothing bad happen to them and then just walked away saying 'screw you' ticked me off."
On this subject, Shearer doesn't call out any names in particular, save one -- that of another New Orleans celebrity transplant named Harry.
"I'm the un-Harry Anderson," Shearer says of the notoriously prickly TV star whose post-storm departure from New Orleans was accompanied by a slew of withering comments that did neither him nor the city any justice. "I'm trying to be the nice Harry," Shearer says. "I'm trying to rescue the name."
And so Shearer blogs incessantly on the popular Huffington Post Web site, spreading the straight dope on the city and referring readers to newspaper and magazine stories. He regularly invites New Orleans musicians, chefs and artists on his weekly syndicated radio show. He went on "Celebrity Jeopardy," representing -- and winning $50,000 for -- the Tipitina's Foundation.
He recently wrote a guest editorial for The San Francisco Chronicle, which heralded the city's spirit and can-do-ness.
"Despite it all, the city's joie de vivre, its celebration of the quotidian as well as the occasion, and its bawdy, take-no-prisoners sense of humor survive," he wrote. "(And) slowly, perhaps more slowly than they imagined, New Orleanians are sending a message that the rest of the nation seems to have difficulty receiving: Today, two years after their world got turned upside down, New Orleans is Bootstrap City."
Yeah, you right, Harry! And on and on he goes, on Bill Maher's HBO program, on National Public Radio, on every radio station in Scotland during a publicity blitz there -- anywhere and everywhere he can get people to listen. So, naturally, two years into this thing, some fans are telling him it's time to give it a rest.
"All the time," he confirms. "The same thing happens to Brian Williams (from the 'NBC Nightly News'). And my point with Brian, which I made to him personally, was maybe if he told people why they should care as opposed to just doing victim stories all the time, maybe they wouldn't be bitching so much."
Why people should care, he says, is simple, an argument well-worn in New Orleans: "People outside of here should care because their tax dollars paid to flood the city. Their tax dollars paid to do it wrong. That's a pretty big story, I think. And my prediction is that five years from now, somebody in Washington will win a Pulitzer Prize for finally discovering that."
Another reason for Katrina fatigue, he says, is racism. "It comes through every pore of what some people say. And for that, I have to blame the national media, which framed this very early on as a 'poor suffering black' story. They couldn't get their cameras out to St. Bernard Parish. They got them to the Convention Center and figured, well: That's all we need. And so, they misframed the story, and being New York liberals, it appealed to them that way anyway."
But despite -- or maybe because of -- a growing chorus of fans who think Shearer needs new subject matter, he keeps coming up with new ways to spread the gospel. His most recent offering is the lovingly crafted "Crescent City Stories," a sweet, poignant and melodic series of interviews and musical cameos currently airing on the new entertainment Web site www.MyDamnChannel.com.
"I was thinking: OK, what am I going to do next?" he says. "So much of what has come out of here in video documentation has been done by New Yorkers and I thought, as a quasi-local, it would be a good thing to let other locals give their view of things. And I thought -- again -- I could try to counteract the barrage of victim stories we get from the national media. The idea was to put some people I know for their loquacity and their cogency on the air, without an agenda, and just let them tell me something about their last two years."
"Crescent City Stories" debuted its first episode several weeks ago and Shearer has added a new one each week. In addition to his own commentary, he has profiled LSU hurricane specialist Ivor van Heerden, singer/composer Phillip Manuel and torch singer Leah Chase.
Ambiance for most of the episodes is set by local keyboard master David Torkanowsky, who is also profiled. An emotional apex of the series is certainly when Torkanowsky mournfully accompanies Chase as she sings: "Was this storm sent to make me realize what living is/It's the beauty of love/The joy of Life/Is this what 'rebirth' means?"
Printed words do not do the segment justice. Go see it for yourself. All the stories are archived on the site, along with a wealth of Shearer's more familiar brand of non-Katrina related political satire.
For a one-man phenomenon, Shearer smartly underplays his own role in "Crescent City Stories," simply serving as on-air interviewer and occasional narrator. It's great stuff, and uncharacteristically unfunny for Shearer.
"Most of the subjects were musicians, so there was a way to have music carry through it all," Shearer says. "But it was all mainly about counteracting that steady diet of 'poor pitiful me' that we get from the national media."
And they're great pieces to remind locals why we love it here, part of the continuing and sometimes arduous process of loving this place -- and a phenomenon Shearer recently experienced.
"I was just showing a friend of mine from Great Britain, a travel writer, around town," he says. "And, watching it all through her eyes enriched my appreciation of the city. What I saw in the people -- what came through -- was the ability, no matter how much angst you may be going through, to experience joy. And that's part of what makes this place different from, say, New York or L.A., where, no matter how much advantage you may have, you're always open to experiencing unhappiness; where, no matter how good things are, you find a reason to be unhappy."
All this cheerleading and boosterism is a far cry from the Harry Shearer who carved a career as a funnyman with no particular agenda. And he is well aware of that.
"When I was a kid, I was relentless about making fun of celebrities with causes. You know, pick a disease, any disease. So to change gears like that and suddenly have a cause and now be asked: 'You're the voice of a cartoon character; why should we believe what you have to say about this?' I guess you could say there's a credibility problem there.
"But this is not what I would choose to be doing -- if I had a choice," he says. "There's a part of me -- a part in all of us, I guess -- that would like to just go back to the way it all was before, just doing what I used to do.
"I wish circumstances were different. I wish there were more well-known people from here or living here who had reason to do this, but there aren't, so we all just play the cards we are dealt."
. . . . . . .
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com, or (504) 826-3309, or (504) 352-2535.
Harry Shearer is one of those multifaceted personalities whose career has always been characterized with lots of dashes and slashes; he is an actor/writer/comedian/political satirist/ broadcaster/commentator/blogger -- among other job titles.
Perhaps his greatest fame -- and best pay -- has come from his role as the animated voices of Mr. Burns and Ned Flanders on "The Simpsons." But for residents of his adopted home of New Orleans, his preeminent job for the past two years might best be described as: cheerleader/truth teller/banner waver.
Since the fall of 2005, perhaps no celebrity has matched Shearer's steady, visible and insistent support for and defense of the city. At risk of alienating fans who'd rather not think too hard or too much about it, Shearer continues to use all forms of media to challenge Americans to remain dialed in to the battered physical and emotional landscapes of the Gulf Coast.
How Shearer ended up as one of the city's chief spokesmen, sometimes assigned the exalted position of "The Voice of New Orleans," is as multifaceted as the man himself. One motivation, he admits, was guilt.
"I was off making a movie during the first two months of the disaster," he says. "I was suffering, but at long distance. And when I finally came back for the first time, in November, everyone was telling me how lucky I was to have missed the worst part; that I had gotten in after the smell had dissipated a little bit."
Shearer and his wife, chanteuse Judith Owen, have had a French Quarter condo for 12 years. It started as a vacation getaway but in recent years has served as their home for up to half the year. It was undamaged by Katrina.
"So, yes, I felt lucky," he says. "But yet, I still felt: When it was all so much worse, I was off making a movie. And I realized that I wasn't going to be spending my next six months or a year doing what everybody else was going to be doing -- plunging into their insurance companies and Road Home and all the rest -- so I figured that energy should be used for keeping -- no, getting -- the story of the city out and keeping it alive."
Another motivating factor, he says, was the abdication of support from other celebrities with New Orleans connections, folks who had the power and influence to get their voices heard and make things happen -- but who didn't.
"Seeing certain people of certain fame trash the city publicly just made me more determined to try and balance the scale in the other direction," he says. "I don't hold anything against anybody who got whacked and split, but people who had nothing bad happen to them and then just walked away saying 'screw you' ticked me off."
On this subject, Shearer doesn't call out any names in particular, save one -- that of another New Orleans celebrity transplant named Harry.
"I'm the un-Harry Anderson," Shearer says of the notoriously prickly TV star whose post-storm departure from New Orleans was accompanied by a slew of withering comments that did neither him nor the city any justice. "I'm trying to be the nice Harry," Shearer says. "I'm trying to rescue the name."
And so Shearer blogs incessantly on the popular Huffington Post Web site, spreading the straight dope on the city and referring readers to newspaper and magazine stories. He regularly invites New Orleans musicians, chefs and artists on his weekly syndicated radio show. He went on "Celebrity Jeopardy," representing -- and winning $50,000 for -- the Tipitina's Foundation.
He recently wrote a guest editorial for The San Francisco Chronicle, which heralded the city's spirit and can-do-ness.
"Despite it all, the city's joie de vivre, its celebration of the quotidian as well as the occasion, and its bawdy, take-no-prisoners sense of humor survive," he wrote. "(And) slowly, perhaps more slowly than they imagined, New Orleanians are sending a message that the rest of the nation seems to have difficulty receiving: Today, two years after their world got turned upside down, New Orleans is Bootstrap City."
Yeah, you right, Harry! And on and on he goes, on Bill Maher's HBO program, on National Public Radio, on every radio station in Scotland during a publicity blitz there -- anywhere and everywhere he can get people to listen. So, naturally, two years into this thing, some fans are telling him it's time to give it a rest.
"All the time," he confirms. "The same thing happens to Brian Williams (from the 'NBC Nightly News'). And my point with Brian, which I made to him personally, was maybe if he told people why they should care as opposed to just doing victim stories all the time, maybe they wouldn't be bitching so much."
Why people should care, he says, is simple, an argument well-worn in New Orleans: "People outside of here should care because their tax dollars paid to flood the city. Their tax dollars paid to do it wrong. That's a pretty big story, I think. And my prediction is that five years from now, somebody in Washington will win a Pulitzer Prize for finally discovering that."
Another reason for Katrina fatigue, he says, is racism. "It comes through every pore of what some people say. And for that, I have to blame the national media, which framed this very early on as a 'poor suffering black' story. They couldn't get their cameras out to St. Bernard Parish. They got them to the Convention Center and figured, well: That's all we need. And so, they misframed the story, and being New York liberals, it appealed to them that way anyway."
But despite -- or maybe because of -- a growing chorus of fans who think Shearer needs new subject matter, he keeps coming up with new ways to spread the gospel. His most recent offering is the lovingly crafted "Crescent City Stories," a sweet, poignant and melodic series of interviews and musical cameos currently airing on the new entertainment Web site www.MyDamnChannel.com.
"I was thinking: OK, what am I going to do next?" he says. "So much of what has come out of here in video documentation has been done by New Yorkers and I thought, as a quasi-local, it would be a good thing to let other locals give their view of things. And I thought -- again -- I could try to counteract the barrage of victim stories we get from the national media. The idea was to put some people I know for their loquacity and their cogency on the air, without an agenda, and just let them tell me something about their last two years."
"Crescent City Stories" debuted its first episode several weeks ago and Shearer has added a new one each week. In addition to his own commentary, he has profiled LSU hurricane specialist Ivor van Heerden, singer/composer Phillip Manuel and torch singer Leah Chase.
Ambiance for most of the episodes is set by local keyboard master David Torkanowsky, who is also profiled. An emotional apex of the series is certainly when Torkanowsky mournfully accompanies Chase as she sings: "Was this storm sent to make me realize what living is/It's the beauty of love/The joy of Life/Is this what 'rebirth' means?"
Printed words do not do the segment justice. Go see it for yourself. All the stories are archived on the site, along with a wealth of Shearer's more familiar brand of non-Katrina related political satire.
For a one-man phenomenon, Shearer smartly underplays his own role in "Crescent City Stories," simply serving as on-air interviewer and occasional narrator. It's great stuff, and uncharacteristically unfunny for Shearer.
"Most of the subjects were musicians, so there was a way to have music carry through it all," Shearer says. "But it was all mainly about counteracting that steady diet of 'poor pitiful me' that we get from the national media."
And they're great pieces to remind locals why we love it here, part of the continuing and sometimes arduous process of loving this place -- and a phenomenon Shearer recently experienced.
"I was just showing a friend of mine from Great Britain, a travel writer, around town," he says. "And, watching it all through her eyes enriched my appreciation of the city. What I saw in the people -- what came through -- was the ability, no matter how much angst you may be going through, to experience joy. And that's part of what makes this place different from, say, New York or L.A., where, no matter how much advantage you may have, you're always open to experiencing unhappiness; where, no matter how good things are, you find a reason to be unhappy."
All this cheerleading and boosterism is a far cry from the Harry Shearer who carved a career as a funnyman with no particular agenda. And he is well aware of that.
"When I was a kid, I was relentless about making fun of celebrities with causes. You know, pick a disease, any disease. So to change gears like that and suddenly have a cause and now be asked: 'You're the voice of a cartoon character; why should we believe what you have to say about this?' I guess you could say there's a credibility problem there.
"But this is not what I would choose to be doing -- if I had a choice," he says. "There's a part of me -- a part in all of us, I guess -- that would like to just go back to the way it all was before, just doing what I used to do.
"I wish circumstances were different. I wish there were more well-known people from here or living here who had reason to do this, but there aren't, so we all just play the cards we are dealt."
. . . . . . .
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com, or (504) 826-3309, or (504) 352-2535.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Chris Rose, columnist for the Times Picayune 9/23/07
An Open Letter to the Producers of 'K-Ville'
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Chris Rose
Dear "K-Ville" Guys,
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm a big fan of your work. Really. That said, we gotta talk.
Let's cut right to the chase -- and not a car chase, please.
We liked your noble attempt at a post-Katrina New Orleans cop show. I say "we" because I wrote a story about it on Tuesday, the day after your prime-time premiere on Fox, and the responses I got from scores of readers ran about 9-to-1 in support of the actors, their characters and the down-but-not-out message you presented.
It was the formulaic plot that left the senses unfulfilled. And we like our senses filled around here.
You've got a helluva lot of money wrapped up in this show and we've invested a lot of blood into this living-in-New Orleans thing, so it's in our mutual best interest for "K-Ville" to succeed.
I don't know a thing about ratings, but when it comes to searing human drama about the life-and-death struggles of a group of people driven to preserve their hometown no matter how profound the collateral damage to their personal and professional lives, then trust me on this one:
I'm your guy.
And as my colleague Dave Walker expertly articulated last week, what you've got here are two different TV shows. And one of them really sucks.
I'm referring to the cop drama. Car chases and Uzi-toting mercenaries are so, well . . . so '80s.
Two years after The Thing, this town is many things. "Retro" is not one of them.
There aren't many ways for new shows to distinguish themselves from the cacophony of prime-time crime dramas that litter the airwaves. But you have a very real chance here.
So, please, dig deeper. If you must give us violence -- and we realize you must -- then give us the real thing, the real story, the real streets, not this watered-down James Bond bunk.
Ditch the wild-scheme plotlines. Don't be afraid to delve into the discomfiting reality that is life in the off-camera "K-Ville." Do race. Do politics. Press buttons. Pose difficult questions that provoke even more difficult answers.
Make us uncomfortable. Make America uncomfortable. Make us think.
Katrina is not just a local issue, as much as many folks around the country would prefer it to be. It's an upheaval of massive national implications, up there with the Depression, the Dust Bowl and the diaspora that followed the Civil War.
In short, it's American history. And you guys have gotten a hold of this long before the History Channel, so take the opportunity to make it shine.
You can make a network prime-time TV series that is groundbreaking, entertaining and meaningful. You can be the next "M*A*S*H." But only if you stop trying to be the next "Miami Vice."
Push buttons. We can take it. The nightmares of race and politics are not exclusive to New Orleans; we're just more transparent about it. We're the fishbowl. So go ahead. Make an example of us as the aggregate sum of all of America's social ills. Everyone else is.
And a little more humor wouldn't hurt. Tragedy fuels comedy -- it's always been that way -- and our darkness can be full of absurd laughter. Some days, it's the only thing that keeps us going. (Maybe you can get Bill O'Reilly to write some jokes; he's the funniest guy on the Fox payroll.)
Then again, what you should probably do is hire some of my readers to co-write the series with you. You want Reality TV? We've got plenty of reality to go around in this town.
Too much, in fact. But we can save some of it for the inevitable series spin-off. And you can name that anything you want, as long as it's not "Gone With the Wind." Or the water.
. . . . . . .
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504) 352-2535 or (504) 826-3309.
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