Taking Spring Break to Rebuild

Nola.com kicked off the return of the weekly BourboCam Live! last night covering the two St. Patrick's Day parades in the French Quarter. Aside from missing part of one to stuff my face with a Gyro (completely forgetting that it was still Friday and lent mind you, but that's another blog post another time), we did talk to several groups of college students out enjoying their Friday night after a long week of gutting flooded houses in damaged areas like the 9th Ward and Slidell. For them the there was little question in how they wanted to spend spring break. They wanted to make their mark helping people whos homes remained largly untouched almost 7 months after the storm.

Unfortunately, I gathered no one really explained our roach situation. One student could not believe that roaches really could get that big untill they discovered the hordes dead ones in the walls of some of the houses they gutted. One of the other girls had her own encounter when a large roach landed on her back and tried to crawl down the front of her shirt.

Cue the freak out.

Homes weren't the only things on spring breakers lists. While waiting to pick up my gyro, I had the fortune of chatting with a second year law student out of, I think, Boston. She was in town with several other law students to look at and process cases of inmates being held for minor charges before the storm hit and were still jailed.

Back on BourboCam we met wave after wave of students from various states, with Minnesota, Illinois, and Wyoming seeming to stand out the most. I've also got reason to believe there were some Canadians in the mix. All of them happy to be helping out and happier to earn what became this morning's hangover.

Along with what Jon called, "College Students Gone Mild," we saw the return of another favorite subject on Bourbon St: Any convention having to do with sex. Last year I worked the swingers convention, this year I met those kooky girls of Slumber Parties here to thank their sellers, peddle their wares, demonstrate new gadgets, and well you get the idea. While the toys may not make it into Wired News columnist Regina Lynn's review of the hi-tech they did score points with Cat's Meow MC Big Mac (Mac may have scored points with them after a discussion of shoe size, he apparently has big feet.)

All and all the first night back left me with a pretty good feeling and I'm looking forward to my next show on March 31st.