Biblical Scholar and NOLAFugees Faith-Based Correspondent David Dykes covers developments in the Crescent City with an eye to The Almighty. This week he reflects on the repopulation effort, the loss of O'Neil Broyard and his landmark Saturn Bar, and some of the 9th Ward's more famous patrons.

   Now as to what the 9th ward will be: It seems that property values down here in the Bywater have gone through the roof, since we managed to stay relatively dry.  Lakeside of St. Claude is still dark and the interiors of houses are piling onto the sidewalks at what seems to me a lower rate than, say, Gentilly or Lakeside. And if the Bywater becomes a boutique neighborhood, it seems unlikely that the rest of the vicinity will be allowed to fall back into the hands of renters and section eight rabble. 

      So the other night I see Frankie Muniz at Mimi’s and it occurs to me to think of the shift in celebrity status that has been inflicted on our ‘hood.  We have always attracted a certain type of celebrities here on this side of town, the sort of West Coast type desperate for the sort of authenticity that New Orleans offers and the Ninth offers in spades.  Nicolas Cage nee Coppola was an occasional visitor to the late Saturn Bar, as were Dan “Blackface” Aykroyd and others of their ilk.  Rumor has it that Sesame Street’s Mr. Snuffalupugus  once filmed an XXX film (Trunkin’) in one of the coffee warehouses here, but the story is likely apocryphal.

     Sure, I guess Sean Penn probably floated through a few months back, packing and surly as a good fauxthentic celeb’ should be, but since then we have been seriously lacking in such fare and have been sufficing with Muniz, who needs to avoid the tar brush of toughness if he is going to stay perpetually adolescent in TV Land, and resident Dave Pirner who is so unassuming and has become such a fixture that he is no longer a celebrity at all, just a part of the Ward.  Gone forever, I fear, are the gun-toting Penn, plastic-haired Koppel and dog-loving McConaughey.  Perhaps it is just as well.

   So without lame celebrities in search of cred, with my local crack house unreconstructed and the Saturn Bar gone, what will become of our beloved upper 9th?  I fear that we will be given over to yuppies (is that even a word any more?) and other corporate types.   Our best hope of maintaining the scumminess that keeps our streets free of Tulane students and antiquers are the gutter clowns, whose presence here is like a rotten smell at a debutante ball— noxious but just what it might take to hold off the money creeps for a bit longer.  Combining the quiet charm of circus clowns, the subtle good taste of facial tattooing, musical blandishments like a flock of grackles, and all the smug selfishness of gutter punks everywhere, the local clowns move about like locusts, poisoning every locale that will tolerate them with their noxious presence.  Smelling their patchouli and old sweat drenched corpi and suffering their caterwauling and loud chatter might be a small price to pay.  They might be just what we need here: scarecrows in an abandoned field.
    
 

David Dykes changes lives and studies his Apocrypha in the 9th Ward.