Maple Leaf Bar - Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

The Maple Leaf hosted the Krewe of OAK "Midsummer Mardi Gras" parade and party as scheduled on the night of Saturday, August 27, 2005, although Hurricane Katrina was barreling down on the city. While attendance was smaller than usual, a crowd insisted on partying New Orleans style one last time. Some came to the event from having spent the day boarding up their homes and packing up their cars, and evacuated from the city after the party.

The Maple Leaf was closed for several weeks in the aftermath of the storm (see: Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans). Owner Hank Staples stayed in New Orleans to guard the bar and his other properties, while vowing in interviews with national media outlets to host the first concert in New Orleans after the storm. And on September 30, 2005, Walter "Wolfman" Washington played the Maple Leaf's first post-Katrina show in New Orleans. (Some other local musicians who were playing in the aftermath of the storm dispute the claim that it was the city's first post-Katrina public performance, but this was the first to generate such sizable crowds and media attention.) That night many of the journalists, cameramen, and crew from NBC News and other media outlets joined the party and recorded the event. The band's equipment was powered by a diesel generator because electricity had not yet been restored to most of the city. The gig was eventually shut down by police and National Guard as the city was still under a curfew. Electricity was restored to this section of the city about a week later.

After Hurricane Katrina, several poets nation-wide came together to lament, honor, and pray for the victims of Katrina and Rita. Several of these poets, known world-wide as the Hymnagistes, published a volume of poetry: Hurricane Poems: An Anthology (Des Hymnagistes Press, 2006). These poets raised enough money to provide the Maple Leaf Poetry Reading Series a new microphone and funds for publishing a new volume of poetry (Maple Leaf Rag III).

Read more about this topic:  Maple Leaf Bar

Famous quotes containing the word hurricane:

    Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)