This was my first time visiting parts of the Gulf Coast that were hit by hurricane Katrina. I have to say it was rather enlightening. I walked around a bunch of damaged areas, played on house foundations, and chucked rocks into the ocean from what used to be a huge casino on the water. It was pretty mesmerizing. I mean, take the old casino site for example. Here it is.

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I mean, that’s just fucking huge. In that big puddle there used to sit and entire casino. I mean, hotel and everything. It was like 8 stories tall. They found it a few blocks inland. I mean, what the fuck? What picks up an eight story building that’s about 120 yards wide and 300 yards long? Sweet jesus. Now, if you scroll the map North a bit, you can see all of the house foundations. Now, the houses right on the shore were some pretty big and fairly expensive houses. The houses just a block inland though, those aren’t. I’m not sayin’ they’re poor people. They’re not. They’re working, middle class types. Construction workers etc. Good people. They lost a lot. I mean, a whole lot. My friend’s place that’s he’s staying in had about 4 feet of water in it. It’s just a few blocks inland. It was one of the lucky ones. I mean, a whole lot of people lost everything they had. It wasn’t just New Orleans. They got all the attention. It was much worse in Mississippi. New Orleans got clobbered with more a direct human impact. People on roofs waiving down helicopters. People wading through the flooded streets. Many people there were too poor to leave. Either they didn’t have cars or couldn’t buy the gas. What else were they supposed to do other than stay there? At least in Biloxi, most people got out. The thing there is that whole industries were lost. New Orleans thrives on tourism. If anything, I knew a ton of people that went to New Orleans just to see the damage and from what I saw there a couple of months ago, they’ve recovered rather well on that front. Biloxi though. Wow. There are still empty lots everywhere. Bombed out buildings in downtown. Gutted, fenced off. The firehouse near my friends place had no walls. I guess they figured they could do without them, put the money toward rebuilding something else.

In Biloxi, the houses on the shore, or near it, can’t get insurance. So, if there isn’t a house, there never will be again. Since no one will insure it no one will build it. Personally, I think that’s good to some degree. Let the state slowly buy up all of that land. Let them nurture the beach front and let it become partly wild again. If anything is built, let it be something like the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art that’s being rebuilt currently (it’s effing beautiful). Or let them build things like the new visitor and tourism center. So far they’ve only bulldozed the site in prep or construction. I just don’t think there should be any more Waffle Houses, casinos, or shopping centers along the beach. Yes, there was a mall on the beach. The EdgeWater shopping mall.

Anyhow, I’ve blabbered enough about all that.

While I was down there I ate a shit load of fresh shrimp. We went down to the small craft dock in Biloxi and bought 4 pounds of medium shrimp and 2 pounds of large shrimp. We grilled the large and boiled the medium. We had what was deamed The Great Biloxi Feastivus of 2009. We grilled the large ones up with some tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and some crazy awesome marinade we whipped up from garlic, apple cider vinegar, fresh jalapenos (neighbor grew em), fresh basil and thyme (my friend grew em), and something else, I can’t remember what. We grilled em up real fresh. The medium scrumps we boiled but not first. We boiled a bunch of water, added the crab/shrimp boil stuff, a bunch of lemons, and some spices. We tossed in a bunch of corn and cooked it then drained it. Then we threw in some potatoes and onions. Took them out. Last we threw in the scrimps and boiled em right up. De Lish. Put those suckers in a big bowl, little more apple cider vinegar, some lemon juice, throw on a handful of fresh basil and you’re ready for The Great Biloxi Feastivus of 2009. Oh yeah, we smoked a bit before eating it too.

I also hung out on the beach at night. Went to the Walter Inglis Anderson Museum and saw some pretty trippy shroomed out art. Man, that stuff was freakin’ awesome. We also explored the area of Ocean View, had a po-boy at Fayard’s and another at the Government Street Grocery. All three towns (Gulfport, Biloxi, and Ocean View) seemed like pretty awesome little spots. I’m glad I went and can’t wait to come back and decimate some more shrimp.