You live in NOLA? You the person i need to be talking to. Would you mind being a beta so i can know if I'm going in the right direction?
My character is from a made up high school. And the time frame is Post-Katrina in which I can make a reference back to Katrina during my story.
I got questions about the environment in NOLA. Like, if I was a public school student walking down the street in the hood what would I witness on a day to day basis? How does it smell? Are there different smells and aromas that can be described? How are the people in urban areas? And, so on and so forth.
I like how you described the Pre-Katrina conditions of the public school bathroom. That is the kind of picture I'm trying to draw with the character walking home from school in my story...a detailed description.
Thanks in advance for helping me out with ALL the question I will have. I will be sure to add you as a contact, thank you.
I've never been a beta before, but I'll give it a shot.
I live in a fairly rough neighborhood, (although it's much better since they shut down the crackhouse across the street).
Let's see... Smells....
People are right when the talk about the Quarter smelling like vomit and urine. On hot summer days it can be overwhelming. However, that's primarily because of the large number of bars/drunks. You don't get that funk in the neighborhoods so much.
The thing is that it's extremely humid here, and moisture amplifies smells. Remember the kid's science experiment where you smell something, then dab water under your nose and smell it again to see how much stronger the scent is? (This is why dogs have wet noses). Living here you're in a permanent state of heightened smells. In the local areas though, it's much less bodily fluids, and much more jasmine and lavender and other fragrant plants. The sub-tropical climate means just about anything will grow and most people, rich or poor, take pride in their gardens and plants. It can be lovely...until you pass a garbage can or a dog turd. You take the good with the bad.
More intrusive than smells, though, is the sound. Everyone here yells when they talk, even if they're standing right next to each other. I actually have a theory as to why. A large portion of the year there is a constant loud buzzing of cicadas. You literally have to yell to hear each other over the noise. I suspect that this has helped form the local dialect.
My first year living here, before I could understand the local accent (which is NOT a southern drawl ala Blache Devereaux), I often thought people were angry. I'd hear people yelling out in the street. Thinking there might be trouble, I'd step outside to check it out, and it would be some friends grinning and laughing and obviously not angry at all, just talking super-loudly.
Every day when I'm inside my house, I can clearly hear people yelling outside. A lot of the properties are gated or fenced so that you can't knock on the front door, so apart from the generally loud talking, you get people actually yelling for their friend to come outside or calling down the block to get someone's attention.
There are a lot of people on the street no matter what the time of day. There are the older folks, who sit on their porches and watch the world go by. Down the block from me is a house where there's a table and chairs set up next to the sidewalk and there's always the same four tough-looking dudes playing dominos. If you see kids, they're rarely alone. They know to stay in groups and there's actually one block that's sort of the unofficial kid's block, where you'll see every kid in the neighborhood playing outside. They don't trick or treat in my neighborhood. They go to the mall or to rich neighborhoods in the suburbs that give out good stuff.
The other thing about walking through my neighborhood is that you interact with
everyone whether you want to or not. You wave at the old folks because they're nice, and you wave at the domino players because they're a little bit scary and you want them to know you're friendly and harmless. If you're a woman (like me), you get hit on by random drunks walking by, and I can't walk to or from my car without being asked for change. There's usually some dude walking around with obviously stolen goods for sale, and the goods are comically random: a five-pound block of cheese....a hideous teddy-bear lawn ornament thingy. It's the quiet ones that keep to themselves that you have to worry about. They're the drug dealers.
The other thing is that because people talk so loudly, you overhear all sorts of conversations. A couple years ago there was a shooting and a little girl got shot in the leg. The next day I overheard two kids discussing the incident with such comments as "That's not as bad as when (Insert name) got shot."
"Oh yeah, and last year (insert other name) got killed too."
Kids here are far more familiar with death than they should be. I have a friend who grew up here and half of his childhood stories involved a friend or family member getting killed. I can't even imagine what that must be like. I only knew one kid that died during my own childhood and he had leukemia.
Aaaand...I appear to have written a book, lol. I'll try to keep future answers a bit shorter.
