Removing "Tide" From Yule

Seen over at Murph's site, this story about an all-too-reality-based NOLA vignette for the holidays apparently upset enough folks to require removal of some features:

For Frank Evans, designer of Lakeside Shopping Center's holiday display, getting into the spirit of the season this year meant building a Christmas village that riffed on the post-Katrina landscape.

He created a winter wonderland replete not only with churchgoers and trains, but also abandoned refrigerators, houses covered in blue tarpaulins and a storm victim suspended from a helicopter...

The mood was somber around the wintry display Tuesday afternoon. Juanita Landau, who ran the model trains around the dismantled village, said the whole situation was a spoiler for those who had tried to keep up the spirits of shoppers.

"A lot of us are really disappointed," she said, as she offered train rides to children for $1. "It made people light-hearted to see it."

Even Santa Claus, in between sittings with wishful children, complained that some people had no respect for Christmas or free speech.

"I think this is terrible," said Santa, a Metairie resident usually known as John Vollenweider. "It was not done to hurt anyone. It was not done maliciously. This was a sign of the times."

Metairie resident Juni Bowes, who had taken her mother, Sylvia, to see the waggish display, said the designer had tried hard to keep it lifelike, right down to the beams that anchored the tarps to the roofs.

"He took all of that trouble to make it accurate," Bowes said. "We're sad to see it taken down. It was very imaginative."

Evans said he can understand the trauma that some residents experienced during the hurricane. His daughter lost her home near City Park in New Orleans.

After he had broken down the display, removing the tarped houses, mummified fridges and dangling evacuee, he said he was too worn out to redo the village in a more traditional style.

Among the other casualties of the remodeling was a sign affixed to the village pump station in homage to Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, who has incurred the wrath of residents for his decision to evacuate drainage pump operators before Katrina struck Aug. 29. The sign saying "Broussard Pumping Station No. 1" was gone, although the one touting "Works only in good weather" remained.

Spokeswoman Jacqueline Bauer said the Broussard administration had no role in the sign's removal.

Pictures here...

I guess Murph's right (he expresses mixed feelings and thinks Mardi Gras might be a better outlet), although I would've like to have seen it. And, like he says, I also can't wait to see what sort of heckuva job Brownie--well, Brownie effigies--will be doing during the last week of February 2006. Something tells me there will be many floats "not suitable for children."