With some time on my hands before visiting the set of David Simon’s Treme (the reason I’m in New Orleans, along with the premiere screening of HBO’s The Pacific), I took my rental car and explored the city, which I’d been to several times, but not since Katrina.
Obviously the effects of Katrina were greatest in terms of lives lost and homes ruined, and you still see plenty of evidence of destruction in the most affected neighborhoods. But while looking around the Tréme neighborhood, where the series is set—and, OK, getting some really great fried chicken at Willie Mae’s Scotch House—I came across another Katrina casualty: The Phillis Wheatley Elementary School.
