OUT TO LUNCH : Intellectual Property Podcast

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Cheryl Gerber, intellectual property

This podcast features Photojournalist Cheryl Gerber, my neighbor and pal who is a award-winning freelance journalist and documentary photographer.  She  is a staff photographer for Gambit and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Associated Press, and New Orleans Magazine.

Her book Life in the Big Easy is a standout; find my review here.

On the podcast, Cheryl talks about her diligence in keeping track of her work, using a law firm in New York.

The work has changed a lot since she said she “used to drive to Gambit’s offices holding wet photos out of the window!” Yet, the digital format is “made for her” she says.

Out To Lunch

 

 

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Save Buskers Bunkhouse by Pearl Heart – GoFundMe

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buskers

 Buskers Bunkhouse in New Orleans, formerly known as Kamp Katrina, is being reincarnated as a nonprofit in Bywater…The house needs repairs. Ms Pearl’s concern is that she may not be able to meet with the demands for these repairs in time as she is on a fixed income. Fines can reach up to 500 dollars a day for each offense.

Source: Save Buskers Bunkhouse by Pearl Heart – GoFundMe

15 photos of New Orleans street performers

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French Quarter, gig, informal economy, outsider culture

This slideshow of FQ buskers includes a few of the most known and constant performers over the last 35 years. For many of these photos, the scene is so recognizable to me that it is possible that my teenaged self was just off the side, sitting on the ground, taking it all in. To this day, the interaction with and observation of public street performers and hustlers remains a valued part of my daily life.

 

Juggling, dancing, playing music or freezing in time, performers have been a part of the French Quarter landscape for decades.

15 photos of New Orleans street performers | NOLA.com

Criminalizing the hustle: Policing poor people’s survival strategies from Eric Garner to Alton Sterling – Salon.com

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Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, police

The danger of the hustle

The contemporary era of policing and mass incarceration emerged precisely to confront black people with limited or no access to formal work. As the sociologist Loïc Wacquant puts it, “in the wake of the race riots of the 1960s, the police, courts, and prison have been deployed to contain the urban dislocations wrought by economic deregulation and the implosion of the ghetto as ethnoracial container, and to impose the discipline of insecure employment at the bottom of the polarizing class structure.”

In other words, prisons supplanted social aid and the criminal justice system became the state’s main tool to discipline the black poor, locked into segregated neighborhoods and locked out of good jobs.

In New York City, a model focused on so-called quality of life offenses took root, aimed in large part at the public face of informal work, from panhandling and squeegee men to drug dealers and loosie sellers as drugs and violence filled painfully long stretches of unrequested time off. The policing theory, known as broken windows, posits that cracking down on low-level offenses helps decrease crime across the board. That’s heavily debated, and it’s notable that recent decades’ widespread decline in crime includes cities that have employed variable policing methods. What’s certain is that it renders poor people’s survival strategies a crime.

Source: Criminalizing the hustle: Policing poor people’s survival strategies from Eric Garner to Alton Sterling – Salon.com

Every day we’re hustling: Why we love “hustlers” — but not “whores”

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hustle

I appreciate the piece linked below on the use of hustler versus whore via the sex work connotations of both terms. Absolutely true how women involved in sex worker are tagged with the much more punitive term while men are assigned the less damaging of the two.

The “hustler” archetype has experienced a steady, exponentially positive, and — despite its deep roots in gay culture — heterosexual treatment in the media. Hustler magazine launched in 1975, as a more graphic version of Playboy. It boasted a circulation of 3.8 million in 1976, and while that number declined significantly in subsequent years, the magazine is arguably the mainstream prototype of heterosexually lensed “hustler” as aspirational, rather than derogatory.

When people talk to me about the name and subject of this blog, they rarely use of the term hustler as meaning a sex worker, but I certainly expected some readers to see it that way and am happy to include this discussion here.

Of course, hustle has more definitions in our current language:

Hip Hop Loops for the hustlers!

Ladies and gentleman! Diginoiz is proud to present the  ‘Return Of The Hustle’! Hip Hop loops with great sound, good feeling, catchy melodies but still based in the hood vibe. Loops for all hustle producers who love the best quality of sound, precision and something more than the industry standards!

 

…one is celebrated, while the other remains cloaked in stigma: Salon dot com on hustlers versus whores

Troy Simon’s journey from tap dancing on Bourbon Street to Yale Divinity School

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French Quarter

Yes those hustling around you have dreams and ambition too. Some of them will achieve them.

 

Troy Simon’s journey from tap dancing on Bourbon Street to Yale Divinity School | NOLA.com

Issue One: Invisible Labour | mice cms

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capitalism, labor organizing, outsider culture

Thanks to “sophistiratchet #blackademic beast from/in/of New Orleans” Terri Coleman for highlighting this publication on her Facebookistan page. Cultural appropriation is so constant in colonial economies that artists are forced to enthusiastically participate in maintaining its dominance.  The artists in this issue intelligently and sensitively address how labor as a commodity when it comes to creating and sharing art assists that frame of events.

How can we account for all of the invisible labour that’s required for us to do our so-called radical work? Informed by intersectional and materialist feminisms, Issue 01 foregrounds forms of labour that go unrecognized in the white spaces of contemporary and media art worlds. This issue is concerned with the before, the after, the behind-the-scenes, and the off-camera. How much not-art is required to make the art? What’s the cost and who puts their life on the line? Without reducing all forms of life to labour, the works featured in this issue allow us to think value differently, to acknowledge all that we do to keep ourselves and our communities vivacious and resilient.

Source: Issue One: Invisible Labour | mice cms

 

About mice

Beautiful Hustle

My pal out in the Square showing off her amazing costume craft. This activity is part of her expression of her combined Latina/New Orleans culture and she carries it off with deep concentration and dignity. Having a hustle can be important for non-economic reasons for some; to use art to regain their emotional footing, to connect with the public, to articulate their love for their region.

1010 ways to buy without money

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barter

What is a book worth? The answer to this question is, like most things, relative… A project called 1010 Ways to Buy Without Money will see stalls ‘selling’ books for a variety of prices, set either by the organizers or by the donors of the books. These might involve taking snacks to the office for colleagues, or creating a photo diary, drawing a self-portrait, or more practically, donating clothes, blood and even organs. The one thing they all have in common is they can’t involve the exchange of money.

The initiative is now entering its fifth year and has spread around the world, with events held from London to Georgia, Madrid to Montevideo and Romania. It is now a participatory project in which anyone can create their own book fair of the same style – the organisers provide materials, information and advice, as long as some guidelines are followed, such as adhering to the no-money approach and creating a Facebook event. This year, in addition to Barcelona, individuals are already organising events in four Brazilian cities, the Californian town of Bishop, the Colombian city of Barranquilla, Montevideo in Uruguay, the Ecuadorian city of Santo Domingo and Ciudad Real, in Spain.

Here is the information to create your own event.

French Quarter transients face arrest

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hustle, illegal economy, informal economy

French Quarter transients face arrest, and more, on New Orleans streets | NOLA.com.

So a group commonly referred to in New Orleans as gutter punks or street kids is getting renewed attention again. I considered it for a few days before I put this story on this site, as my focus here is people making do in creative and shared ways, but I wanted to raise the issue of itinerant communities and transients that come and go and the possibility of danger from them. The hustle is defined in many ways, but certainly New Orleans street people have made all of them work very well.

As long as this city has been in existence there have been people crowding the banquettes or docks, trying to catch your eye to ask for a handout or to offer a story of woe or of opportunity in return for cash. With our warm weather and millions of visitors, we will always have many asking and a few willing to hand it over, deserved or not.