In Memoriam: Scotty Cathcart Hill (1947-2018)

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buskers, gig, hustle, New Orleans, Scotty Cathcart Hill

In Memoriam: Scotty Cathcart Hill (1947-2018)

A lot of people don’t realize that Scotty was an individual that made it possible for everybody to play on the streets,” says trumpeter Gregg Stafford, who began performing with Hill around 1975. “His band was the first band out on the streets of New Orleans,” Stafford continues, as he remembers what a struggle it was for Hill to stand up against complaints from shop owners and harassment by the police to keep his group playing outdoors in the French Quarter. “Many a time we had to go to court, we were issued a summons, arrested and went to jail.”

Hill’s French Market Jazz Band’s spot was on the corner of Royal and St. Peter streets and, according to Stafford, most of the musicians who worked regular gigs on Bourbon Street in the early 1980s would join the group on their days off. “We were making more money in two hours on the street than they’d make in six hours in a club. We were the only band on the street.”

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

Will This New Labor Classification Save Gig Workers’ Careers? – Forbes

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gig, informal economy, job, labor organizing, unemployment

With the debate over worker classification in the Gig Economy raging, many employers who hire freelancers and contractors live in fear .

 

“That was the biggest issue: If you create something like this, are companies going to take advantage and coerce people to do it?” says Zaino. “We think they are not going to be able to coerce people above a certain income level. They are not providing a routine service that is a commodity.”

It is also possible there could be considerable political opposition to such a proposal–even if freelancers like it.

With labor market trends pointing to a future in which more people do independent work, governments in the U.S. and other nations are moving toward aggressively reclassifying workers now doing contract work as employees, notes Zaino. “They don’t want to lose that payroll tax,” he says.

Source: Will This New Labor Classification Save Gig Workers’ Careers? – Forbes

Sidewalk poet Erin & Jackson Square Reader Angela

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gig

Melissa: A Job, Gig and Hustle

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gig, hustle, interviews, job

Job: I cook for a living and through cooking am able to support local farming, fishing and agriculture. I’ve lived in New Orleans for 19 years. I started cooking as a profession after the storm because I liked using my hands and the serenity of prepping.

Gig: My gig is to convince people that food is not cheap and that high quality food is necessary to your health and our world as a seatbelt. I’ve lately been trying to connect folks to my culture and my love of all things Cajun. In doing that I am able to cook how I want and not through the standard restaurant model.

Hustle: I’ve been hustling different ways in this city for a long time. Having only one job to concentrate on now is a luxury. This year my family and I are trying to not eat out unless it is a very, very special occasion. As a cook you hardly eat and you don’t want to go home and continue to cook, clean the kitchen and do dishes. And you’re serving the best quality product you can possibly put your hands on to your patrons, then you go out and eat to a half cared about plate. Of course some restaurants are doing the “right” thing but some are not. We already do not eat commodity meats and are seasonal eaters but challenging ourselves to eat from our own kitchen will be a hustle for us. We both work full-time and are raising a teenager. It’s going to be an interesting year.

Mags: A Job, Gig and Hustle

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gig, hustle, interviews, job

JOB: wags by mags!

i’m going into my 5th year of more-or-less full-time self-employment with my dog-walking and pet-sitting business, wags by mags! i’m a one-woman show; i try to keep a mostly-full 9-5 weekday schedule of regular dog walking clients and then i supplement occasionally with evening and weekend work pet-sitting. actual hours worked can vary greatly from week to week, month to month; some weeks i might only clock 20-25 hours of actual work, others i might be pushing 80, particularly during busy holidays.

it’s actually the first time in my whole life that i’ve had something that even remotely resembled a “job” where i worked more-or-less set hours and had financial security of some sort from one source.

having said that, after 4 years of doing mostly one thing, i find myself missing some of the more creative “gigs” i used to do and so am trying to figure out a way to balance my life out more, working the “job” less and devoting more time to the “gigs.”

GIG: i’ve had a few different creative “gigs” over the years. i was a club dj throughout the 90s into the early 00’s, but was already easing into “retirement” when the levees failed and i relocated to kentucky for a few years. i haven’t even owned turntables or dj’d in public since early 2005. it never really made me much money (it’s expensive to BE a dj), but i loved the music and the creative challenge of it and it was a childhood dream that i managed to make happen. i miss it a lot and have just recently decided to work towards purchasing some equipment so i can perhaps get back to it at least recreationally.

i was also a music journalist for almost 20 years. that might count as more of a “job” since at times i was making more from my writing gigs than from dj’ing or any other side hustle but it was always freelance and ebbed and flowed in amount at any given time. i did for a few years serve as editor for a national dj/dance music magazine based in chicago but even that was more of a labor of love than a making a living situation, as it was a niche publication that didn’t make much money and i had to supplement with other freelance work and dj gigs, etc.

the other creative gig that has stuck with me over most of my adult life though i’ve started and stopped doing it a bunch of different times due to burnout is the making of art and crafty stuff, under the name art by mags! i’ve handmade and/or sold everything from silkscreen t-shirts to salvaged/recycled folk art since college. again, it was never enough to be my main “job” but was often something done in tandem with one or more of the other above “gigs” to piece together a living. i still tinker occasionally but haven’t been actively selling any art/craft for a while now.

HUSTLE: i think so much of how i live in new orleans is my “hustle.” i picked new orleans to settle in 1990, after graduating from college, because it was so cheap to live here and the city offered so much culturally. i always intended it to be my homebase while i went off and traveled the world but the traveling part never really materialized because as it turns out a bachelors in art history doesn’t really qualify you for many “jobs” and so my life here ended up being a series of “gigs” and “hustles” just trying to survive financially, with not much opportunity to travel. (have i mentioned i’m not so good with money?) but there’s still time!

before katrina, i never owned a car, just a bicycle, and i pretty much lived in the same square mile of midcity in various apartments, so i could get anywhere i needed via bike relatively easily. after my return to new orleans, i’ve become a scooter girl – still no car. i’m older and lazier so the scooter is more appealing and at 100mpg and super cheap insurance, it’s still very economical and gets me around town quickly and easily.

i’m also a craigslister, freecycler, trash picker, dumpster diver and thrift store junkie. and when i’m really in a bind, financially, i’ve been known to sell a thing or two on ebay and/or craigslist, for myself or for others, as a paid “gig.” it’s always seemed too complicated to make a business out of but it’s sort of fun to play the “what can i find at the thrift store for $2 that i can resell online for $20+?” game. and i’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years.

Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of Labor in New Orleans-Review

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African-American organizing, book review, gig, hustle, job, labor organizing

Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of Labor in New Orleans by Thomas Jessen Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Picked this up on for a Tuesday flight out of town and finished it by Thursday. My speed is partly due to the bumpy flights to Portland but more credit should be given to the interesting essays included. Most of these writers research labor or New Orleans as their work, starting with Eric Arensen, the well-known labor writer and author of the landmark book “Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics.” Arensen encapsulates that history here again while taking the time to credit other history and labor writers and researchers in this update. In his essay and in the entire book, a prime topic is the bifurcation of race in New Orleans that has meant black and white class struggles remain separate and rarely equal.
Matheny’s essay on how the two local musician unions (one black and one white) struggled for cohesiveness during the Civil Rights era is a telling story about how cultural connections can often be stretched but how political power remains less elastic. Additionally, the subjugation of new ethnic minorities in the city can be seen in Murga’s excellent day laborer essay that centers on the growing Latino population who toiled at the thankless jobs that grew in those toxic days directly after the 2005 levee breaks, and in the Schneider/Jayaraman ROC essay on the shocking statistics of the restaurant and construction workers. These essays should encourage us all to stand with our sistren and brethren in active support or at least, to tip VERY well and stop honking at those work trucks in front of us. Both of those essays include the researchers process for the data collection which is a nice addition.
The labor and organizing essays are almost all well-researched and definitive, but the historical pieces on work are the choice meat. Ugolini’s piece on African-American women and the market economy, Roberts’ piece on Voodoo economics (not the Reagan version here, but those New Orleans spiritual entrepreneurs) were both engrossing, as was the praline mammy story and its accompanying myth. Writer Nunez presents the last so skillfully that the full shame of those mid-century life-sized dolls chained to the front of the shop door can be felt by even modern readers. I also appreciate the addition of historic terms such as “higglers” (Ugolini) and “hoodoo” (Nunez) which will send me back to the New Orleans WPA guide for further research (is Nunez asserting that hoodoo is a term that denotes voodoo mixed with capitalism? love the idea if so).
Dillard professor and author Nancy Dixon offers a parallel review of the service industry using its appearances in New Orleans literature over the last 200 years (as befits her experience as the editor of the recent anthology N.O. Lit), interwoven with her own personal recollection of waitressing and bartending in some of the infamous holes across town while she worked through college. Her empathetic view of the unequal nature between black and white workers gives another example of the racial segregation that continues to this day.

The last nod of approval goes to the late Michael Mizell-Nelson and his examination of the short-lived unity among the (white) streetcar and (black) gas workers in the 1920s, as well as the sad story of their later resegregation. Having his writing on New Orleans blue-collar work contained in this book gives it an added level of authenticity and hopefully in future editions (Mizell-Nelson passed away in December of 2014), the editors will add a posthumous postscript for New Orleans’ own Streetcar Mike.

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