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.”

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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

French Quarter character Spaceman will be your handyman, if you can find him

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hustle, job

At all times, he’s got a leather punch, pliers, wire, a small bolt cutter, a dremel and a collection of knickknacks that he has picked up along the way. The other day, he found aluminum rods that he plans to use to create a frame for wings that will flap using a complex hinge system he designed. Spaceman is working with a seamstress in town who is making cloth for the wings. If successful, he plans to make more and sell them.

French Quarter character Spaceman will be your handyman, if you can find him | NOLA.com.

Every Single County in America Is Facing an Affordable Housing Crisis

Tags

airbnb, capitalism, housing, hustle, informal economy

When people overreact about airbnb, I think I’ll bring the story up that is linked at the end of the post. Affordable housing has been in a crisis for some time, long before that site was created.
The lack of affordable housing issue comes from the same old greed that has allowed this crisis to happen in every place in the US, not all of which are airbnb-heavy counties obviously: owners cashing in on the highest rates they can get for their property, whether the culprit are developers or homeowners. If you want to charge at the high end of market rates (whether through airbnb or Craigslist/classifieds or using brokers or any other system), then you are going to get a revolving door of tenants and those tenants are not going to care about the area or the neighbors. If you want to have responsible tenants, then map out something that works for both parties (whether using airbnb, a handshake or Craiglist/classifieds or using brokers or any other system).
As for those who use airbnb to decimate their neighborhoods: those folks have been around since the first days of the Industrial Age, using any means necessary to populate their slums. The way to counteract those slumlords is for a city government to take affordable housing seriously, and begin to address that issue without penalizing those homeowners and yes renters that use their property properly to offer good places to long-term neighbors and to the type of visitors interested in participating in community when they travel, and for short-term and newly arriving residents.
I find it ironic that those who are crying the loudest against airbnb are not now (and have never been noted for) demanding rent controls or incentives to increase long term affordable housing. Interestingly, after Katrina, the vitriol against public housing was shockingly directed almost entirely at those trapped in the cycle of poverty for generations as their neighbors and neighborhood associations applauded the shuttering of well-built, brick townhouses and had no issue with the crap now being slowly built in its place with much of it reserved for market rate apartments.
I have been lucky for almost my entire renting life to have caring and responsible homeowners that I have rented from and they always repay my loyalty with their own, but too many of my friends are being priced out of the city because of this type of rampant market-rate greed that started IMMEDIATELY after Katrina (long before airbnb) and so lets call it what it is. I have long advocated for the city to offer tax credits for rent-controlled listings or at least for those who offer rates on the low end or middle. I think the DDD should offer incentives to the owners of Canal Street businesses to develop their upper floors for the service industry to be able to be in walking distance of their workplaces, and the same with the Quarter (as a resident, I can show you how many floors over storefronts are completely vacant; it would boggle your mind).
Airbnb done badly is just a symptom of that greed and outlawing it will not stop slumlords but will reduce the number of caring residents who use it responsibly to make the mortgage or to keep their apartment if they need to be away for a month or two. Airbnb offered the data in 2013 that 89% of their listing were single listings of primary residences. (If you suspect that data is 100% accurate, I will say that i have some skepticism just as I do about hotel data, but I can tell you that in my 20+ airbnb trips, all but 2 of them have been primary residences and those 2 were well-managed European hostel-style with strict rules about behavior.) As a constant traveler, I appreciate the ability to stay in a neighborhood and get to know residents, and to be able to walk to the store and to the metro or bus. I cannot tell you how many times before airbnb that I was in a hotel “zone” with no place to walk to get food and little access to public transportation, no one to talk to about what or where it was safe for a woman alone, adding up to what was often a stressful experience.
Check out these sensible recommendations for short-term housing (including different rates for primary residence airbnbs and a cap on the number of short-term rentals in any one area):http://www.theselc.org/draft_short_term_rental_recommendati…, but let’s recognize that the boogeyman has been among us for some time and cannot be solved by outlawing a sharing site.

Affordable Housing Crisis

(let me also say that as a direct action organizer, it is my experience that when a direct relationship can be the primary conduit for a transaction – whether its benefit is meant to be economic or social or intellectual or any other – the behavior of all involved is likely to be better. Therefore, I will always advocate for the most direct links to be respected by municipalities and agencies that want to create bureaucracy where informality will work. Online sharing sites create what is called “credential exchanges” and, when done correctly, require contact between individuals in the selection, the hosting and the review stage which mean that individuals build a reputation through these direct links. I believe these systems are more likely to reduce fraud and dangerous situations than a absentee corporate hotel or a city agency’s oversight.)

Melissa: A Job, Gig and Hustle

Tags

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

Tags

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.

French Quarter transients face arrest

Tags

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.

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

Tags

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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