Yahoo! NOLA Group

There is a Yahoo! group that is an online version of Big Ray's old New Orleans Mailing list. It is a a small (but suitably quirky) group that has been exchanging NOLA info for over a decade. Today one of the members (Trent Dang -- I believe this is his real name) talks about his move back post-storm, titled Objective Evaluation of NOLA:

Thought you guys might like an update as my wife has been back in NOLAfor 2 weeks now: The CBD is emptier after 5 than it used to be, but otherwise, unless you're in the 9th Ward, everything's just the way it was before. Some people are obviously still rebuilding their houses, like especially in Lakeview, but they're doing it. There's actually significantly more civic pride now - in spite of the city's poor management of the rebuilding process. An interesting phenomenon I've witnessed is theinflux of natives who did not live in New Orleans during the storm, but who are now coming back. We have two new lawyers here whose husbands fall into that category. They both started within the month.Tourism's not quite up to where it should be yet, we saw that the other week.