Biloxi Blues? (Andre)

 

We certainly have been through many towns, cities, rural areas, and everything in between in our travels to this point. Some areas have been amazing. Some have been beautiful. Some have been less so. Some have been reminiscent of areas we have seen before and some even made us think of home in the northeast. Sometimes we just drive through an area. Sometimes we have planned stops. And as you can imagine, sometimes an area calls out for a stop even if none were planned. On some occasions, an area calls out for a longer stay. Such was the case of Biloxi, Mississippi!

While we did experience what we have come to call ‘van magic’ – see previous post, there was much more going on in this town that drew me in.

As you can see from some of the pictures, there are quite a few things going on in this small city of approximately 40,000 people. Clearly this area was still impacted by Katrina in 2005, nearly 8 years earlier. As we walked the neighborhoods, it was very common to see a habituated house, surrounded by empty lots, then see other houses that were abandoned, next to houses that were still in the process of reconstruction. Then you would turn a corner, and there was a large casino hotel with neon lights flashing and many people just enjoying themselves in the midst of this half-ghost town. Yet, turn another corner, and there was an abandoned high rise tower, fully dark and just abandoned!

Hurricane Katrina Memorial

 

 

 

The downtown area was equally interesting. A few stores, banks, government buildings, and that was about it. There were many traffic lights throughout the city, but most often there were no cars waiting or passing through the intersection. I ran Main Street, and this was not what one would think of as a Main Street. Mostly small residences, again some habituated houses, some empty and some in various states of disrepair, and many more empty lots. Then there was a train crossing that ran right across Main Street that had to be a least 6 feet elevated creating a large and daunting looking hump across the road.

We also found out that Biloxi has a shrimp boat fleet – think the scene from Forest Gump – that is another part of the local economy in addition to casinos and tourism. And, in part due to the shrimp industry as we understand, there is a large Vietnamese population in this town.

 

After leaving Biloxi I did a bit of looking on line and found the following to add to my observations. Prior to Katrina, the town had a population of 50,000, thus there has been a near 10,000 person drop due to the storm. It was estimated that approximately 90% of the buildings were damaged or destroyed in the storm. The town, state, and federal government are still working together to figure how and what to redevelop this area that so clearly was changed by Katrina.