Sanctuary: A bridge to somewhere

There’s a rust orange arc set above old train tracks, looping a small bridge that stretches from the Marigny/Bywater neighborhood in New Orleans to a bank of the Mississippi River where it begins to curve off from the population of the city. Along the bank, back toward the city, the French Quarter and its charm-like shops wait for tourists, and on this day I’m watching the distance from the bird’s-eye view this bridge allows me.

The bridge was constructed as part of a $31-million project planned by the city, which received the money through federal community block grant funding dedicated to long-term community recovery efforts after Katrina. The Ninth Ward, where the Bywater neighborhood is located, was one of the most severely damaged parts of the city after the major storms in 2005 and during the recovery has been a hotbed for gentrification, displacing many of the city’s Black working-class residents.

I first discovered this bridge in 2016, the year after I graduated high school. One of my closest friends and I, each of us Black natives of the city away for college (he in New York, I in Missouri), had taken the day to wander our hometown we were returning to with fresh eyes for the summer. We had stopped in the Bywater to eat at a small restaurant whose pizza I liked. It’s on the same block as a record store that’s located closer to the end of the street where we first noticed the rust-toned bridge waiting bluntly in the background — almost inviting but detached also, some complicated result of gentrification, perhaps a reflection of the park’s route and where my friend and I were meeting it.

We decided to approach the bridge not knowing where it led or if it were meant for the public at all. Moving up the steps, we saw the river emerge and, with it, the Crescent City Connection in the distance. Along with that: a small view of the city subtly stacking to the right, the intersection of the figures in our sight line seeming to neatly distill something we could sense more than say.

At the top of the bridge, our conversation is indirectly filled with all of those things: ultimately our recognition of the parts of ourselves we were still learning, accented by our perspective of the landscape changing around us. I was studying journalism; he was studying art and design. That day, and generally when we see each other, we collectively remember things out of context, conjuring a distinct laughter that fills with the tenor of our high school memories, mostly the dissonance remaining. That laughter feels at home at this park.

We’ve gone back more times since first finding the bridge, usually during the summer if we’re both in town. A couple of times we walk the full path along the river down to the French Quarter. Other times we just walk out onto the wharf where people would be skateboarding and watch the body of the river pulse.

This time I’m alone as I stand atop the bridge, stopping there. My friend isn’t in town while I’m here this summer. We’re both in graduate school now (he in Rhode Island, I in Virginia). But at home, feeling the midday urge to shuffle through old records in a store, hoping to make some discovery of my day, I go to the first place that comes to mind: the record store next to the deep orange, if not brown bridge.

After I leave the store, pleased by my discoveries (a favorite Roberta Flack record of mine along with one by Maze and Frankie Beverly), I decide to wander up the intentionally rusted structure again. As I start forward in the blind heat of the day, the records swing tightly in the store bag that finds traction on my humidity-glazed forearm. The river begins to emerge again as I go slowly up the steps.

The park on the other side of the bridge looks more polished than the last time I saw it; there seems to be more seating, more shrubs, more trails and signage for pedestrians. There aren’t any skaters around, but the park feels busier, though it isn’t crowded. But the additions cram the view, and the initial quiet of this place that once gave way to the river’s sound so effortlessly is disrupted a little.

After minutes, I watch a surprise proposal take place on the wharf. There’s a couple who walks out toward the water, their friends sneakily trailing them. The party congeals with the yes of the to-be bride once the surprise is complete. And as they begin to celebrate with champagne, I decide to unfocus from where they’re standing. This romance I encounter is not why I’m here. I’m not a part of it. But I allow it into my line of sight and continue thinking toward a horizon less contrived. I can only start here.

Still, where I stand between the park and Piety Street, close to where my mother grew up on Pauline in the Upper Ninth Ward, I take it all in: the parts discovered, the parts gone, the parts rusting in transit. They become a part of this record that I return to as an attempt to recapture a local legibility that won’t succumb to its past.

Myles Poydras is a DMV-based writer and native New Orleanian.

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This story was originally published July 8, 2022 at 11:00 AM.