Rare Book Monthly
Articles - November - 2005 Issue
In Her Angry Path; Hurricane Katrina vs. Bookstores<br>Part One
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Q: Tell me a bit about Octavia Books?
A: We opened our doors in 2000. We have an inventory of about 15,000 new books. Our store is located at 513 Octavia Street in Uptown New Orleans at the corner of Octavia and Laurel streets between Magazine and Tchoupitoulas. That is uptown about four miles upriver from the French Quarter. We have a little coffee area and there is a bakery in the building, which just reopened as well, and we have a good relationship with them, referring customers to each other. There is also a judo studio and a yoga studio in the building. They only suffered a few stains on the ceilings, some falling panels on the overhead, and some broken glass. We were all very lucky.
Q: Tell us what you did do when you heard that Katrina was headed your way?
A: We thought we needed to be concerned, but at that time Katrina was following a complicated path and no one was quite sure when or where she would land. We didn't actually make the decision to evacuate until it turned on Sunday, August 28. We had an author reading event with mystery writer Julie Smith scheduled for that night [Saturday]. Julie writes about New Orleans from the perspective of someone who lives here; The Axeman's Jazz, The Kindness of Strangers and Jazz Funeral are some of hers. Needless to say, we had a small turnout, but she graciously showed up and read passages that had to do with hurricanes from some of her works.
My wife and I and Pippin, the dog, left about 6 a.m. on Sunday and headed out with one of my employees and her mother to my mother's house in Mobile, Alabama. As you know, the hurricane hit on Monday. After the hurricane, we headed to Montgomery, Alabama and then to Cincinnati and ended up in Columbus. We waited out the second storm, Rita, there and then wanted to get back to New Orleans and see what had happened to our store and our home. The first roadblock wouldn't let us through. They said only essential business owners could come back. They didn't think a bookstore was "essential," evidently. We went to the next roadblock and we got in.
Q: Perhaps that guardsman was somewhat more enlightened. What did you find?
A: Yes. It was amazing, after two weeks we had no idea what we would find. First we went to our house, which was amazingly intact with orchids blooming in our kitchen. We had been afraid all of our house plants would have shriveled up and died without our being there to water them. There had been water in our streets that covered the median (what we call the neutral ground). Our basement, which is three feet belowground and unusual in New Orleans, had water in it. We lost major appliances, some bookstore storage stuff, a few things - but nothing too important. We were overjoyed.
