How Gentrification and Tourism has hurt New Orleans Spiritual Culture
- Fontaine Felisha Foxworth
- Nov 27, 2017
- 7 min read
The video you just watched is of a Black woman who threatened to call the New Orleans State police on me, for absolutely no good reason at all. My personal experience has prompted me to write this piece on how gentrification and tourism has adversely affected New Orleans spiritual culture...here is my story.
As you can see from the short video clip, things got a little heated in the lobby of the healing center on St. Claude Ave in New Orleans. The woman in the video works for the creator of the Voodoo Tarot, and the owner of the two floor Healing Center in the 9th Ward section of Nola, now called (The Bywater) by gentrifiers. Coming from Bedstuy Brooklyn, NY - I'm not new to the adverse affects of gentrification, however, what's going on in New Orleans has so many other levels of wrong.
In July of 2017, I relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana to embark on a journey of restoring my financial situation; after going into major debt, investing my entire savings into the production of my own line of tarot cards called, the Brown Girl Tarot Deck™. Recovering from this level of broke was not going to happen in NYC. Every attempt I made to find a bartending gig seemed to be blocked by the universe itself. It became very clear to me that I had to leave my city, and flee to a place where things were just simpler, and more affordable. With my rent being behind, and a depressingly negative bank account, I manifested as many coins as I could and moved to NOLA within three weeks of my decision, with a whopping total of $226 cash to my name. I had never done anything this scary and dramatic in my life, but in my spirit, I knew it was now or never.
Once I got to New Orleans, things went very, very wrong. From staying briefly in a roach infested home, to sleeping on a couple different couches, to having my entire wallet stolen with all my life in it, on my way to my crummy strip club bartending job. I wondered if the universe was playing a cruel joke on my soul. It got to the point where I could no longer stomach working in the strip club, and I walked out in the middle of a shift. (If y’ll want to read about that experience, you can check out my Brown Girl Blog on my website.) Upon my resignation from the strip club, life almost immediately became better. The day I quit, I randomly ended up at my first football game ever, and watched the Saints win, I settled into my own room with a beautiful view of the sky cascaded by banana tree leaves, and I landed a gig at an event space and bar in the “Healing Center” in the 9th Ward. That is how I became aware of the “Island of Botanica, the spiritual shop I eventually consigned one of my decks in.
Now just to backtrack, when I first moved to Nola, I had to depend on bartending because I was broker than broke. I was intent on starting a side hustle setting up shop reading tarot in Jackson Square, where all the people went to get their tarot read. Little did I know, was that it wasn’t that easy. In order to read tarot on the square, you had to get a couple permits and licenses, that added up to almost $250, and there was a processing time of 30 days. With the way my bank account was set up, that was a no for me. On top of the financial requirement, many of the people who read tarot on the square weren’t all that nice. There was a heavy competition between the readers, and a very territorial energy. Some of the readers dressed up like gypsies, or some kind of streetwalker/pirate hybrid. After doing some research and experiences from my own encounters, I came to the realization that the whole tarot business on Jackson Square and in the French Quarters was all a big tourist trap! I had even found out that Jackson Square was mentioned on a TV show about America’s greatest scams. Discouraged, I continued working at the event space, and became more and more drawn to the spiritual shop.
By the time my Tarot cards came in, my job turned sour, and the owners stopped calling me into work after all of their bartenders came back from vacation. At that point I made a stern decision to quit trying to work in the hospitality industry all together, and completely rely on my business to self sustain. Without much knowledge of wholesale buying or selling, I decided to try to sell my decks to the many New Orleans spiritual shops. I stopped into several places. Hex was a generic witchy place in the quarters where the sales rep was very dismissive and reluctant to check my deck out. Earth Odyssey was over stocked with too much product, Marie Laveau's owners never got back to me after a few follow ups...I ended up at the Island of Botanica and spoke to the creator the Voodoo Tarot, whom I didn’t know was a Jewish Caucasian women from New York, until I stood there looking her in the face. I was surprised to hear she had heard of my deck, and she congratulated me on my achievement. We made an agreement to see how the first deck sold before she purchased any from me. I returned to the healing center to check on my deck, and met the nice Black lady from the video, who would threaten to call the police on me several weeks later. She seemed somewhat excited by the first ever WOC, non-illustrated, photographed classic tarot deck in the world, and asked me about who I went to for printing. After our very lack luster encounter, I left still feeling hopeful that the deck would sell. I returned a couple more times and found my deck still there. I ultimately decided to take my deck back once it was settled that I’d return to NYC. I went back the day before I moved. This time however, I found my deck completely out of it’s shrink-wrapping and plopped on the display station behind the other decks.
Though I was livid, I calmly began to ask the nice Black lady what happened, and asked why I was not informed. Immediately, she acted defensive, and made every excuse for why she didn’t know what happened. She asked me why I didn’t put it in a box, and she even called my deck “high maintenance.” She rudely stated that “people see the other decks, and they buy them, yours…” *silence* Her nasty attitude and energy was utterly disgusting, and without cursing or raising a voice, I told her that her behavior was uncalled for, and that I had every right to be concerned about why my product - which can no longer be sold, was left opened and tossed behind the other decks. Without my knowledge she had been recording me. I photographed the condition of my deck and grabbed it from the display. As soon as I realized that I would not get anything out of this exchange, being the comedian that I am, I sharply told the women that her spirit wasn’t aligned and that I’d pray for her soul, after a few more sarcastic, but very real exchanges, I walked out of the low vibrational spiritual shop.
As I hurried toward the lobby door of the healing center, a woman who was in the shop and witnessed the whole occurrence, came rushing toward me and begin to tell me that I was in the right, and had every right to ask about my disheveled product. She told me that as a Native New Orleans resident, she couldn’t stand the healing center and what it meant to the 9th Ward. She said that everyone she knew was against it, and resented the cultural appropriation of voodoo, the santeria, and New Orleans culture as a whole. The owner calls herself the voodoo priestess, and I’m assuming that her “save the day” healing center is actually a destination for tourists, and transplants, because the lady made it clear that it doesn’t have the respect from the long time natives of New Orleans. She told me that she was only in the store to observe how they operated, and she was so glad that she was there to witness what happened to me - you can see her standing up for me in the video. I’m sure glad she was there too. As we continued our conversation in the lobby, the nice Black lady came storming out of the store, with her phone in hand, recording me again. She than threatened to call the police on me. At that point, I pulled out my camera phone and let her know that two can play that game. (I'm corny..I know) She quickly changed her grandiose tune, and hurried back inside the shop.
I couldn’t believe that she would really call the police on me, especially in the political and social climate we collectively exist in, and especially because I did nothing wrong. She had only recorded me because she knew she wasn't right, and suddenly I realized that this situation was a blessing in disguise. As I became aware of the darker side of the healing center, and the gentrification and tourist trap that the Nola community is facing as a whole, I knew that I had to make this incident public. Not only does this start a conversation about the dangers of gentrification in historically black communities, as it leads to the appropriation and distortion of a whole culture for the financial gain and benefit of the appropriator; it also gives birth to a discourse on how WOC/POC mistreat other WOC/POC when positioned in a situation that questions their own sense of livelihood and/or obligation to uphold one's own integrity and conscious decisions to align with impostor allies...also that white guy who looked like one of those streetwalker/pirate hybrids, who unsolicitedly yelled “Shut the fuck up and just get along” starts another dialogue that cannot fit in this article. (Thank you entitled white man for your two cents.)
At the end of the day, I believe everything happens for a reason. I hope this article finds it’s way to the movers and shakers in NOLA, who can possibly take a stand for upholding Black New Orleans culture. With culture activists like Katrina survivor and documentarian, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, who made the film “Trouble the Water” (whom I had the pleasure of meeting) and the state's first time elected Black woman Major, Latoya Cantrell, I have high hope that under her administration, the cultural dilemma that NOLA is undergoing can began to be remedied. For now, I’m back to New York figuring out where life will take me next. I used to want to #TakeBedstuyBack, but now I'm focused on just living, and let the cards fall where they may.
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