Times Picayune

Voodoo festival charms music lovers in City Park

"I like it because it's a younger, edgier crowd," she said.
Edgier and at least as off-the-wall. Kelly Israel took his usual spot under the Spanish moss-draped live oaks and in front of the hyper-alternative Mortuary Haunted House/Noomoon Stage with his 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood hearse.

The vehicle glittered with matchbox cars, Casio watches, jewelry, pins, stained glass, coins, marbles and any other items that would make it sparkle. Its hood was adorned with 24 rusted fleur-de-lis along each side, each attached to two bullets and a button with a letter on it, lined up to spell out "Katrina changed everything."

Noomoon founder Dan Sheridan tries to carry on the anti-establishment theme of Voodoo by promoting local underground and street music acts with T-shirts, videos and the stage he sponsors. He calls Noomoon "a multimedia conglometron hell-bent on the destruction of the mundane."

As a family of brown pelicans returned to Bayou St. John for the winter and yet another festival-goer parked illegally on the banks of the bayou, dusk began to fall in Faubourg St. John, the neighborhood that lies between Voodoo's City Park venue and Jazzfest's Fair Grounds location. As it fell, Bill Abbott stood on his front porch with his dog and smoked a pipe. He's a Jazzfest fan who has never been to Voodoo.

"They're a very young bunch of white kids, basically" he said of the Voodoo-goers filling a street that gets this crowded at only one other time of the year. "Jazzfest is something the neighborhood has adapted to over the years. This is relatively new. Like anything new, you have to learn to adapt to it."

Abbott said he was ready to adapt, saying he might even give Voodoo a chance next year. Then he thought about the black-tie "Voodoo on the Bayou" event to be held later in the evening at the Pitot House down the street, a neighborhood fundraiser at an 18th century mansion that was once home to the first American mayor of New Orleans. "Now, that could be some interesting chemistry," Abbott said, laughing.