Desire

Watching the Oprah and Nightline shows on Katrina brought out three things I haven't seen on the regular network or CNN pieces.

Thugs were grabbing and raping children in the Superdome.

The hopelessly sick were placed in the makeshift morgue with the already dead so they could die in peace.

There really was a streetcar named for Desire Street.

Tennessee Williams' play opens with Blanche DuBois coming to New Orleans to visit her sister, the pregnant Stella, and the sister's husband Stanley Kowalski. To get to their seedy apartment, she has to take a streetcar named Desire. Thus the Desire streetcar became the most famous street railway in the world. The Desire Line was originated by the New Orleans Railway and Light Co. in 1920. The original route was from Canal and Bourbon, down Bourbon, Esplanade, Decatur, Elysian Fields, Chartres, Desire, Tonti, France, and Royal to Canal. In 1923 the Desire Line was re-routed from Canal and Bourbon, down Bourbon, Pauger, Dauphine, Desire, Tonti, France, and Royal to Canal. Desire served the bar and nightclub section of the French Quarter along Bourbon Street, the shopping district along Royal Street and the residential districts today known as Bywater and Faubourg Marigny. The last Desire streetcar ran the line on May 30, 1948, to be replaced by a Bus Line also named Desire.

Remember when Marlon Brando was an object of desire and not The Godfather?