Culture
Here’s a Pothole Stunt for the Ages in New Orleans
Tired of waiting for the city to fix their street, residents of the Irish Channel neighborhood furnished their pothole and listed it as an Airbnb rental. It worked.
Turning potholes into public art is a time-honored way of calling attention to municipal neglect. One Chicago-based mosaicist fills them with colorful tile portraits. A Schenectady designer has planted flowers in her local pits. A British construction worker, using the pseudonym Wanksy, paints penises on torn-up streets. As CityLab has documented, there are many, many ways of using theatrical protest stunts to get the city to pay attention to your rutted road.
But this summer, one neighborhood in New Orleans collectively stepped up the asphalt-installation game when one resident decided to list a local pothole on Airbnb.