![\"e-erin\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dangermond.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/e-erin.jpg?resize=450%2C337\" "\\"e-erin\\"")
<\/p>\nErin and hurricane tattoo<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Erin Eastern
\nGreen Market Manager<\/p>\n
Erin hails from a demographic group she believes was hit the hardest by Katrina – young, no longer dependent on parents albeit living month-to-month, with no insurance, and no savings. She and her roommate began an evacuation journey that started with following his family to Covington and then heading to Florida to her grandparents, where they sought shelter for the duration of the evacuation. \u201cWe had no money to buy clothes and had two pairs of underwear with us. So we needed someone who could take care of us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When it was okay to return to New Orleans, Erin\u2019s roommate opted to stay in Florida and she came back alone. \u201cIt was a ridiculous time. My friend, Rachel, moved into the apartment with me and even wore my roommates clothes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This was not Erin\u2019s first tattoo. \u201cI had marked important moments in my life with a tattoo. When I turned 18, I got my first one \u2013 a lizard \u2013 it means nothing. I had a pair of boxer shorts with lizards on them. For me it\u2019s not so much about the design. I don\u2019t care if I don\u2019t like it in 30 years. It\u2019s a permanent marker of what I did like at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next one was during her college sophomore year, when she thought she would never come back to New Orleans. \u201cI was living in Berkeley and had a masked man tattooed over my heart to symbolize my love for the city. But then I realized that I wanted to make my life in New Orleans, and I had a feeling this was 100% home because I loved the place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Erin, the tattoos are part of accepting things never turn out the way you want, but they turn out okay in the end. Her Katrina tattoo is what has become for many here the iconic hurricane swirl. \u201cMy best friend would never get a tattoo. \u2018How can you put that on your body?\u2019 she\u2019d ask me. But we were driving around the city after the storm and she said she wanted to get a tattoo with a hurricane symbol. She asked me if I would get one with her and could I say no? No. So we got the same tattoo. This symbol wouldn\u2019t have been something I chose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy best friend ended up moving away from New Orleans a few months later. Everyone thought she was so lucky because she had kept her job through the storm, but she wound up moving to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erin and hurricane tattoo Erin Eastern Green Market Manager Erin hails from a demographic group she believes was hit the hardest by Katrina – young, no longer dependent on parents albeit living month-to-month, with no insurance, and no savings. She and her roommate began an evacuation journey that started with following his family to Covington and then heading to Florida to her grandparents, where they sought shelter for the duration of the evacuation. \u201cWe had… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-6372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-tattoos-to-commemorate-katrina-in-new-orleans"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-1EM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6388,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6372\/revisions\/6388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}