No one in Grand Isle seems to know what’s going on. President Obama is going to be here. Not sure when. Not sure where. Not sure how.
“We don’t know,” said a young National Guardsman, sitting underneath a tent bobbing his earphoned head. “We haven’t seen the news since the third.”
A trio wearing Jefferson Parish shirts didn’t have any answers either: “We have not been briefed for a reason.”
The two certainties are Obama’s meeting with Admiral Thad Allen, and a following press briefing at the Coast Guard station. The sheriff officer posted at the station’s entrance had an answer: “No one gets in unless you’re on the list.”
Up at the baseball diamond near the Grand Isle Community Center, three helicopters have landed. Gov. Jindal was apparently on board one of them. No one seems to excited bout that.
“Loaded’em up in a black Suburban and took off,” said one of the men watching from the dugout.
News crews seem particularly put out. There’s hardly enough room for another helicopter, which pretty much rules out any chance of Obama landing here. And they get to film Jindal whining about this mess day in and day out.
“I knew when I shot him my guys weren’t gonna use it,” says a cameraman.
The island’s only so big. If the President’s not landing here, it probably means he’s landing at the Coast Guard station out of view. This realization seems to bum the whole town out.
The notion is too much to consider. He must be driving. Obama can’t avoid these people altogether. These people who are waiting in their yards, on front steps and balconies, as if for a highly secretive parade. These people who have posted signs along the main road in some guerrilla gesture of communication with the outside world. 
A writer for Paris’ Le Monde is wandering around near the ball field. She’s frustrated she can’t get anyone to tell her where Obama might be making an appearance. She thinks, maybe, they can’t understand her accent.
Her accent’s not the problem. No one has any idea where Obama might show up. And they’re starting to get a little nervous they’ll never lay eyes on the man.
“The best I’ve gotten is we’ll know three minutes before 12:30,” says a man with the U.S Small Business Administration.
But that’s about the time the press conference is scheduled to begin. And none of these people at the community center, or lining the roadway, are getting a look behind the Coast Guard’s iron curtain.
“I’m a government official and they wouldn’t let me in,” says the SBA man.
“I’m wearing flip-flops,” I tell him. “I never stood a chance.”
“You wanna borrow my shoes?” he offers, showing off his brown loafers.
“Flip flops?” a reporter asks. “Are you with NPR?”
Off in the distance, the noise begins. With sirens’ screaming and lights flashing it approaches. Everyone flocks to the roadside for a better look.
In a slow-motion sprint, a parade of patrol vehicles and SUVs streamed by. Hundreds, if not thousands, of point-and-shoot digital images are captured of the processional. For years to come, they will be displayed on refrigerators throughout the island and serve as a blurry memory of the President’s visit.
No one’s really even sure if Obama was in the motorcade. Who knows? This seemed to sink in for the crowd once the noise had continued down the road.
Across the horizon, a helicopter heads toward the Coast Guard station. There’s a collective groan heard up and down the island, like everyone’s simultaneously been conned at a curbside card game.
Everyone soon learns that Obama has already done a walkabout on Fourchon Beach en route to Grand Isle. The on-the-list press was allowed to follow, and captured tender images of the President cuddling with a dime-sized tarball he had picked from the sand.
It’s perfect. Dirty, but not too dirty. The beaches in this area are suffering, but at first glance they’re still pretty lovely. Light sand and lapping waves. Apparently, the bulk of the oil here washes up at night during high tide, where it is scooped into plastic bags by work crews.
The Grand Isle area is the Hollywood of the oil spill. A nice backdrop. BP CEO Tony Hayward has worked on his tan on the island routinely since the spill began.
Spectacles such as these walkabouts on seemingly pleasant beaches will eventually drive men like Billy Nungesser crazy. In order to make the trek up to see Obama, the Plaquemines Parish President had to take a day off from loosing it on national television as his marshland of a parish succumbs to a thick, dark crude. It’s been seeping into the fragile wetlands for over a week, with no end in sight.
For the past week, Nungesser has invited – nay, challenged – the President to venture out into the marshes beyond Venice. Apparently, the tantrums have not paid off.
Besides, the marshlands play bad for the cameras. Too real down there. The sickening smell, the birds and fish dying slow, BP-sponsored deaths, the smothering, swampy humidity. Much better to be seen on television sets across the world soaking up rays with a sweet sea breeze.
Probably for the best. Especially, if you’re going to speak about tourism. Later, in his public statements, flanked by the governors of three Gulf states, Obama will again hawk the region as a safe, clean tourist destination: “One of the powerful ways that you can help the Gulf right now is to visit the communities and the beaches off the coast.”
Remember Mayor Larry Vaughn, in the first Jaws movie? Come to the beach, the water’s fine. 
As the President meets with Admiral Allen and local officials, miles of Grand Isle coast line is closed to the public. The expanses of sand sit empty, save for bright orange boom running along the high-water line. Occasionally, you’ll run across a crew of National Guardsmen working near the water or racing around on ATVs.
Two press photographers stand on a boardwalk overlooking a stretch of the beach. One of them is wrapped in a sun-blocking gauze as if he’s in the Sahara. Both men have given up hope that the President is planning a second walkabout.
“If he is, it’s probably gonna be down there,” one said, pointing to the opposite end of the island, “where all those workers are that we’ve never seen before.”
In a campground near the Coast Guard station, a couple in bright orange shirts relaxes in lawn chairs. They are from Columbia and they specialize in oil clean-up technology — start listing off international awards, the whole bit. They are here to make a pitch for their product – an all organic, sawdust-like material that absorbs hydrocarbons – but, thus far, have had no success in finding anyone high enough up on the totem pole to listen.
But their trip hasn’t been a complete waste. They’ve been able to help out the Guardsmen on the beach. 
“One of the guys walked up from the beach and said, ‘Do you have any gloves for my commander? We’ve run out,’” recalls Liz Cabot, of GetNOW.
[more on these guys soon in a separate post]
Back on the main drag – past Pipeline Road and Heliport Road and Exxon’s headquarters – the swarm of media has been reduced to watching Obama’s statements on television. They crowd diners and bars, impotently holding cameras and microphones. At the Starfish Restaurant, reporters watch the TV while scribbling furiously in their notebooks. The locals seem as amused with the circus as they do with their presidential visit.
Up on the screen, Obama attempts to quell public disappointment surrounding the spill response: “America has never experienced an event like this before. That means, as we respond to it, not every judgment we make is going to be right the first time out.”
Outside there’s some suits and ties huddled around paperwork and a laptop. They are amazingly crisp and completely disinterested in the press conference or media spectacle unfolding around them. Their icy stares, thrown if you gawk for too long, do not sweat. It’s strange, almost eerie.
Inside, the press conference is wrapping up. Soon, Obama will be out of this heat and flying back to Chicago to spend the Memorial Day weekend with his family. Lord knows, he wouldn’t want to stay here; the beaches are closed.
“The media may get tired of the story, but we will not,” Obama says over the television. “We will be on your side and we will see this through.” 
When it’s over, cameras and boom mics rush the locals. The other-worldly men outside are gone.
“Oh my God,” says a waitress wearing a Saints apron. “It’s crazy.”
There’s a German crew here. They’re sitting at a table with an older couple, watching them eat their lunch and discussing the President’s visit. The oil spill is apparently big news in Germany.
“Environmental catastrophes are something they’re really concerned about in Germany,” said Alex Privitera, of N24, a Berlin station with a bureau in the states.
He explains that Germans consider themselves fairly environmentally conscious, and thus concerned about such environmental calamities.
In theory, it’s nice,” Privitera says, “but they still drive their Mercedes 150 miles-per-hour.”
The German audience also remembers Hurricane Katrina, he says, so the locale is fresh in their heads. And they’re interested in how this spill might affect the presidency — the Obama’s-Katrina line of thought.
They are also amazed, Privitera says, that the oil is still gushing. He describes the spill response as a “slight chaos in coordination” and questions the information flowing from BP.
“There’s suspicions,” he says. “Like here, they’re suspicious about what BP is doing.”
Once the table-side interviews are over, the Seastar empties quick. The madness is over. President Obama is en route to his holiday and Grand Isle can return to normal. Except for the oil. And the closed beaches. And the oyster beds and fishing. Other than that, back to normal.
“Looks like I came in to work at the right time,” another waitress says as she begins her shift in an empty restaurant.
