The producers of HBO’s Treme have gone into crisis mode to tamp down another controversy. Fresh off the heels of the brouhaha that ensued when houses depicted in the advertising campaign promoting the first season of Treme were demolished following a high profile spat between Treme creator David Simon and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu over a feeble attempt by preservationists and Treme producers to save the doomed structures, preservationists have now turned their attention to the chair featured in the advertising campaign for the second season of Treme.
Preservationists contend the chair was once sat in by Hokie Mokie, considered by many the “King of Jazz” for a brief period in the 1940s. Mokie apparently sat in the chair during a rent party in the Back ‘O Town neighborhood later essentially mowed over by urban renewal projects in the 1960s.
