New Orleans, LA @ The Artist Mansion

The Artist Mansion has a tremendous tree house in its backyard. You begin up the tree house by climbing about eight green stairs, which have no railings. You proceed, then, across a ten-foot platform inclined very slightly upwards. Now you have reached the large trunk of the tree. A small winding stair corridor, enclosed in wavy sheets of plastic, takes you up another few feet. At the top of this corridor, a few lone stairs are attached around the trunk. They lead you to the first platform, a rough octagon about twelve feet in diameter, decorated with a large ceramic Buddha. Green and purple spotlights shine down on him from tangled tree branches hanging overhead. From this platform, another winding staircase (this one prefab and metal), its railing wrapped in twine, takes you to the second platform. More purple and green and blue lights decorate the area. A few precarious steps, from branch to branch, would you lead you off the platform and onto a large, traversable net strung from the tree across the yard to a small slide, which ends abruptly about seven feet off the ground. Or, you can continue up the tree by one of two routes: 1. climb up another roughly constructed staircase, or 2. enter a small enclosure near the trunk and lift yourself up through a hole in its ceiling. Now you are on the third and final platform. From up here, you can see down to the people scaling the net below, or even further down to the makeshift pool dug into the ground and covered in plastic.