I know people who are obsessed with New Orleans. A guy I used to work with would go there roughly once a year with his wife. “There’s no place in the world like it,” he would tell me. Last week, my wife and I paid a visit for a few nights to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. It was my second time in New Orleans, although the first time was Mardi Gras 2002, just before I turned twenty-one. Since I spent most of my time then trying to navigate an obscenely packed French Quarter, the first trip feels like it barely counts. My wife’s first trip doesn’t count in a different way: she was born in nearby Mandeville and lived there until she was six. Sometimes, she and her family would venture into New Orleans, but most of her memories of the city are a little fuzzy. So really this was both of our first visits in our adult lives.
My old friend was right: there’s no
place like this city. We like to talk about the weirdness of Baltimore – and it
is weird, in comparison to DC, its closest big neighbor. But if I’m being
honest, Baltimore’s general vibe isn’t all that different from that of
Philadelphia, or Boston, or Richmond. They’re all in the same ballpark at
least. New Orleans, meanwhile, is just a different breed from Houston or
Atlanta. Its weirdness is off the charts. The only city that, to me, feels anything
like New Orleans – maybe its little cousin? – is Savannah, which has a similar swampy creepiness to it. (I say that
having spent only a couple hours there, a few years back, so I may not be the
authority on this: I’m going off my own subjective impression.)
For
better or worse, it’s a unique place. It has its own regional cuisine that’s
largely confined to the city. Its inhabitants have their own regional accent
that’s clearly distinct from the southern accent at large. (They don't say "ya'll," I'm told.) Its French quarter
boasts a style of French-inspired architecture I’ve never seen anywhere else. Walk into one of the endless knickknack stores
in the French Quarter and you can buy a t-shirt or some other tchotchke emblazoned with a
quote from Tennessee Williams: “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco,
and New Orleans. Everywhere
else is Cleveland.” There’s probably some truth to that, even though
there are plenty other American cities I like just fine – including Cleveland. I
think the point though is not that every other city in the country sucks: it’s
that most cities are homogenous. Chicago is cool, sure, but it’s kind of just
Dallas with a different climate. Columbus and Indianapolis are basically the
same city in consecutive states. Phoenix is alright, but it’s about as generic as
they come. New Orleans, though, is hard to confuse with anywhere else.
By no means does that mean that New Orleans is
paradise. My wife and I had a wonderful time, and I say this with all due
respect: parts of New Orleans suck. Specifically, Bourbon Street, one of the
most famous thoroughfares in the world, is very close to my vision of what hell
must look like. It’s dirty, it’s smelly, it’s dumb, and holy shit is it loud.
Every block on Bourbon Street features one of those hurricane places, where
sugary mixed drinks are dispensed from machines into tall, colorful plastic
cups shaped like grenades or palm trees. Into the streets, these joints blast air
conditioning (which, to be fair, is appealing), and deafening music (which is not). On our obligatory
walk through Bourbon Street on Saturday night, we saw: a woman peeing in the
street, another woman more than sixty years old lifting her top in exchange for plastic
beads, and, most depressingly, a third woman taking a selfie with a homeless man who
had passed out on the street. The last of these took place just outside
Galatoire’s, the venerable old French-Cajun restaurant that still requires men
to wear blazers in the main dining room. The contrast was striking.
The problem with Bourbon Street, I think, is
that it has become a victim of its own popularity. It’s exactly the same
phenomenon that transformed Manhattan’s Times Square from the Crossroads of the
World to An Insufferable Shitshow to be Avoided at All Costs. With each wild Mardi
Gras, the legend of Bourbon Street grew and grew, until it achieved a
practically mythical reputation. I haven’t formally researched this, but I
believe half the frat boys in the country have a metal “Bourbon Street” sign somewhere
in their dorm room. More and more idiots keep flocking there in search of the
biggest party they’ve ever seen, and local vendors are glad to oblige. Now what’s
left is straight up insanity – a brand of insanity I hope I never experience
again in my life. One of my memories from Mardi Gras 2002 is that at the end of
three nights on Bourbon Street, a friend of mine summed up the experience: “I
was really excited for this,” he said, “But this place is evil and I hate it.”
It took me about ten minutes to reach the same conclusion this time.
Let’s be clear, though: I don’t hate parties. I
used to be a frat boy myself, after all. On Sunday evening, we wised up and
walked over to Frenchmen Street in Marigny, which abuts the French Quarter. Now
that was a party. A big brass band played on a corner (outside a used book
store, incidentally), causing the audience, a diverse array or black, white,
locals and tourists, to spill into the street. We watched for a bit and then
paid a cover to enter The Spotted Cat, a jazz club, where we watched an
effortlessly brilliant combo. Those dumb hurricane dispensaries were nowhere to
be seen – but I did have an excellent local microbrew.
On
Monday, we returned to Bourbon Street and found a relatively quite bar that
offered cool atmosphere and free popcorn. “Maybe this place is different on
Monday night,” I said. We walked two more blocks. Nah, it was still terrible.
I’m
not trying to dump on the city of New Orleans, which is so cool – not because
of, but in spite of, the heart of the French Quarter. A short list of what I
appreciated in three and a half days includes:
o
The Hotel
Monteleone, which is straight old-world class. The carousel bar is pricey, but
absolutely one-of-a-kind.
o
Streetcars
o
Beignets
o Café Au-Lait
o
Incredible Brass
Bands composed of people who frankly look like they live on the streets
o
Domilise’sPo-Boys (Roadfood steered me in the right direction yet again.)
o
Frenchmen Street
o
Lovely
residential neighborhoods
o Basically all cajun food, but especially my Shrimp Etoufee from Galatoire’s
o
Random lizard
sightings
I’ll
return some day – not in late June, though. I’ll never do that again. It’s a
cool city and like most cool cities, some of its best features are tucked away
off the beaten track. On my next trip, I’ll be savvy enough to avoid the city’s most
famous and least appealing parts.
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| My Wife took this awesome picture of one of the brass band dudes in front of a chicken place. |
