It’s taken me a few weeks to get around to posting my updates about my time in New Orleans. I was there for four weeks and I had an absolute blast, up until the last week I was there, when the Covid-19 pandemic brought the whole country to a screeching halt. It felt weird and bad to talk about what a fun time I had in New Orleans when suddenly the whole world was in the middle of this scary pandemic, especially since as I left, New Orleans herself was getting hit particularly hard. I think it’s a minor miracle that I didn’t get the virus myself, considering how bad things got in the city (and how much they are saying Mardi Gras played a part). I ended up spending my last week in town self-isolating in my Airbnb on the Westbank and being mad that my trip was getting disrupted. But now it’s been a few weeks, I think most of the risk I faced personally has passed, and now we’re all starting to settle into what everyone insists on calling our “new normal.” I am adjusting my trip based on information as it becomes available, and I’m very hopeful that I’ll be able to continue on soon. But in the meantime, I think the best way to honor the spirit of the people of New Orleans is for me to celebrate what a fun city it is, filled with incredibly nice and generous people.
Honestly the people I met in New Orleans are probably the friendliest, most genuinely nice people in America. The bartenders and servers and cashiers and Lyft drivers are among the most authentically nice service industry people I’ve ever been served by anywhere. But even total strangers with nothing to gain were incredibly nice and generous. I felt like I constantly had strangers checking in on me. One example: there is only one bridge from the Westbank where I was staying across the Mississippi River to downtown New Orleans, and one day when I attempted to take the bus into town to meet an old friend who happened to be visiting, the bus driver didn’t stop at the last stop and I ended up getting back on the bridge and going all the way back across to the Westbank again. After an hour on the bus I had ended up like four blocks from where I started; I was mad, and now I was late for meeting my friend. So, standing at the bus stop I took out my phone and ordered a Lyft. Behind me a woman sitting in her car rolled down her window and called out to me to ask if I was ok. She was waiting to pick up her daughter from this bus stop when she saw me get off the bus and stand around staring at my phone, and wanted to make sure I wasn’t in trouble and didn’t need any help. When I told her what happened, she was satisfied that I didn’t need help, but she still told me to let her know if I was stuck and she could give me a ride to the main bus terminal. I was absolutely floored by this interaction. I don’t think I’ve been offered help that casually and with such caring by a total stranger since I was a kid. And that was far from the only time a stranger in New Orleans offered incredibly generous, unprompted help.
I do feel like New Orleans is a two-sided coin, though, and the other side of the coin is the corruption and inefficiencies that I knew they were famous for, but was astonished to see in real life. That obnoxious bus ride was one example (public transit is not something they do well); but other than the bus the only other transit option I had to get into town was a ferry from Algiers Point to the French Quarter. The ferry was more convenient than the bus, but it also took me 20-30 minutes just to get to the ferry terminal; one time I made it all the way there and was told the ferry wasn’t running… because the dock was sinking. The roads in New Orleans have got to be the worst roads I have ever driven on in my life, and it’s not even just a “quaint old town thing;” even in nice residential areas, the roads look like they belong in a war zone. I experienced the famous Big Easy corruption without even being a full time resident, and the full time residents I spoke to (and again, there were a lot of them because they are so damn friendly) talk about much worse corruption than that. Just a few months before I got there, a partially constructed hotel collapsed, killing multiple people, and yet even by the time I got there the ruins still loomed ominously over the French quarter. The people I talked to all seemed to be unable to avoid the topic of how frustrating living in New Orleans can be, and almost all of them seemed to have the same exasperated outlook about living there.
To be honest it was a fascinating juxtaposition. The people are all so joyous, and yet so fed up. The city is so old and historic and yet so plagued by modern civic problems.
I did love the relationship New Orleans has to its past. After spending a decade in Boston, I thought I knew what it was like to live in a historic city. And Boston and New Orleans have a lot in common in that regard. But in Boston history always feels like an interesting feature apart from its modern identity, like it’s just one of the spectrum of things that combines to make the whole city what it is. In New Orleans, the history feels much more pervasive, as though it seeps through and flavors every other thing about it. You can’t ignore history here. It’s built into every brick in every building; you can’t even order a cocktail without there being some piece of history behind it.
Personally, I really loved it. The architecture is gorgeous, from the Spanish galleries of the French Quarter down to the little shotgun houses in the working class neighborhood where I stayed (and of course, both styles have a good story behind them). The main transit downtown is a system of century-plus old trolley car lines with wooden seats that chunk their way past gleaming skyscrapers. You can walk into a 200 year old historic landmark building and order a sugary drink in a plastic novelty cup shaped like a skull or a hand grenade. And, that place will be adjacent to a 4-star Michelin rated restaurant with a strict dress code serving haute cuisine.
It’s also a place that feels like it has no rules, which also makes it a place of excess. You can drink on the street, and most restaurants ask you when you get the bill if you want a “go cup,” or a cocktail to take away. It’s easy to get carried away in an environment like that. One day I walked down Bourbon Street and watched a girl throw up on the street without losing a step, and then her friends cheered her when she took another sip and kept walking. Another day I sat on the second floor gallery of a restaurant on Bourbon Street eating dinner and I looked down to see a guy so blackout drunk and alone that he literally curled up to take a nap in a doorway across the street.
Mardi Gras is maybe the peak example of this. I made it to the city just in time for the big day, although in New Orleans Mardi Gras season actually stretches from Twelfth Night to the day before Ash Wednesday, so New Orleans can have anywhere from one to two months of parades and parties every year. I arrived the weekend before the actual day, so in reality I missed most of the event! That being said, just a couple of days of Mardi Gras was more than enough for me – the people of New Orleans are a hardy folk if they can make it through 6 weeks or more of this level of party. You can tell who the locals are here, because they’re the ones with the best costumes, having the most fun, and keeping their shit together the best. To be honest, I thought that going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans once would be enough for me, but it’s such an overwhelming experience that going once felt like a trial run, like I’d have to go back and do it again, but do it more!
This post has ended up much longer than I anticipated, but take that as a reflection of how much New Orleans is. It’s an overwhelming city, in almost every way imaginable. I go into more details in my photo page, but in keeping with the practice I started in Nashville, I want to summarize some of my highlights here:
- The food!! Oh man the food. Of all the places that I mentioned wanting to visit over the last several months, New Orleans is the one that got the strongest positive reactions, and about 80% of those reactions were food-related, and for good reason. I ate so many poboys, oysters, blackened redfish, crawfish, gumbo, etouffee, beignets, and more and more and more. I went into a dive bar for their crawfish boil, where I was handed a styrofoam box and told I could eat all the crawfish I could scoop out of a nearby bin and fit into the box. I also went to a five star restaurant where I got one of the fanciest meals of my life, and where the meal was concluded with the server bringing us a literal jewelry box of bonbons. I made my way to Cafe Du Monde in the middle of the night multiple times to eat beignets and drink chicory coffee without waiting in the long lines they have during the day. I slurped oysters the size of my palm and ate delicate crawfish etouffee while sitting on a second floor gallery looking down on Bourbon Street. I went to see a Cajun band play at a famous music hall and during intermission between sets, they literally served red beans and rice to all the attendees. I could eat the food in New Orleans every day until I died and probably not get tired of it. No wonder people spoke about the food in New Orleans so passionately.
- The drinks! Like I mentioned, New Orleans is a chaotic place where the pursuit of pleasure reigns above all. But New Orleans is also the home of some of the most iconic cocktails in America. The sazarac (one of my favorite cocktails!) and the hurricane both originated in the city (and of course, both have fascinating stories behind them). I took a mixology class where I learned the history and how to make several classic New Orleans cocktails – I strongly recommend it to anyone in the city!
- The music! After spending a couple of weeks in Nashville I thought I was a little over seeing live music, but I was wrong. As much as I can enjoy some Tennessee country music, I actively enjoy New Orleans Jazz. I saw some good live jazz on Bourbon Street (Fritzel’s was a favorite I ended up at a couple of times), but Frenchmen Street just outside the French Quarter is the place to go. Continuing another practice I started in Nashville, I put together a playlist of some of the sounds of my time in New Orleans for you all to enjoy:
I feel like I could go on and on about my time in New Orleans. I honestly loved it. Despite the unfortunate circumstances under which I left the city, I very much see myself coming back some day – hopefully some day not too far in the future. I have a whole list of things I didn’t get to after my time got cut short, although the city is so full of culture that even if I’d had a whole additional month I probably wouldn’t have gotten to do everything I wanted.
Cruise on over to my photo page to see photos of my time in New Orleans as well as some more specifics about the things I did there. In the meantime, I leave you with this quote from Interview With the Vampire, which I read as a kind of New Orleans souvenir.
Alyson Gagne 