"Mixed Drinks To Go" are how you know you're in New Orleans.
What do you get when you mix a Mexican-spring break and the incredibly uninhibited nature of Amsterdam? You’ve got a giant gumbo pot, which you might end up calling New Orleans. Being the Constitution State and all, we tend to be a bit reserved here in Connecticut. Maybe it has to do with the weather but it’s generally frowned upon when you see a person stumbling through the streets in a total drunken stupor. Going down south is always an eye opening experience for any northerner but going to New Orleans is about as close to going to a foreign city as you can get while not needing a passport.
When you think of New Orleans, you mainly think of two things: The French Quarter and Hurricane Katrina (more on that later). Bourbon Street, located in the heart of the French Quarter, has a reputation as a seedy, slightly dirty, party area where pretty much anything goes. Guess what? Like the cheerleaders in high school, the reputation is well deserved. There are countless bars, dance clubs, strip clubs, mixed drinks to-go places, as well as a place where you can see “live love acts.” You could almost see the cymatia oozing out the front door of that place. This reporter had no issue passing on that establishment.
But it’s not all skanky hos and drunks. If you want to be in movies, you move to Los Angeles. If you want to be a theater actor, you move to New York. If you want to be a crack head, you move to Newark. But if you want to be a jazz musician, you move to New Orleans! While there might not be as many jazz clubs as there were pre-Katrina, there are loads of them for the nine jazz lovers in the country. It’s also a good idea to go if you’re trying to impress someone by seeming uber cool for knowing who the Marsalis brothers are.
They bury their people above ground. If they did it under ground, the graves would pop back up. That’s really creepy.
Since New Orleans was settled by the Frogs, a good deal of the street names are of French origin. That meant this hapless reporter was left not knowing how to pronounce pretty much any of them.
In other “that’s a French sounding name” news, the big dessert down there are these French donuts called beignets (pronounced bin-YAY-s). Not wanting to sound like a total goof, it might behoove you to just ask for “a bag” when placing your order at the famous Café Dumonde. They’ll know what you’re talking about. Those beignets are a hot, doughy concoction loaded with powered sugar. After taking a bag of three beignets back to my hotel room, I got so much powdered sugar on the floor it looked like Tony Montana’s living room. But that’s normal.
You seriously get THIS close to some of the animals at the zoo. You partly feel protected by the glass in front of you, but mostly you don't.
The Audubon Zoo is an incredible attraction. You can get very close to the animals (sometimes a little too close) and get some great pictures. All the exhibits are included in the price of admission, unlike some other zoo that happens to be located in the Bronx where you have to pay extra to see the baboons. But the zoo is clean, well maintained and has a large variety of animals to look at. The petting zoo had a number of different sheep and goats that were friendly enough to let you feed them without taking your hand off.
When the residents talk about their city, it is generally referred to as either “before the hurricane” or “after the hurricane.” It seems to be the biggest event in these people lives and it’s very heavily talked about while on different city tours.
The most popular thing to wear seems to be Barack Obama t-shirts. There were more Obama t-shirts than New Orleans Saints or Hornets shirts (someone other than me will have to explain to the Anti-Couric about the Hornets, because she still thinks the Dodgers play in Brooklyn). They were being worn and sold everywhere. His impending presidency seemed to be a great source of pride for the residents down there. It’s understandable, seeing as how the previous administration didn’t exactly move too swiftly when the hurricane nearly destroyed the city.
People walking around...drinking. Only in New Orleans! (Or Europe, or South America...oh, and Mexico, too.)
New Orleans can best be described as a big, sweaty party and the whole world is invited. After seeing how not crowded the streets and airport are, it seems like they need some more people to join that party. There was almost no traffic the entire weekend stay and the streets were not crowded. While it might be a little bold to say that New Orleans is one of North America’s “great” cities, it certainly is one of the most interesting and certainly worth a visit at least once-before the next big storm comes along and wipes out a truly unique city, not built around convention centers.
*In no way associated with that baseball team in the Bronx.
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