Hempstead, N.Y., November, 10, 1994—I visited New Orleans last week. Just like any good tourist, I ate a lot, partied a lot and pumped loads of money into the local economy. But my trip also marked a number of firsts for me.
It was my first flight (nothing special), the first time I was in another time zone (no big deal) and the first time I ate alligator (definitely an experience). It was also the first time I took a hard look at a lot of problems in the American city, something I wish I had given more credence to a long time ago.
I don't really know why New Orleans made me so urban-conscious. It wasn't because I was beset by homeless bums on every street corner—I have, after all, been to New York City. But maybe it was because the bums actually came into Burger King, sat down opposite me and started a conversation while I was cramming a sandwich down my throat and then asked for a handout. I was caught off guard by a simple civility I had never expected from a person so repugnant. In the end, I felt touched by something I had always attempted to remain removed from, but it's taken me no small amount of time to figure out why.
It's kind of funny that a town like New Orleans could make a hardened New Yorker feel sappy. A town with effectively no drinking age, where the most famous attractions are all based around alcohol and sex and the most popular street is named Bourbon made me reevaluate my lofty morals. A town with no conscience made me feel guilty about my own.
What threw me about New Orleans, I think, wasn't the bars, or the women, or the food or the music—I'd heard all about that and I'd looked over that cliff in New York. What pushed me over the edge in the Big Easy was the life of the city, and the message it communicated.
New Orleans is alive. It has a heart called the French Quarter, where the beer flows fast and the hurricanes hit hard. It has a pulse, pumping out along Bourbon Street up Decatur Street to Jackson Square, over the Riverbend and down Canal Street, its lifeblood watering the Garden District, washing over everything in the French Quarter and trickling down to coat the city from the Superdome to the cemeteries. It tastes like Cajun catfish and Creole crawfish and a hundred other spices and species lying just beyond the borders of the menu. It smells like a man or a woman, alternating between flowers and sewers, bourbon and bayou. A guitar, a trumpet, a saxophone and a harmonica are its voice, and its lungs are filled with the babbling breath of tourists on Toulouse and the rumbling of steamers splashing on the Big Muddy.
But what makes New Orleans a treasure isn't the jazz, the Mardi Gras or even the Saints (though locals may dispute that). What makes the Crescent City a special one isn't the jambalaya or the lagniappes, the gumbo or the gator. No, despite whatever you may have heard, N'awlins isn't really about any of that. It's about a way of life in a city made to foster it—an attitude and a presence so subtle it's sad to see so many people miss the point.
I met a lot of tourists during my visit; I made some fast friends and renewed some old acquaintances. But in our travels and escapades, it seems we really missed New Orleans. We were too lost on Bourbon Street, too Jazzed in Jackson Square to appreciate the city's purpose. We just thought it was fun to drink and carouse.
I didn't see it then, but I think I finally figured out what the city meant after I left it. The biting reality I was returning to made me miss something I had come to embrace—a philosophy, far beneath the food and the music and the beer, of what everything is really all about: living free and easy for just about everyone.
New Orleans is the antithesis of New York in that respect—it isn't a predator's market. People don't get destroyed in New Orleans; they aren't afraid to make eye contact on the street. They live, and they let others live, and they tell their tales to each other, drink their Dixie beer, listen to their blues and eat their po'boys all year long. They live life to the fullest—a Mardi Gras of the spirit, a Fat Tuesday of the soul.
Unfortunately, such a seemingly novel concept is also a fading one. I was told New Orleans has one of the fastest-rising crime rates in America, some astronomical figure like 200 or 300 percent per year. It is a leading crime city. Its police department has been known to be corrupt, and the mayor recently admitted citizens owe the city millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. There have been 350 murders alone in New Orleans this year.
Tourists, drug problems, gangs—it all adds up after a while. It's killed New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and most other major US cities (editor's note: I wrote this column way back when New York was still waaaay unsafe). It's choking the life out of the Big Easy, though people on the street are still happy to shake your hand and greet you, and the ever-increasing population of bums still apologize for panhandling you.
Reading about a native New Orleans man who had been wrongfully imprisoned for about 25 years, I was struck by a disturbing truth. The man, who had never lived anywhere but the city, didn't recognize his home when he was freed. He didn't understand they there were gunshots on Magazine Street, or why there was such a thing as "the projects."
Living near New York, a dead city, I had no trouble dealing with that part of New Orleans: the crime and the poverty and the decay of the urban landscape. I just couldn't understand why they let the bums into Burger King, until now.
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