What New Orleans Taught Me(commonedge.org) |
What New Orleans Taught Me(commonedge.org) |
Feel free to reach out to me if you want some intros.
Your risk of getting railroaded as a tourist drops dramatically if you stay away from the French Quarter. If you also stay away from any location the hop-on/hop-off buses stop, that drops almost to zero.
I live close enough to go 6-8 times per year. We only go into the Quarter to dine at restaurants that we know (and usually were recommended by natives) or shop at a handful of places whose only location is there.
She spent her late teens and early adulthood living in the city, and moved back after living all over the place several times during her life; and so when we met we just got in her car and she took me to all the places that were meaningful to her: shopping on Magazine Street, Ursuline Academy where she went to high school, a book signing with one of her classmates, coffee and beignets at Café du Monde, lunch at Domilise's, etc. It was important to her because she felt that to understand New Orleans was to understand her as a person better. The major detail from the song that was missing was there were no roses bursting through cracks in the sidewalk, but sometimes there was jasmine growing along the fences and walls adjoining the sidewalk and as you walked along you'd just be bathed in the smell of it. Random marching or jazz bands do sometimes pass right by you. Everything you said about the city is true. It's sometimes dangerous, and I wouldn't want to be out in the wrong place at night, but it's honest and raw and real in a way most cities, even my beloved Boston, are not.
I've been here a few times now, mostly frequenting the Quarter, Marigny, the Warehouse District, and the Garden District -- each seem (to me) to be their own special, slower spin on different areas of the country. I'm sure some will disagree, but to me, the French Quarter, while obviously having tons of European influence, feels a lot like a New England town (except the weather of course!). Marigny (again, to me) feels almost SoCal-esque, with its small bungalows and arts focus. The Warehouse District feels like a rust belt city, very industrial but charming, and the Garden District feels straight out of Georgia or South Carolina, the most southern. All this is to say it all makes New Orleans a very special place.
However, I've lived in Chicago, Austin, KY and Omaha. I moved back and honestly I like it here. I hated it when I grew up, but the cost of living is cheap and the food is good. I got my real ID here back in 2016 when I got my learners permit which surprised people in Chicago. Also we got phone app IDs pretty early. It's getting a little better.
When we were evaluating places to settle as adults, the schools are what kept us from stopping when we were there.
Why this is great is because it makes it unattractive for rich real estate developers and rich gentrifiers from moving here and wiping out the culture by turning it into strip malls and suburbia like the rest of the country.
People have these itemized buzz word lists of visited cultural touchstones that they drop in conversations to sound hip about the city.
Its very clinical... like an all white person second line.
Gentrifiers who sliced off the face of the city and are wearing it like a skin suit.
Pros: - Great food
- History (relative to the US at least)
- Laid back culture
- Decent public transit. Not as good as NYC or SF, but in the city and even outlying areas like Metarie the streetcar gets you alot of places
- Interesting architechture in places like the Garden District and French Quarter
- All-in-all, one of the most unique places in the US
Cons:
- Weather is shyte, although winters tend to be mild (ironically it can get cold at times, even worse than say the SF Bay)
- K-12 education outside of private and parochial Catholic is mostly, not good
- The politics. Depending your perspective, you get the worst of both worlds (batshit insane conservatives running the state vs. corrupt liberals running the city)
- Every other commercial you see will be for personal injury lawyers. The tort decisions there are out of control and insurance rates are high.
All this is probably OK for childless young adults. I'd think twice before settling down there though
2025 makes it hard to be far from SF for me again because there's so much interesting stuff getting built. FOMO follows me around though.
I would consider raising a family in those areas as well. Beautiful and walkable.
I live here part time now. I tell people New Orleans is a different country - has to be experienced.
My great-great-uncle told me about driving there with a buddy during college--in the 1920s.
I think one of the early Harriet Potter books included the reference to a man who spent a year there in his youth and had the indiscretion to have experimented with alcohol.
Just a very different place from the rest of the US South, and AFAICT, different from any other place in the US
Nope. This person is not terribly insightful.
> the more rigid monochronic frame that dominates the rest of the country. In polychronic cultures, time is seen as cyclical and relational rather than fixed
Maybe in brand new suburbs, but where else? This person is detached from the rest of our communal reality and is inventing a new one!
Not sure how a barely-chopped photo edge makes the actual article "difficult to read".
Didn’t mean to come off as rude.
- Setting for Gabriel Knight I: Sins of the Fathers. The most atmospheric game I've ever played. It was basically a tour of New Orleans (St Johns cemetery, Lake Ponchartrain, Tulane, etc.)
- Yes, food. Even though Antoine's, Commander's Palace, Mothers are touristy, they're the best touristy food I've ever had. Then there's the usual suspects like Cafe du Monde beignet's, jambalayas, crawfish etouffees, gumbos, po-boys and mufulettas.
I also wandered out to Metarie (which I learned was pronounced Meta-ree, not Me-taree). It's a suburb.
America doesn't really have any other destinations quite like it.
[0] https://nypost.com/2022/09/18/new-orleans-becomes-murder-cap...
Plastic surgery’s a pretty powerful force in his universe too, this was only a few years ago but he looked just the same as when I was seeing his ads on tv in the eighties all the time.
Long story short, the counsel for the plaintiff was VERY good, made the insurance company's people look like amateurs, and was successful in pleading his case and getting everything he asked for. Very nice fellow, and I didn't notice until driving over a shipping canal that his face was plastered on a giant billboard for maritime injury cases, lol.
That’s federal law; nothing to do with the company or New Orleans.
Glossing over a lot of nuance, but if you can offer the person what amounts to a lifetime (or at least long-term???) job at the same or better pay that they can reasonably do with their new disability, there is no standing for a workers comp claim.
They wanted to offer him the job so they could fire him for not performing because they didn't want their premium to increase.