This year, my family decided on New Orleans for Christmas. I had lobbied for Vancouver, but was overruled based on “it will be cold and dark”. It was a really excellent trip though, so thanks for overruling me Sarah – I owe you one I guess. I had to work a couple of the days, but still got some lovely walking in despite the colder-than-usual weather. A few highlights, thoughts, and musings to follow.

New Orleans has a fairly extensive streetcar network! And the St. Charles line is the oldest continuously operating streetcar in the entire world, so it was a lot of fun to see the trolleys running. I will say they need to be running way more streetcars though; Olivia and I tried to take the St. Charles line from Canal Street to the Garden District on our last day there and people were waiting in line to go – 50+ people at the stop. Pretty gnarly, and I dunno – maybe RTA should get more funding so they can run streetcars at like 5 minute headways to actually serve the demand that is already there.

Sure, the St. Charles cars are ancient, loud, and has weird wooden seats. But people love em, and New Orleans is a cool ass city for keeping them around for so long. From what I gather, they have expansion plans in the work too, so hopefully that will involve getting some more rolling stock too. If anyone at RTA is reading this, I’d be happy to throw some more ideas at you!

State of the City

On boxing day, I went exploring and found some less than nice parts of town too though. New Orleans caters heavily towards the tourism crowd, but from what I can tell that is mostly contained around the French Quarter and Canal Street. Downtown is weird, with a ton of office buildings and not much else – while the areas around the train station were just bleak. The Pontchartrain Expressway runs directly adjacent to Union Passenger Terminal (you can see a speed limit sign in the background of that picture), and it really leaves a bad mark on the area.

New Orleans feels a little kitschy in the tourist areas, and a little rough in the non-tourist areas but I don’t mean that as a negative. The kitschy-ness is still pretty unique (spooky voodoo tours, Mardi Gras related things, brass bands, etc.), and the rougher areas still felt interesting. To be frank, New Orleans has a lot of issues (sinking into the sea being only a small part of it). The legacy of redlining is stark here (as it is everywhere I suppose), and Louisiana was perhaps the most racist state in the country in the Reconstruction era.

But a little more about the music scene – we saw a really fun brass/jazz band playing in Jackson Square on the 27th, and then saw them again playing on Frenchman street that night. Live music is easy to find, and I think that’s a mark of a fun city to visit. It’s like Nashville, but for jazz instead of country (which is a big upgrade in my book).

The city is majority Black, but it’s hard to tell when you’re in the French Quarter. Not that the touristy areas felt like Portland or anything, but I think the tourism industry in New Orleans caters to the “White American Sensibilities”, and most of the people I saw walking around seemed to be from out of town. I’ve been reading a book called Lords of Misrule about the racial history of New Orleans, and Carnival/Mardi Gras in particular which has been enlightening – I’d recommend it if you are interested in learning more about the history of New Orleans in general.

The areas I saw of the city were always interesting, and it was probably the most interesting place to walk I’ve been this year outside of New York. I guess now I know what it’s like to miss New Orleans.

What does it all mean?

I’ll throw my hat in the ring and say that New Orleans is a city worth spending time in. It’s charming, interesting, historical, and unique. French, Spanish, Creole, American, African, and more – it really is a fascinating place. Hopefully I’ll go again soon, but arrive via the City of New Orleans (or maybe the Crescent).