New Orleans' French Quarter

[LincolnKennedy]

^Yeah.  I spent a week there one night.

[MyTwoSense]

^Yeah.  I spent a week there one night.

Excuse me? 

[tcj1985]

Great photos!

[Vince_908]

Not to go on and on about it, but, yes, I agree, that New Orleans may be limited in its ability to supply a visitor with an urbane city experience, and I absolutely agree that so much-- maybe almost all-- of what has been built in the city in the past 50 years, including in the French Quarter and CBD, is just awful at worst or nondescript at best.

The Lakeview neighborhood is one example. It was a middle-class neighborhood for the most part, I think, and mostly postwar, and, when I was looking at the neighborhood one year after Katrina, it was not the destroyed architecture that was chilling. What really got to me was all the evidence of neighborhood life that had just been brought to a halt. It was just an everyday kind of place, like Cleveland's West Park or something, that was of no interest to outsiders like me until after disaster struck.

And then of course there are all the cultural overlays and undercurrents that set New Orleans apart, and their stories go so much deeper than their presentations in the tourist zones. Much of the spectacle that tourists see during Mardi Gras or at other times is rooted in and still generated in those rundown parts of town.

There's a line in an Adrienne Rich poem that goes something like "Yes, poets are born in wasted tracts like these," and I have always liked that line because it could apply to the worst poverty-stricken ghetto or to the most garish well-off suburban subdivision. In defense of New Orleans, I do think that, despite its many, many woes and shortcomings, you really do get a feeling that it has the ability to generate poets and musicians and other kinds of artists.

I also don't mean to say that I think the poverty of New Orleans is charming or irreversible. It's just part of the long story of the place, and I think that New Orleans provides clear evidence that a lot of the important work over time has been done by people who don't have much to go on materially.

[ColDayMan]

Uptown and the Garden District are certainly appealing (if not equally) with the French Quarter.  Though New Orleans' problem is that the "ghetto looking" areas ARE quite close to the main attractive neighborhoods (projects right next door to the Superdome) and thus your impression is almost Detroit Syndrome (no specific side of ghetto ala Cleveland's eastside or Dayton's westside; just ghetto in many sections of the city).

I disagree.  Off the main drag, its as you state, the city is straight up ghetto.  That goes back to my point I've made in other city threads.  People say they are going to "new orleans" but they are really going - airport to the FQ/CBD.  Same as when people say they are going to Miami.  Most are really going to Miami Beach.

I never disagreed with that notion EXCEPT for the fact that you said "the city itself lacks broad appeal outside of the FQ" which I completely disagree with as it has the beautiful Garden District and the interesting Uptown.  But overall, I do agree that New Orleans almost has that southern Detroit presence.

[MyTwoSense]

I never disagreed with that notion EXCEPT for the fact that you said "the city itself lacks broad appeal outside of the FQ" which I completely disagree with as it has the beautiful Garden District and the interesting Uptown.  But overall, I do agree that New Orleans almost has that southern Detroit presence.

We'll we're going to have to disagree.    I know I'm very hard on southern cities, but the place seems even more fragmented (pre katrina) then Cleveland and those two areas along with the Tulane/Audubon area don't make for "broad appeal".  I've been to the city quite a few times, I've just felt underwhelmed.  Its a bad business city, corruption is rampant, it's very racial polarized, and we talk about poverty here in Ohio.  Man it doesn't compare to poverty in the south, but that is a whole 'notha level.

Now we can agree that NoLa is a Southern Detroit or even St. Louis.  Next time you go check out the areas above City park or algiers, Mid City. 

[jmecklenborg]

>People say they are going to "new orleans" but they are really going - airport to the FQ/CBD.  Same as when people say they are going to Miami.  Most are really going to Miami Beach.

Absolutely.  There is also that great part of Don DeLillo's "White Noise" where bus loads of tourists go and buy post cards of the "Most Photographed Barn in America", right after taking photos of it with their own camera. 

I disagree that artists, poets, etc. come out of New Orleans or any other place in disproportionate amounts due to some physical characteristic.  That city certainly stands alone amongst American cities and doesn't suffer the stigma of being "boring" in the way that the midwest does.  It (and Miami) are flatter than the midwest, but that's never pointed out as a negative. 

[ColDayMan]

I never disagreed with that notion EXCEPT for the fact that you said "the city itself lacks broad appeal outside of the FQ" which I completely disagree with as it has the beautiful Garden District and the interesting Uptown.  But overall, I do agree that New Orleans almost has that southern Detroit presence.

We'll we're going to have to disagree.    I know I'm very hard on southern cities, but the place seems even more fragmented (pre katrina) then Cleveland and those two areas along with the Tulane/Audubon area don't make for "broad appeal".  I've been to the city quite a few times, I've just felt underwhelmed.  Its a bad business city, corruption is rampant, it's very racial polarized, and we talk about poverty here in Ohio.  Man it doesn't compare to poverty in the south, but that is a whole 'notha level.

Now we can agree that NoLa is a Southern Detroit or even St. Louis.  Next time you go check out the areas above City park or algiers, Mid City. 

I've been to New Orleans' "bad" areas and good and I can tell you, they still have a certain charm about them that if "cleaned," they'd be great urban neighborhoods.  Because you've been underwhelmed doesn't mean that they aren't attractive, broad appealing neighborhoods.  Some people are underwhelmed by Shaker Square but it has an overall appeal to it, no?

[MyTwoSense]

I've been to New Orleans' "bad" areas and good and I can tell you, they still have a certain charm about them that if "cleaned," they'd be great urban neighborhoods.  Because you've been underwhelmed doesn't mean that they aren't attractive, broad appealing neighborhoods.  Some people are underwhelmed by Shaker Square but it has an overall appeal to it, no?
[/quote]

OK, fair.  Well, since we're going to go there, what are we basing "broad appeal" on?

Leave the square out of this. 

[ColDayMan]

Broad appeal is an area that generally is favorable by the general public and last I checked, the Garden District and Uptown were visited by tourists that were not in downtown/French Quarter (re: St. Charles Streetcar).

[LincolnKennedy]

There's a line in an Adrienne Rich poem that goes something like "Yes, poets are born in wasted tracts like these," and I have always liked that line because it could apply to the worst poverty-stricken ghetto or to the most garish well-off suburban subdivision. In defense of New Orleans, I do think that, despite its many, many woes and shortcomings, you really do get a feeling that it has the ability to generate poets and musicians and other kinds of artists.

Well, this thread has already surprised me since some one quoted Adrienne Rich, who I never would have heard of had "20th Century American Women Poets" not been the only English class I could get into during my senior year of college.

I don't think New Orleans had a disproportionate ability to 'generate' artists so much as it was a gravitational center for certain types of art, particularly jazz music.  Similar to Memphis for blues/rock music during it's early period, or Kansas City for jazz in the 30s.  What I always thought was interesting is how the two greatest pop music traditions in the U.S., jazz and blues/rock, came out of a black/French milieu (New Orleans) and a black/British milieu (Miss. Delta & Memphis), and how there are plenty of great French jazz musicians and plenty of great British rock bands, but who ever heard of a great French rock band or a great British jazzman?

[MARK GLOVE!]

I particularly like # 4, 11.

How did you fit 46 photos on one thread??
I thought the maximum was 17.

[jmecklenborg]

>but who ever heard of a great French rock band or a great British jazzman?

French pop music is bloody awful.  Honestly, I have a theory that the import duties keep the proper equipment necessary for the making of rock & roll out of France.  That's why you never sell anything on Ebay to anyone in France. 

What's great about America is driving past places like Middletown or Lima and knowing that at this very moment, somewhere in that little city, there's some dude down in his basement wailing on guitar.  He's playing an instrument invented here, he's playing it through an amp built here, and he's playing a style of music invented here.  I just never got the sense when I visited France that anyone I passed on the street was capable of plugging in and cranking it.