New-Orleans Travel Guide
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One of the pleasures of New Orleans used to be that the city changed very slowly, if at all. This was a city that objected strenuously when a certain decades-old restaurant dared to switch from hand-chipped ice to machine made. This was a city where ten years could go by between your visits, but your favorite bookstore would still be in business when you came back, and your favorite bookseller would still be behind the counter, possibly with a volume he had been holding for you against the day you finally returned.
But on August 29, 2005, New Orleans changed forever. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which was not quite as strong as nor the direct hit originally predicted, at least three of the levees designed to keep the below-sea-level city safe from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain either broke or were breeched. Eighty percent of one of the most historic and culturally rich cities in America was underwater. The water remained for weeks, months in certain places, and by the time it was gone, the landscape of New Orleans was permanently altered.
Throughout that time, and as the floodwater was pumped out, there were impossible images. Like those of the ravaged Lower 9th Ward, where house after house was reduced to piles of random lumber, unrecognizable as anything much less someone's home; or others of houses, once lined up in an orderly row, now smashed at various angles into each other, sometimes, incredibly, sitting on top of each other. Vacant lots had materialized where homes had literally been blown away. Sometimes, concrete pilings were left behind, making the lot look like a cemetery, which it was, in a sense. Sometimes just the front steps were left, leading to nowhere, a metaphor that doesn't bear explication. Across town, in Lakeview, homes appeared fine from the outside, but inside, furniture lay about in careless heaps, like the contents of a snow globe shaken by a giant, the consequence of floating in 10 feet or more of water for weeks on end. Everything, from stuffed toys to pianos to pictures on the wall was and is covered in thick fuzzy mold -- family homes, rotten to the core. And adding to the brokenness of it all was the color -- verdant, tropical New Orleans turned brown, gray, and dusty. The vegetation itself had drowned.
It takes a long time to come back from something like this. But New Orleans was given two gifts. The first was that the narrow band of land that did not flood at all included the most historic and best-loved areas, the French Quarter and the part of Uptown that included the Garden District. New Orleans is considerably more than those much-photographed neighborhoods, make no mistake, but what the average visitor imagines when they think of New Orleans remains much as it ever did.
The second is the spirit of the people of New Orleans. Within weeks of the catastrophe, intrepid remaining citizens threw a jazz funeral, complete with an exalting, rejuvenating second line, for the disaster, for its victims, for its citizens. Then they got their hands down in the muck, and began to clean. Restaurants and clubs reopened even when it meant grilling on the sidewalk and keeping the beer cold with a generator. Plans were made for Mardi Gras, and pleas were made for the return of Jazz Fest, because this is a city that loves its parties, and what's a party for except to celebrate life and survival? And sure enough, Mardi Gras parades rolled, and many contained floats openly mocking the terrible thing that had happened just 6 months before, a thumbing of the nose at events that may have left the city broken, but not bowed.
Today, recovery is ongoing, and the process goes slowly. All manner of important things are, maddeningly, no closer to being resolved than in the early days after the storm, while the fate of many citizens and establishments remains in question. Which prompts a question of your own, probably: Should you go?
Oh, yes.
Go, because everything in life is fragile and precarious, and we can take nothing for granted, and some day, it really will all be gone. Go, because it's not gone, not at all. Go, because the things you wanted -- the beautiful architecture, the majestic oaks, the river wind, the quality of light that gives even the most mundane just a little bit magic -- all remain. Go, because people are there, and as long as they are, there will be music, and food, and it will be some of the best of your life. Go, because perhaps you've wanted to help in any way you can, and now the best way you can is to help a historic city regain its economic feet. Go, because every brick in the French Quarter has a story to tell, and so does the damaged ground of the 9th Ward, and you should bear witness. Go, because there is much to celebrate, and this is still the best place there is to do so.
"I want to be in that number," goes the song. I do indeed. I hope you do, too.
