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New Orleans Shakes Itself Off as Mardi Gras Nears

Devastation is Everywhere but Visitors Are Returning

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

January 21, 2007
With an average elevation of four feet and annual rainfall of five feet, New Orleans is all too familiar with flooding. In fact, some locals have already made it the Cajun version of the F word.

Like a friendly dog caught in a cloudburst, the city is shaking itself vigorously and moving on. The French Quarter is open and thriving. The streetcars are running. Dixieland musicians again stage impromptu street shows in Jackson Square.

New Orleans is trying hard to fuse itself back together after Hurricane Katrina ripped it apart 16 months ago.

Before Katrina, the Crescent City drew eight million tourists per year. Its pre-storm population was nearly double the current figure of 200,000. Three times more schools were open then too.

Now, with Mardi Gras less than a month away, New Orleans is working hard to regain its reputation as the City that Care Forgot. The Katrina Krewe, a group of local women, got 1,000 volunteers on a hot summer Saturday when they announced they would launch twice-weekly clean-up operations.

Cruise lines returned to the Port of New Orleans in October.

And the New Orleans Saints returned to the much-maligned Superdome to poke their way into the National Football League playoffs. Both team and city are making remarkable recoveries.

Of the 181 square miles in New Orleans, 140 were under water. More than 200,000 homes were destroyed or damaged. City Park, a 1500-acre oasis at the end of a trolley line, lost 1,000 trees while suffering $40 million in damage.

Not Easy Being Easy

Slowly but surely, New Orleans is becoming the Big Easy again.

Restoring the Canal Street trolley line, unwisely ripped out in 1964, cost $155 million but has produced a new tourist attraction -- plus a practical way to avoid drivers more concerned with the sidewalk scene than road safety.

To be sure, New Orleans is still one of the world's great people-watching places.

Mardi Gras, which falls on Feb. 20 this year, is expected to be its usual madhouse, with tons of tourists in town to watch an expected three-dozen floats -- seven or eight more than last year -- and party with people who know how to party. The music, nightspots, restaurants, and debauchery of Bourbon Street aren't gone with the wind.

Lee Circle is still Lee Circle, with its donor-paid statue of the famous Confederate general. There's no statue of Marquis de Lafayette in Lafayette Square but then, New Orleans prides itself on being unpredictable. The gazebo where John Philip Sousa led his marching band in 1928 echoes with memories. So does the Court of Two Sisters, a historic Royal Street bistro where visitors still enjoy an outdoor jazz brunch in any season.

Muriel's Jackson Square claims to have a haunted upstairs -- New Orleans was full of ghost stories long before Katrina -- and both food and service are spirited. Locals love Mother's, where a menu item called "debris" has nothing to do with storm damage. It's so popular that President Clinton had to wait on line when he dined there.

Brennan's, one of 10 New Orleans restaurants owned by the Brennan family, is still enjoying the mastery of chef Lazone Randolph, who started there in 1965 and is so loyal to the city that he cooked dinner for staffers by sterno after Katrina knocked out all electricity.

Hard-to-pronounce Begue's ("be gay" is close enough), in the Royal Sonesta Hotel, is another French Quarter property worthy of inclusion on a three-day eating tour. Its redfish is almost as remarkable as its polished service.

Both the stakes and the steaks are enormous at Harrah's, the city's lone land-based casino. The only thing dampening the spirits of diners is wafting tobacco smoke, since no barrier separates the restaurant from the smoke-filled casino.

Not for Non-Smokers

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Smoking is also a problem in French Quarter jazz clubs, although many of them offer small non-smoking sections that contain neither desirable seats nor ample separation from smoke. Recent legislation has cleared the air from restaurants, so the Big Easy is becoming easier on out-of-towners hoping to sample the many flavors of the city.

For breakfast, the best flavor is the beignet, a mix of fried dough and powdered sugar that makes a fine accompaniment to the traditional chicory blend of local coffee. Residents insist it's better than the usual morning drink but most outsiders find it bitter.

Getting around New Orleans is easy. Streetcars rumble along the Mississippi riverfront and traverse Canal Street and parts of the St. Charles line that bisects the Garden District. Gray Line of New Orleans offers a wide variety of tours, touting city highlights, ghosts, and even areas ravaged by Katrina.

The 600-room Hotel Monteleone, a family-owned property operated from the same spot since 1886, is not only the largest hotel in the French Quarter but one of three American hotels (along with New York's Algonquin and Plaza) designated as a literary landmark by the Friends of the Library Association. The four-diamond landmark has hosted Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and even New Orleans native Truman Capote -- who boasted he was born in the Monteleone even though his mother actually went to a nearby hospital for his birth.

A rooftop pool and spa emerged from a recent renovation but the rotating Carosel Piano Bar remained intact. It is the world's only merry-go-round that requires riders to be 21 or older.

Life is a merry-go-round in New Orleans. Since gambling is against the law but gaming is okay, casinos are limited to one on land but 16 more are moored on the riverfront.

Noted Locals

The list of famous natives includes John Goodman, Nicholas Cage, Peyton Manning, and Chef Emeril, while the list of famous achievements begins with Andrew Jackson's War of 1812 victory over the British (a Jackson Square statue depicts the general on his rearing steed). Mule-drawn carriage rides remain popular even at $60 per half-hour.

There are 72 neighborhoods and 60 different cultures in the city and long, narrow houses from the days when citizens were taxed only on their frontage. Much of the architecture in the French Quarter shows a Spanish influence, pieces of the Eiffel Tower are contained in the iron edifice of the Culinary Institute of New Orleans, and graveyards are stacked on top of the ground to avoid the sight of floating bodies. More than 300 people remain missing from Katrina, which took at least 1,600 lives.

In nearby St. Bernard's Parish, where flooding was total, some houses have rooftop holes made by residents escaping rising waters that reached their attics. Many houses are spray-painted with data showing status of occupants and water levels. One says LISA & DONNIE ARE OK on the front but U LOOT, U DIE on the side.

Six Flags has no plans to reopen its abandoned theme park, even though the empty roller-coaster tracks look like they could support a train full of happy youngsters. Abandoned malls, twisted signs, and houses knocked off their foundations are easy to find, especially in area where levees broke in the wake of the storm. Many roofs remain festooned with plastic blue tarps.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has repaired and restored floodwalls and levees -- but only to pre-Katrina levels. Air service is about 60 per cent of what it once was, but JetBlue makes two daily roundtrips from its New York hub at John F. Kennedy International.

Donald Trump makes regular visits to oversee the new condo complex he's building. Also going up is the $700 million Hyatt Regency National Jazz Park.

Actor James Gandolfini, of Sopranos fame, will be arriving soon; he's agreed to serve as the King of Krewe Bacchus during Mardi Gras.

Go with the Flow

Locals try to go with the flow. They even sell T-shirts that lampoon the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) for its late and limited response. A more-hopeful shirt says RE-NEW ORLEANS. Another simply says FAITH.

Katrina created a lot of pain but also a lot of hope. It made New Orleans the only place on the planet where visitors can eat their way through the city and eat their hearts out on the same day.

The governor's office matches the skills of volunteers with people who need help. Call 866-286-3835 or see volunteerlousiana.gov/1800Vol/OpenIndexAction.do.

For further information, contact the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau, 2020 St. Charles Ave., New Orleans, LA 70130 (Tel. 800-672-6124, www.neworleanscvb.com).

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