It’s hard to find good reasons to leave New Orleans, and it’s hard to leave when you find them. Two years ago I ran into a friend from New Orleans on a subway platform in Brooklyn. He told me he was going to law school. I asked him why. “Oh, you know,” he said, “I had to do something, or I woulda died there.”
What makes New Orleans so beautiful is what makes it so dangerous. Neon signs hang on Magazine Street, untouched for fifty years. They’re not there for nostalgia; they’re there because there’s no money to replace them. Beer is cheap in New Orleans, work ends at five and no one is really expected to work for the month before Mardi Gras. But I also know three people, directly, not friends of friends, who’ve been shot. New Orleans is gorgeous if you have money, desperate if you don’t.
I’m having trouble wrestling with the fact that it may disappear. I read articles pointing out that the French Quarter and the Garden District were largely spared the worst of it, but that seems to be missing the point. The French Quarter is the least interesting part of New Orleans, the least alive. All those musicians and cooks and waiters who serve in the French Quarter live in places like the 9th ward, which is what we can watch sinking under the levee break on TV today. New Orleans is run on all those areas that over the last two days have ceased to exist.
It breaks my heart.
