I was in Baton Rouge for 2 weeks on business, and I spent a weekend in New Orleans.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to take as many pictures as I would have liked, but I did get to capture the French Quarter and some of the surrounding areas.

 

The French Quarter was amazing and full of activity...but places like the Lower 9th Ward and Holy Cross looked as if the hurricane had just hit recently.  When I was walking around things were great in the French Quarter, but after crossing Canal Street and heading about 1 block into the CBD area things got a little creepy and deserted.  In a nut shell, the French Quarter was great and the rest was hit or miss...mainly miss.  Enjoy the French Quarter.

 

 

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5. There were lots of street performers and vendors

 

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27. Up on the levee now

 

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29. Neat area, lots of activity

 

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31. Got some beignets (aka mini Funnel Cakes) at Cafe Du Monde

 

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39. A streetcar named Desire...

 

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42. On the other side of Canal Street now...

 

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46. So long from New Orleans

interesting that the put the cars from the St. Charles Street line on the Canal line.

I head down there about once a year (gf's family and all) and it is one of my favorite places in the world.  So much street activity at all times of day.  Hope you had a chance to hit a good restaurant for dinner.

It should be called the Spanish Quarter. Almost all of the French stuff burnt down in the late 1700s. Awesome pics

interesting that the put the cars from the St. Charles Street line on the Canal line.

 

I think most of the St. Charles cars stayed high and dry through all the flooding, but much of their route was trashed by fallen trees and wrecked catenary. The newer, replica cars for the waterfront line and Canal Street, on the other hand, were nearly submerged and completely ruined and will have to be rebuilt before they can return to service.

interesting that the put the cars from the St. Charles Street line on the Canal line.

 

I think most of the St. Charles cars stayed high and dry through all the flooding, but much of their route was trashed by fallen trees and wrecked catenary. The newer, replica cars for the waterfront line and Canal Street, on the other hand, were nearly submerged and completely ruined and will have to be rebuilt before they can return to service.

 

thanks for confirming. I thought I read that, but hadn't really paid attention.

Looks awesome.  I'll be down there in two weeks, so these pics definitely have me excited for the trip.

Beautiful.

Looks awesome.  I'll be down there in two weeks, so these pics definitely have me excited for the trip.

 

 

Ever been? you're in for a treat! :-)

Looks awesome.  I'll be down there in two weeks, so these pics definitely have me excited for the trip.

 

 

Ever been? you're in for a treat! :-)

 

Only in terms of food options.

Nice shots of a fun place.

Looks awesome.  I'll be down there in two weeks, so these pics definitely have me excited for the trip.

 

 

Ever been? you're in for a treat! :-)

 

Only in terms of food options.

 

You think so? I thought New Orleans was awesome! So much, I put it on my places I wouldn't mind living. :-D

On another note, I saw a sign for a Trump Tower while I was in New Orleans...and it looked to be at a complete standstill.  There was absolutely no activity on/near the site where the sign was posted.

Looks like a nice place to wander around for a while.  Any night photos from the French Quarter?

Looks like a nice place to wander around for a while.  Any night photos from the French Quarter?

 

Uh...no.  Too much  :drunk:

^never been to the Crescent City, is there an open container law in the French Quarter?

You think so? I thought New Orleans was awesome! So much, I put it on my places I wouldn't mind living. :-D

 

I'm not a big fan of southern cities.  although NoLa and Miami are unique because of demographics.

 

I think the restaurants in NoLa are great.  reasonably priced.  However, IMO, the city itself lacks broad appeal outside of the FQ.

I would love to go to New Orleans someday.  It seems to have that Quebec City effect, meaning it feels distinctly European while in North America.  Plus, there's always Bourbon Street...

I would love to go to New Orleans someday.  It seems to have that Quebec City effect, meaning it feels distinctly European while in North America.  Plus, there's always Bourbon Street...

 

To be honest, Quebec and NoLa are night and day.

^never been to the Crescent City, is there an open container law in the French Quarter?

 

Yes there is an open container law there...which is fantastic.

 

I think the restaurants in NoLa are great.  reasonably priced.  However, IMO, the city itself lacks broad appeal outside of the FQ.

 

Agreed on both points.

Beautiful pics, thanks for sharing.

 

The Summer temps would easily keep me from living there.

I can see how some people would not find NO endlessly interesting, but there is certainly much to see outside the French Quarter. In fact, I would say that the FQ is not the most interesting part of New Orleans.

 

I am no NO expert but know enough to recommend long walks on Magazine St. or St. Charles Ave. or visits to the big parks or unusual cemeteries. Since it's still partly shut down (and since it's not summer), you can't do it now, but I'd also recommend riding the St. Charles streetcar from the end of the line all the way into the middle of town on a summer night.

 

There are also some really impressive off-Quarter neighborhoods. Two I have walked around in a lot are the Marigny and the Garden District.

 

Even the beat-down parts of New Orleans and its elaborate drainage facilities are interesting, though, and the more you know about its nearly 300-year history, the more interesting you will find the place to be, because, in this place, the stories of the place almost outdo the place itself. It is also strange to be in a city whose existence was all but suspended for more than a month only a few years ago.

I am no NO expert but know enough to recommend long walks on Magazine St. or St. Charles Ave. or visits to the big parks or unusual cemeteries. Since it's still partly shut down (and since it's not summer), you can't do it now, but I'd also recommend riding the St. Charles streetcar from the end of the line all the way into the middle of town on a summer night.

 

There are also some really impressive off-Quarter neighborhoods. Two I have walked around in a lot are the Marigny and the Garden District.

 

I will say that Magazine Street was pretty amazing (sorry no pics).  I also would have loved to check out the Garden District in New Orleans, but didn't have time.  I'm sure there is more to see and appreciate, just not widespread enough I guess.

I can see how some people would not find NO endlessly interesting, but there is certainly much to see outside the French Quarter. In fact, I would say that the FQ is not the most interesting part of New Orleans.

 

I am no NO expert but know enough to recommend long walks on Magazine St. or St. Charles Ave. or visits to the big parks or unusual cemeteries. Since it's still partly shut down (and since it's not summer), you can't do it now, but I'd also recommend riding the St. Charles streetcar from the end of the line all the way into the middle of town on a summer night.

 

There are also some really impressive off-Quarter neighborhoods. Two I have walked around in a lot are the Marigny and the Garden District.

 

Even the beat-down parts of New Orleans and its elaborate drainage facilities are interesting, though, and the more you know about its nearly 300-year history, the more interesting you will find the place to be, because, in this place, the stories of the place almost outdo the place itself. It is also strange to be in a city whose existence was all but suspended for more than a month only a few years ago.

 

I've taken the line out to the Garden District.  It's hot..no A/C and I have flashbacks of the old shaker rapid as I self basted like a pig on a spit! Riding the train to the end was painful.  On the way back to the CBD, I got off went to Audubon Park, which is/was very nice.  However, I didn't like the neighborhoods, street or homes going south from Magazine.  I thought I would explore since neighborhoods like that usually have great finds...but I'll be damned.  It's straight up 'hood.

 

Done city park.  It was not very interesting.  The neighborhoods north of Rampart street reminded me of the bad East Cleveland side of Forest Hills park.  

 

Too be honest, not many people, venture outside the FQ when they go to NoLa.

^I stopped at a gas station in the Lower 9th Ward...to take a leak.

The first time I went to New Orleans I was shocked by the severity and extent of the poverty and surprised by how nondescript so much of the city was.  Miles of dull 1970's apartment complexes and strip malls.  I remember driving around the pulbic housing areas being stared at like an alien.  Also the French Quarter or at least Burboun St. was playing all the same top 40 music as college bars nationwide.

well you have to remember BEFORE katrina that the majority of city was already living in poverty.  The city and parish governments are corrupt.

 

There are things I've read/seen on some investigative reports our people did after Katrina that are just shocking.

New Orleans is a great place to visit, but I am always struck with how nasty some of the neighborhoods are (pre-Katrina).  On the plus side the French Quarter is a great place to party and it is a city where you can really feel the history.  It has a definite vibe.  Great photos by the way - I have always liked the shots from the narrow streets of the Quarter peeking into the financial district. 

 

I did take a trolley tour one time, and all the statues with the soldiers on horses have a meaning.  Something like the front, right leg in the air meant they died in battle, and the left in the air meant they went on to greater glory.  Kind of mundane but interesting.  I also remember the first time I went with my family and was very young - that was the first time I saw women swinging out of windows in the "clubs".  One of the ladies with pasties invited me in for a look, and my mother pulled me away pretty quickly.  An odd memory that has stuck with me for a long time.

You think so? I thought New Orleans was awesome! So much, I put it on my places I wouldn't mind living. :-D

 

I'm not a big fan of southern cities.  although NoLa and Miami are unique because of demographics.

 

I think the restaurants in NoLa are great.  reasonably priced.  However, IMO, the city itself lacks broad appeal outside of the FQ.

 

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).

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.

^Yeah.  I spent a week there one night.

^Yeah.  I spent a week there one night.

 

Excuse me? 

Great photos!

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.

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.

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.  :wink:  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. 

>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. 

 

 

 

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.  :wink:  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?

 

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?

 

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

 

Leave the square out of this.  :-P

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).

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?

I particularly like # 4, 11.

 

How did you fit 46 photos on one thread??

I thought the maximum was 17.

 

>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.