What's the scoop on New Orleans, she asks.

The scoop on NOLA is wild and beautiful, even without Mardi Gras.

The taxis are plentiful but usually poor mechanically. From the airport there are vans that will drop you at your hotel for cheap. Big blue Super Shuttles for example. Driving is ok. The streets follow the shape of the river, making a roughly serpentine grid. I recommend finding a shuttle bus then take taxis around, unless ya gotta have a car.

Walk to end of Canal, watch the frantic river traffic.

Directions do not include north, east, west or south. You will get a blank stare if you ask someone if this is north of that. The usable directions in New Orleans are upriver / downriver and lakeside / riverside. The West Bank is usually south and sometimes east; it means everything west of the Mississippi where radio stations start with a K.

Everyone addresses everybody else as Babe, regardless of gender.

The 300 year old French Quarter is walkable from business district. Avoid Bourbon Street. All other streets are ok. Esplanade is pronounced with a nod, Burgundy is burGUNdy. Cool old piano bar far down on Dauphine. Just beyond that, downriver of Esplanade, is a cool neighborhood free of drunken tourists. It’s full of drunken residents. The Faubourg Marigny. Check Point Charlie for dinner, laundry, live music and beer at Esplanade and Decatur. R-Bar downriver on Royal street is cool and full of locals. Café Brazil (music) over there too.

Downtown is the central business district just off the river on Canal. Then Uptown and the Garden District is upriver along Saint Charles. It is filled big old houses but is newer than the Quarter. It is the land of vampire writer Anne Rice and Tulane University. Riding the trolley along St Charles is scenic and you get places, but it is slow. Also paralleling the river, Magazine Street is the cooler, funkier, more fly, more hip part of the area.

It is a dicey town, but reasonably good street smarts will keep you alive. Good to bad neighborhoods can change quick, just be aware. You can walk around downtown, the Quarter, the warehouse district and the river. But get a ride uptown under the freeway. Don’t walk into anything that looks like a housing project. You don’t want the streetcar named Desire, it is now a bus to the Desire Housing project.

Disclaimer: all of the locations were happening in 1995, absolute accuracy today not guaranteed.

Relentless Growth of Greed