Here’s the strangest thing: The New Orleans that people always came here to visit is still here, either virtually untouched or already renewed from relatively minor damage. I had a good time in New Orleans over four days. I ate well. I heard fabulous music. I grumbled to myself about the ridiculous August heat and humidity but bopped around town nevertheless.
Other tourists appeared to do the same, but not many. On a normal summer pre-Katrina day, the city was never jammed because it’s low season in hot weather; nowadays, the season is lower than ever.
Still, the place is irresistible, heat or not. I took a fascinating Gray Line walking tour of the elegant Garden District with six other visitors, and we ooohed at its graceful homes, which had mostly suffered minor damage and have been repaired.
I took a French Quarter history and architecture tour–the Quarter holds the city’s essential history, having flown under French, Spanish, Confederate and United States flags–and it was a freebie. The Quarter has a National Historical Park, the tiny Jean Lafitte park, and one of its rangers, Danny Forbis, led 15 of us around.
When we stood under a gazebo at the Mississippi River bank and Forbis talked about our being on the city’s highest land–about 25 feet above sea level–I looked along the downward sweep of St. Louis Street, and for the first time I understood how New Orleans is built in a big bowl.
I walked all over the French Quarter on my own and enjoyed its cacophony and smells and iron-wrought gentility, its architectural delights and the way it has of turning a crumbling, faded wall or rickety street into a piece of American history. I also enjoyed its lack of human crunch, even though a crowd gives the place its electric ambience. (For the record, I roamed the city anonymously, not identifying myself as a reporter.)
You could go to New Orleans today and party yourself silly, eating and drinking and dancing until you roll out of town, and never face the bleak reality of many of the city’s neighborhoods. But you cannot escape the constant signs and talk about what happened, and is still happening, here.
Not more than five minutes into my rental-car drive from Louis Armstrong International Airport into the French Quarter, the disc jockey on WWOZ, the FM station devoted to the city’s musical cultures, was talking between cuts about the blurry future for musicians who remain, and the tourists who are not there to hear them.
The Storm, which is how people here generally refer to Hurricane Katrina, remains the city’s leading and unavoidable news.
“I’m going to tell you a lot about that wicked storm that hit my city,” Sandra Smith was saying. “You will see more devastation than you’ll ever want to see in your entire life.” She stood at the front of a big Gray Line bus, and about 50 of us were aboard.
The Hurricane Katrina Tour is by far the most popular on Gray Line’s city tour list, much scaled back these days. We paid $35 apiece, and $3 of that will go to a local charity we chose from a short list.
Smith, a pleasant woman with good tour-guide gab, told us that “hopefully, we’re going to see a lot of progress out there.” To the first-time eye, it was hard to see much we could call progress.
As we rode, she told us her own story in bits and pieces, how she had left her French Quarter place and headed to the city’s highest ground, where I’d been standing with the park ranger on the French Quarter tour. And how troops had evacuated her and others from their makeshift encampment to Houston.
When our big bus began cruising the main streets of the deserted neighborhoods–it was far too large to go down the smaller cross streets, where there was also little sign of life–she pointed out some houses of people she knew, or knew about.
I was unprepared for the vastness of it, and other people commented that they were too. As I looked at this sadness and wondered how these neighborhoods could ever rebuild, Smith addressed my question in a startlingly concise way.
“You come back to your house,” she said. “You look down your street. Every house is a wreck, like yours. The weeds are high, all over the place. And you look around, and it’s totally empty. You’re the only one around. What are you going to do? Are you going to be the only person living on your whole block or for blocks around? Are you going to come back? Are you going to walk away? These are decisions that people have to make, right now.”
The next day, Stanley Bergeron’s tour was a bit different. His Tours by Isabelle van was small, and he could get through places the big Gray Line bus could not. Unlike the big tour, we went into the worst-hit 9th Ward. (Worst-hit is a matter of perspective. Everything destroyed seems worst-hit.) Taking both tours, I found I was seeing most major neighborhoods of grief.
While the tours are drawing money for their operators, it was also clear that Bergeron and Smith wanted people to understand the terrible predicament their city is in–and see it through their eyes.
Bergeron’s boss, Isabelle, had called him daily for weeks to get him back to work, and on this tour. “She said, `If we don’t try to explain to people what happened, who will?’ I thought it would get easier, doing this tour. I’ve been doing it about eight months. And it does not get easier.”
I couldn’t quite figure out the other part of this equation: Why do people want to take the tours? If you’ve ever been to the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii, in Italy, frozen in time when Vesuvius erupted all over it 1,927 years ago, you know the eerie feeling of seeing a place where life ended, just like that. But a lot of digging has been going on over the centuries to reveal Pompeii’s ancient mysteries. In New Orleans, those shattered homes and shattered lives could have been yours.
I asked Bergeron why people were taking the tour. He didn’t seem to think it had anything to do with morbidity or sensationalism. “Maybe curiosity. Understanding, too,” he said. “The analogy I use is a car accident. Nobody really wants to see a car accident. But if you’re on the highway and you pass by one, what do you do, automatically? You slow down. It’s there, and you want to see it. You want to get a feeling for it.”
Back in the comfort of the French Quarter, Bergeron told us that when tours ended, “I used to tell people, `I hope you had a good time.’ I don’t do that no more. I don’t expect you to have a good time. I don’t have a good time.”
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IF YOU GO
STAYING THERE
If you are a member of a hotel chain club, or use the Web, call up your hotel of choice to check prices–which can be real bargains now but will probably rise as more conventions and visitors begin coming to town now that summer has ended. Try to stay in or near the French Quarter, the heart of major sites in New Orleans.
DINING
Virtually all of the nation’s favorite New Orleans restaurants are open, and the best way to plan a meal is to peruse menus as you walk by them–which you’re bound to do in the French Quarter or other areas.
INSIDER INFO
Don’t just stick to the French Quarter or Garden District. New Orleans has many fine museums, including art museums, house museums devoted to niche subjects–and the National World War II Museum, which focuses on D-Day. And, of course . . .
STORM TOURS
Several tours will take you through the parts of New Orleans hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina. Generally, they are guided by New Orleans residents who were affected by the storm. Here are some tours dedicated to the disaster.
Gray Line: The Web site says that Gray Line began its Katrina bus tour when members of Congress who had resisted funding the rebuilding of the city “changed their mind after seeing all the devastation” and that they’re offering the tour to similarly educate the public. 3 hours, at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. daily. $35. 800-535-7786; www.graylineneworleans.com.
Tours by Isabelle: In a van that accommodates 12 visitors, the 3 1/2-hour tour goes through the city’s worst-hit areas. 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. daily. $53. 877-665-8687; www.toursbyisabelle.com.
Cajun Encounters: This Katrina tour, which also visits one of New Orleans’ above-ground city cemeteries, goes in a mini-bus that seats 33. 2 1/2 hours. 9:30 a.m. daily. $42. 866-928-6877; cajunencounters.com.
Celebration Tours: This tour in a 12-passenger van goes to devastated areas and concludes on a positive note, in the Garden District. 2 1/2 hours. 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. $45. 504-587-7115.
–H.S.
