Do you know it means to miss New Orleans?

I’m an NOLA ex-pat and desperately miss the city. French Quarter Fest would normally be starting tomorrow but is postponed due to COVID.

I want a crawfish pie, a Natchitoches meat pie, a gumbo, some etouffee, maybe some beignets and a frozen daiquiri.

one of the nastiest citys i ever was in....

Restaurants are open in New Orleans. And there's take out.

Awful place. I lived there for 4 years. I never miss it.

Do we know WHAT means to miss New Orleans? What the fuck are you asking us?

Your sentence makes no sense.

Seems you just miss the food, lardass.

I feel like I'm supposed to like it, and there are a few neat things there, but the city just grosses me out for the most part. It OK when it really cold but otherwise, yuck.

[quote] Do we know WHAT means to miss New Orleans? What the fuck are you asking us?

[quote]Your sentence makes no sense.

It’s a song title. 🙄

Illiterate OP means 'do you know what it means to miss New Orleans' - he probably relocated post Katrina and regrets it.

our hotel mgr said run for 3 blocks till u get to the square cause outside of it its robberville mugcity. true

[quote]one of the nastiest citys i ever was in....

And that’s what I love about it.

OP Augustus, save room for later!

I assume that NOLA rash has cleared up by now.

It’s unique - but skeevy. I guess you can grow attached to it and ignore the danger - but I find the desperation and drunkenness depressing.

I love tiptoeing through vomit and piss while flashing my tits and bits.

I love it. I love the food, the architecture, the gardens, the debauched gentility. I would never be able to live there, but New Orleans is a great place to visit every other year or so for a long weekend.

Never could find much about Nola I enjoyed for more than a day or so. Granted, there are places where you can have a lot of fun, and personally I can take being around a bunch of sloppy drunks for only so long. There are very beautiful areas but sadly most of them are rarely more than a block or so away from some god awful slum. And there are just too many people who are scary looking and acting.

I miss it, OP. It’s a big city and there are huge swaths of it that are upscale, in fact it’s being gentrified at rapid speed just like everywhere else. It has a romantic decay and lots of beautiful architecture still. But every time I go back it gets more and more like hipster Brooklyn, so I don’t know what the other posters are talking about unless they’re typing from 1985. There’s even a large contingent of Wokesters trying to monitor what people can and can’t do at Mardi Gras. Every American city is on a trajectory to sameness. And every American city has poverty, some cities without warmth or culture to soften it. To me Philadelphia, Baltimore, Providence, and parts of NYC are scarier and harsher than NoLa.

I visited New Orleans for the first time last year. I was there for two weeks and wanted to leave after two days. What an overrated shithole and the homeless are everywhere there.

OP, are you a great big fat person?

You couldn’t have loved it too much if you lived there without learning to cook the food you loved. Go online, get the recipes, and cook.

What a dump!

Like the term romantic decay to describe it. Good reason why all those vampire novels and voodoo tales are set there.

There are less homeless there than on the west coast and about the same as in any east coast city. DC has homeless under every bridge and every park and lining sidewalks. What city doesn’t have homeless? It’s part of our times due to lack of resources for the mentally ill and drugs. New Orleans has so much cheap housing that there’s less homelessness there. A lot of them are now white kids that are living their anti establishment dream. They’ve all got dogs and are probably heroin addicts. They are a fraction of what I’ve seen in SF or LA.

My favorite city in the world. Yes, it’s dirty. Yes, it’s dangerous. Yes, it’s crumbling and poor and the government there is both inept and corrupt beyond belief, but in spite of that it holds a certain magic and joie de vivre I’ve yet to find elsewhere. There’s just something about the sultry decadence there that will always hold me under its sway. So yes, OP, I certainly do know what it means to miss New Orleans.

I love walking around early in the morning. I feel transported back into time, like I’m in a Tennessee Williams play. Nobody out but street cleaners and delivery people, foggy, sounds of riverboats. All that is annoying and hard to endure melts away at seven AM in New Orleans. All the criminals are asleep!

I visited for the first time in 2019 and really was fascinated by it, although I don't think I could live there. The bookstores were great, likewise the food. There is an impasto of decay that is seldom found in other American cities. Someone told me New Orleans is the only American city that has not unhoused its ghosts and I can believe that. And it's probably one of the world's most multicultural cities over history.

Since the truly seedy gay scene faded, it lost some appeal. The Corner Pocket has its moments - but it’s almost a tourist attraction instead of a way of life for a subset of NoLA residents. I enjoyed it when there were the true hardcore gay old drunks, poor kids from the South, closeted gay men visiting on business and hardened regulars who had seen it all for decades.

[quote] It’s a big city

On no plant in the universe is New Orleans a big city. It wasn't even a big city before Katrina, before hundreds of thousands of people fled and never came back.

Is it Louisiana that has drive-through daiquiri places?

I understand, OP. If a person doesn't get New Orleans she doesn't deserve it.

Ignore that cunts here writing from Sioux City, El Segundo and Jersey City with their snatches stinking complain about one of the only truly great places in the United States. And, despite its rape by Republicans from the hurricane(s) on, it holds its head above the water.

Mostly.

R29, yes. And don’t forget your go-cup when you leave the bar.

Miss New Orleans? I don’t even know her?

I had a daiquiri they called "93 Octane", from some trashy bar several years ago. I think it caused brain damage.

Either that or the heat made my head shrink.

We live in Houston and visit once or twice a year, and I always feel absolutely disgusted with myself on the way home. However I’m weak and still go back for the food, alcohol, bar restroom sex, and street sex (at Southern Decadence.) When I feel really dirty after a night of debauchery, I drive through the Garden District to cleanse my soul. The homes are absolutely spectacular.

OP/R24 I love your descriptions.

NOLA has always fascinated me, in a way few places in America do (the only others are West Virginia, and the Dust Bowl region). I admire the resilient, sociable

and creative spirit of the locals, and I am drawn to the spooky, mystical, pagan side of the area, and feel that it is charged with something quite darkly seductive. I’m intrigued, and I’d like to go someday. The food and the music also pique my interest and make me feel a certain inexplicable longing for a place I have no link to and had never experienced (tell me, is Dr. John seen as lame and gimmicky with you, or is he really a local legend?)

Then again, as others have said, that could just be grime and skeeze. I acknowledge a romantic obliviousness on my part. In the same way, everyone outside of the southwest U.K. thinks my neck of the woods is idyllic (like the tv shows Countryfile or Last Of The Summer Wine) when in reality there’s a lot of boredom, loneliness, lack of culture and education, breadline poverty, gruesome suicides, and inbreeding, and an ever-widening wealth and class chasm among the locals.

Also, I think the NOLA heat would kill me, as I’m so used to cold damp English weather. I’ll stay indoors fanning myself, sweating buckets and complaining if the temperatures rise above 30 degrees.

I would live there in a hot second. My husband who grew up there, however, would never.

[quote]Since the truly seedy gay scene faded, it lost some appeal. The Corner Pocket has its moments - but it’s almost a tourist attraction instead of a way of life for a subset of NoLA residents. I enjoyed it when there were the true hardcore gay old drunks, poor kids from the South, closeted gay men visiting on business and hardened regulars who had seen it all for decades.

I hate that I never got to go to Le Roundup, which some folks here have described in terms usually reserved for the Cantina from [italic]Star Wars.[/italic] In its time it made several DL threads about the strangest/scariest/sleaziest gay bars ...

[quote]So many great memories of The Roundup ... the decrepit bathrooms had ancient signs marked MEN and OTHERS and didn't have locks on the doors, in order to keep people from shooting up or fucking on the toilets.

[quote]The crowd was male hustlers (authentic "trade" long after that had lost currency in the rest of the world), trannies, drag queens, hookers, pimps, drug dealers, homeless people with dogs — just flotsam. Fights were a nightly occurrence, and one night a furious drag queen prostitute set another girl's cheap Dynel wig on fire with her cigarette lighter. AND it was all less than a block off the touristy part of Bourbon Street! Confused fratboys or Midwestern couples would push open the saloon doors, freeze and then flee in horror while the whole bar laughed at them.

[quote]One of the sleaziest things I ever saw in any bar was when an obnoxious tourist demanded Bud Light "in a BOTTLE" from the cranky bartender. As soon as the tourist wasn't looking, the bartender stuck the neck of the bottle into the crack of his jeans and popped off the cap with his ass, setting it down on the bar with a flourish.

If you miss the closed Baths , there is always the sling at The Eagle / Phoenix

Had a quick business trip and decided to end in NOLA. Spent two days. Didn’t even go to the French Quarter. Stayed in the Garden District. Walked around the area. Drank a frose (don’t judge), stopped at a bakery. It was perfect. Got my meals to go and ate in the courtyard. It was 80 and muggy as hell though - I’ve never been in the summer and I wouldn’t want to...

I have always been drawn to the city. It’s the tourists, homeless and criminals I’m not keen on. I feel like I’m wandering around in another world - it’s so unlike any other American city - Then I remember that I’m supposed to be aware of my surroundings. There is a huge homeless encampment under the exit to the garden district. It looked like skid row.

[quote]The Corner Pocket has its moments - but it’s almost a tourist attraction instead of a way of life for a subset of NoLA residents. I enjoyed it when there were the true hardcore gay old drunks, poor kids from the South, closeted gay men visiting on business and hardened regulars who had seen it all for decades.

Fridays were "New Meat Night." The former proprietress (a MEAN drag queen) used to go to the Greyhound station and pick off the cutest hillbillies getting off the buses -- "You wanna make $40 tonight?" They'd just arrived in New Orleans and within hours were dancing on the bar in their soiled underwear while leering homosexuals dangled dollar bills in front of them.

One of the cruelest/funniest things I ever saw there was a sweltering August night where the A/C in the Pocket was turned down to Arctic levels. The trade were forced to stand in a wading pool while the proprietress drenched them with ice water, turning their underwear translucent. Then they'd have to get on the bar and go-go while their teeth were chattering.

Needless to say, it is John Waters' favorite bar in New Orleans.

i almost went to Tulane in 1975,but went elsewhere. I figure i would have definitely died of AIDS had i accepted there. i would have whore around there. i remember driving there with my mother for an interview with the school and at dinner she was trying to get my feedback and i was entirely distracted by this hunky waiter's huge bulge!

No, what DOES it mean to her--whoever he is??!

Before Covid I traveled a lot for work and there was usually 1 trip to New Orleans a year. I love it for the food, the history, the spookiness...it's hard to describe but I love it and it's my favorite place to visit. Live there? Hell no. It's too hot and humid and it stinks, but I still love going there and can't wait to go back.

Every person commenting about drunks and puke and despair never stepped out of the FQ or even Bourbon Street if they ever came to NO at all. Fuck you and your white bread, big box, fly over suburbs and the New Yorkers who are never more than a stone's throw from a Duane Reade across from a Starbucks across from a Chase across from a Citibank. I moved from NYC five years ago, and it's the best decision I ever made. NO is the only unique city left in America and if you don't know what Super Sunday is or think it has something to do with football, fuck you, you don't get to have an opinion on NO, you soulless, fun hating, tosser you. I'm going to do voodoo on every single one of you shit-talking NO. We are the swamp born. What is damp may never dry! I know what it means, OP. I'll buy you a drink at Igor's when you make it back.

Louisiana and especially NO breed the best rappers.

The heat is part of the charm.

R5 is right. I went with my late partner in 1995 and 1997 (despite his declining health he was determined to give a lecture at the local med school because you would not BELIEVE the circumstances under which many women give birth there in public hospitals...third world level). We both found the food pretty good and pretty much one of the only things that was good there. Other than that it was a swamp. Sure they have some beautiful historical buildings and architecture and the local culture is nice, but the city itself is so nasty and it is so full of absolutely backwards people that we had our Cajun food and beignets and left.

My home town so I'm biased...

But those in the know - does it compare to Calcutta? Karachi? Nairobi? Naples? Sao Paolo?

How bad is it?

NO was wonderful when I was young. Now I’m just one of the old drunks sitting at the bar at 4pm. I remember one night in my youth on the dance floor of Oz (gay club) and being so confused why it was bright outside. Turns out the sun had started to come up. It was 6:45 am!

I do enjoy the absence of judgment. So rare in the over gentrified gay cities of today. Thigh the number of gay bars are fading,

One of those cities I always loved when I was there,but was never sad to leave. I could tell you some stories about the Roundup and Lafittes ! And the baths there,my god the dick I had in there.

The Roundup sounds like quite the experience.

Another Houstonian who loves to visit NO. Hate the drive though. Supposedly there's a train you can take for about $46. Takes 9 hours though.

Ah the dirty days: Jewel's, Le Bistro, TT's West; then the yuppie days: Menefee's, the Mint, the Midtown Spa, the Corner Pocket; people who distinguished between the Bourbon Pub and the Parade Disco; ... so many good times

Oh, for God's sake! No one has posted the song yet?

Great city, amazing history. Visit Vieux Carre (French Quarter for you tourists) sparingly. I'd wait til next year, when Covid had died down. I'm returning soon.

And a great song as well; makes most other city signature songs seem like commercial jingles, not songs at all

I always thought a historical docu-drama about Storyville would be great. The real people and places

OP, are you Don Lemon? If so, I think you're hot.

No, and I don't know what it means to Miss Louisiana, Miss America, Miss Universe or any other pageant queen, but I bet it involves "world peace."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3TmqOorZ6csm%2BvzqZmraCimq6le5FxaXJpYWmGbrDOZrCorV2gu7DDjKKrZqWVlru0edOoZKaho6h6r7HWZqarpJWWu7R5