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Le Vieux Carré

One morning on my recent trip to New Orleans, I was wandering down Bourbon Street taking photos with my big Nikon.

I was hard to miss among the tourists wielding their wimpy point-and-shoots; the Nikon is a massive thing with a telephoto lens the size of a Starbuck’s Grande cup.

Suddenly, a young black man hailed me. “Hey, buddy!” he shouted, “Take a picture of my friends!”

I looked, and he was pointing enthusiastically toward two other guys, restaurant workers taking a cigarette break on the sidewalk ahead.

The two workers flipped away their cigarettes and struck a pose. I obliged with this photo.

For a large part of my four days in New Orleans, I wandered around the French Quarter and the riverfront area, where most of the tourist stuff is concentrated, taking photos of the people, the activity, and the architecture. I probably walked 10 miles a day down those narrow streets.

But in truth, I was off the streets and back at my hotel every night by 8:00 PM. In daylight, the French Quarter seems as friendly and safe as Disneyland. But the later it gets, the edgier. Pulling a late-nighter or all-nighter on Bourbon Street did not seem prudent.

When you drive into New Orleans on I-10, the exit sign doesn’t say French Quarter; it says Vieux Carré. That’s pronounced View Car-ay. It means old square in French.

The Vieux Carré Historic District, AKA the French Quarter, is the original neighborhood at the center of New Orleans, which was founded in 1718.

Specifically, the Quarter is 78 square blocks — 13 long and six deep — on the north bank of the Mississippi River.

Every thoroughfare in the Quarter is a narrow, one-way street. By day, to make life easier for pedestrians, Royal Street is off limits to motorized traffic; by night, Bourbon Street is barricaded for the same reason.

The countless bars are free to open and close as they choose. Some serve ’round the clock, some keep regular hours, some close when the last customer is gone.

It is quite legal to get yourself a “go-cup” and carry it on the street, as long as the container is unbreakable.

As you may know, some bars in the French Quarter employ young ladies to dance for the entertainment of their customers. I am not one to frequent such establishments, so I can’t speak to the attire these young ladies wear on-stage.

But when they stand in the doorways in an effort to entice passers-by to come inside, they don’t wear a whole lot.

Morning in the French Quarter is fascinating. All of those thousands of visitors from the night before have left evidence of their merrymaking in the form of litter and garbage. So every morning, the Clean Team fans out to pick up the trash. The streets are powerwashed weekly.

Also, morning is when the bars, shops, and restaurants haul out the previous night’s refuse and take delivery of the new day’s supplies. From dawn until 2:00 PM, the streets and sidewalks are alive with workers and delivery trucks.

I worried that the food in New Orleans might be a disappointment — you know, over-hyped, over-priced, and not very good. Although the prices were brutal, the food was spectacular.

I made it a point to try as many new dishes as possible. Here, as best I can reconstruct it, is my menu during the trip:

Breakfast

— Beignets submerged under a mound of powdered sugar
— Shrimp and grits
— Eggs St. Charles

Lunch

Shrimp po-boy sandwich
Debris po-boy (bits of the roast beef that fall into the pan)
Barbecued oysters and seafood gumbo
Muffuletta

Dinner

Bouillabaisse
Crawfish étouffée
Jambalaya
Fried shrimp

Barbecued oysters were unexpectedly delicious. And, God help me, I had an appetizer of oysters on the half shell four times.

One afternoon, after walking quite a distance along the riverfront, I returned to the French Quarter near Jackson Square. For a few minutes, I stood on the corner outside Cafe du Monde, the popular coffee shop in the French Market, listening to a guitarist playing for tips.

I took a few photos of the man, which obliged me to make a small donation — as he confirmed by fixing me with a stare to be sure I got the message.

When he finished his set, I walked over and placed two dollars in his cup. “Thanks, man,” he said.

Then he added, “Hey, where’d you get those shoes?” The derisive tone was hard to miss.

I said they came from REI and walked away indignantly.

Apparently, it is not cool to wear dark brown Merrill Moab Ventilators in New Orleans.