Essay: The City Tourists Never Knew

Through the recounting of the legions of coventioneers and hearty partyers who have flocked to the city to frolic at Mardi Gras, jazz festivals and Sugar and Super Bowl games over the decades, New Orleans has come to be thought of as the place to forget your cares. It has been years since I've held that view. Growing up in a town some 40 miles upriver, I saw overwhelming evidence that the more accurate image is that of a city that care forgot. Now the rest of the world is getting a shockingly graphic and unsettlingly intense introduction to the forces that created the New Orleans I know.

I keep hearing people say on TV and in print that they don't recognize "this New Orleans." Perhaps they closed their eyes or didn't pay close attention when they were there. While I understand the temptation to wax nostalgic about the architecture of the Ninth Ward homes, the beauty of the Garden District, the charm of the French Quarter and so on, such musings perpetuate a romantic notion of the place that doesn't track with reality. Sure, there are isolated spots dotting the tourist maps that are well stocked with pristine prettiness and antebellum hospitality, but like A Streetcar Named Desire's Blanche DuBois, the real New Orleans hasn't possessed much beauty or charm for nearly 30 years. The deep wealth and class divisions, the decayed infrastructure, the lax civil-engineering management, the depleted city coffers, the lawless depravity, the history of political corruption by a long line of city and state officials, and the incompetent governance that television viewers are discovering are, to use the local vernacular, the roux of a long-simmering pot of gumbo that finally boiled over when Hurricane Katrina turned up the heat last week. Now the city is drowning in it.