A woman from out of town spilled from a bar onto Bourbon Street double-fisting a pair of fluorescent alcoholic drinks known as hand grenades. Not far away, a reveler wearing only a thong and a black cowboy hat straddled a column outside of a club. And another few blocks over, Joseph Holmes, 25, tap-danced on the sidewalk for tips, just like he had since he was 5 years old.
Still, there was no mistaking all of this on Friday for a normal night in the heart of New Orleans, Mr. Holmes said. The music thumped. The drinks poured. Some tourists were letting loose. But the vibe, he said, was off.
There was a heaviness, the palpable sorrow, that has hung over the French Quarter since a man plowed a truck carrying guns and explosives into a crowd early on New Year’s Day, killing 14 and injuring dozens.
Mr. Holmes was back on Bourbon Street, dancing deep into the night. But, as he put it, what choice did he have?
“This is our nine-to-five,” Mr. Holmes said on Friday during a lull between passing tourists. “If this wasn’t how I made my money primarily, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
New Orleans is famous for infusing grief with flashes of levity and music, a deliberate and defiant tradition of celebrating life and exalting the dead, particularly when the feelings of pain and loss are the sharpest.
The atmosphere on Bourbon Street since officials hurried to reopen it last week has felt distinctly different. But fear and frustration, however potent, were not enough to justify to staying away. This was business. There were tourists to serve and entertain. Sympathy would not pay for rent and food.
Outside Fat Catz Music Club, a girl with braids and a pink “princess” sweatshirt, who turned 4 last month, drummed on a plastic bucket for tips. Her uncle said he felt uneasy about the two of them being there, but it didn’t matter — they were homeless and needed money.
For tourists, Bourbon Street is a destination for food as irresistible as the jazz — and, after a certain hour, unbridled revelry. The appeal has made the street the epicenter of the industry powering New Orleans’s economy.
But for the people who live and work there, that strip of Bourbon Street often embodies New Orleans’s most stubborn struggles: The financial precariousness inherent to service industry work. The belief by some that the city’s power structure was more concerned about preserving tourism than providing for residents. And the pervasiveness of deadly gun violence.
“Sidewalks and street corners are crumbling,” Ethan Ellestad, the director of the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, a nonprofit group, wrote in a recent column in Antigravity, a magazine published in New Orleans. “It stinks. Far too many streetlights are out. Violent crime is a persistent problem and people often feel unsafe. All of these are issues that have been allowed to fester and are in dire need of a real — and sustained — solution.”
Gun violence has been a particularly persistent problem. Crime rates soared in New Orleans during the height of the coronavirus pandemic but have since plummeted citywide. Still, five fatal shootings were recorded in the half-square mile that makes up the French Quarter last year, according to police figures.
City officials have said that they have been hamstrung, in part, by a recent state law allowing the concealed carry of firearms without a permit. Some businesses have posted signs saying guns were forbidden. The city tried unsuccessfully for an exemption for that area from state lawmakers.
When that failed, city leaders got creative: The New Orleans Police Department tried to designate its station in the French Quarter as a vocational school. The distinction would have made a 1,000-foot radius of the station a gun-free zone.
“We weren’t going to sit on our hands,” Helena Moreno, a city councilwoman running for mayor this year, told reporters, according to The Times-Picayune.
That idea was scuttled by state officials.
City officials have cracked down on mostly more minor technical violations on Bourbon Street in recent weeks. The authorities have targeted illegal street vending, parking violations and unlicensed performers. Mr. Holmes expressed his frustration with being hassled by New Orleans police officers.
The efforts were timed to the Super Bowl, which comes to New Orleans next month for the first time in over a decade, but officials argued that the intention was to drive a sustained change.
Bourbon Street remains a magnet for tourists even after the attack. It is a narrow and scenic strip lined by old buildings, balconies and bright neon signs, where it is easy to stroll holding a drink and listening to a saxophone solo. “Everything kind of melds together to create something unique,” said Katelyn Joy Moore, 23, a student and theater performer visiting from Covington, Ky.
“You feel like you’re in a home,” she said. “You don’t feel like you’re in a touristy area.”
To a degree, some residents agree with her. It is, if not always the heart, then at least a hub for New Orleans.
“It’s everything,” Mr. Holmes said. Bourbon Street offers him a platform for expressing himself and working out his emotions through dance. He can interact with a wide array of people from around the world. It is also his livelihood.
It is the same for many other artists.
“It’s one of the few places where you can find consistent, recurring employment as a musician,” Mr. Ellestad of the Music and Culture Coalition said in an interview.
During the depths of the pandemic, a Bourbon Street devoid of life became a symbol of the paralysis and pain inflicted by the coronavirus. It was also a place of communal jubilation in the best of times. After the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010, Bourbon Street erupted into a party.
And yet, it is also a place many locals avoid.
Jennifer Jones, a self-regarded icon and “light” for the city known as the “Dancing Lady,” has performed and enjoyed herself on Bourbon Street. But she also thought it had become too much about lifting tops and downing copious amounts of booze — a sordid theme park of sorts for adults.
“It is a lot of people wanting to do what they can’t do at home,” she said. “You want to come and act crazy, but you don’t want to suffer the consequences.”
Chad Bearden, a bartender at a sprawling pool bar, traded nights for a day shift. “The craziness,” as he described it, had become too much.
That’s not to say it does not bubble up before sunset.
“I’ve seen them come in on a Thursday night, all excited,” he said, raising his arms in imitation of a tourist ready to party. “By Saturday, they look like they’ve been mugged, beat up, ready to go home.”
“It just does something to people,” he added. “Freedom, alcohol and a city that doesn’t really close.”
Even right after tragedy.
People whose livelihoods depend on putting in hours in the French Quarter faced a tough choice that, in truth, had only one feasible answer: Go to work, as much as they were grief-stricken, worried and exhausted.
“The reality of it is that they don’t have the ability to take the time off work, and take the time for themselves,” said Olivia McCoy, founding director of WeHelp NOLA, a nonprofit that offers free counseling for service industry workers. “They unfortunately need to earn their paycheck.”
The party might have rolled on for some, but signs of the anguish coursing through New Orleans were inescapable. Some walked up to Bourbon Street with tears streaking their face.
“Hospitality work is healing work,” said Mark Schettler, a veteran bartender and executive director of Shift Change, a group supporting service industry workers. “And this was an attack on our cathedral.”
At various points along Bourbon Street, people had left flowers, candles, stuffed animals and what appeared to be a tamale wrapped in foil. On the bustling corner of Bourbon and Canal Streets, the outside wall of a Walgreens was covered in handwritten messages:
“We will neva forget.”
“Terror didn’t win.”
Once again, Bourbon Street was a magnet — for residents, for visitors, for those who were stumbling their way through the pain, physical and emotional, unleashed by a staggering display of violence.
“I was there, I was there, I was there,” said Jovon Bell, 45, who lifted his T-shirt to reveal the adhesive patches left on him from his hospital visit.
The attack only underscored how much of a contradiction Bourbon Street could be.
Ryne Hancock is a disc jockey at WTUL, a New Orleans radio station, and a native of the city, who used to work in a restaurant nearby. The area is a dump, he said. (“I can say that,” he added. “You can’t say that.”)
“I hate Bourbon Street,” he said in one breath.
“It represents joy,” he said in another.
These past few days, he has been wrestling with everything he felt after the attack. He wanted to be surrounded by community. He wanted to leave a message for the victims.
So here he was, standing on Bourbon Street.
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