Life in the Big Easy Ain’t so Easy!

I was driving cross country on my way back to Los Angeles from spending Christmas in Tampa. It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and I decided to spend a couple of days in The Big Easy.

Trips to New Orleans

I’ve been going to The Big Easy since I was 17 years old. My high school band, the Valdosta Wildcat Marching Band, won a band contest when I was 17. Our prize was to march in a parade that went through the French Quarter on Bourbon Street. I’ve returned many times since then. Eaten amazing food and listened to wonderful music. I’ve also been kicked out of bars and had some pretty wild times in New Orleans. Yet, I hadn’t been back since before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Quarter, and the Ninth Ward.

I’d heard that New Orleans had made a comeback. However, I was wondering what COVID-19’s effect would be on the Big Easy.

The Effect

I’m sad to say that I think COVID-19 has decimated New Orleans almost as badly as Hurricane Katrina did. Why would I say something like that? Because the economic damage that I saw when I walked through New Orleans and the French Quarter was prolonged. It had been going on for months. There was not the catastrophic devastation that happened with Katrina. However, the continual loss of life for over a year and the economic downturn that came with the pandemic had its own devastating effect on The Big Easy. 

The French Quarter

I checked into a hotel about eight blocks away from the Quarter. The hotel gift shop was closed, the bar was closed, and the restaurant was closed. The reservation concierge behind the desk told me that the staff had been cut in half over the preceding months. After settling in my room and relaxing from the road, I walked down Canal Street to Bourbon Street. I turned into the Quarter looking for some real New Orleans cuisine. As I walked down Canal, business after business was boarded up or had for lease signs in the windows. There was a lot of street construction going on. New Orleans is not completely dead. Yet, the theaters were shut, restaurants were closed, and even the few package stores that were open looked like they weren’t doing well.

As you turned into the Quarter, you noticed that a lot of the store fronts were shut up. Now, this was a weekday, but it was also 7:00 PM at night. Anyone who’s ever been to the Quarter knows that it never sleeps. Restaurants were closed, bars were empty, or if they were open, they were only doing takeout drinks. There would only be one employee working. Even the bars and restaurants that were open were not full and some of them closed early. Pat O’Brien’s, a bar that I have never seen closed in my entire life, was shuttered for the two days that I was there. The Quarter was a shell of itself. There were still tourists, and there were still wild people running around doing out of control things. However, it certainly wasn’t the jam-packed Quarter that I remember from days gone by.

Around Jackson Square

The only area that was full that I could tell was around Jackson Square. The restaurants around the square seemed to be doing OK, especially Cafe Du Monde where you went to get chicory coffee and beignets. Yet even the street merchants and artists who sell their work around the square seemed to be struggling. There weren’t many street musicians who were out performing. In the two days that I was there, I literally saw only one street jazz band. The art galleries and souvenir shops around Jackson Square seemed to be attracting a lot of business. Elsewhere in the quarter, there were signs for apartments and storefronts for lease everywhere. There were empty buildings with going out of business signs on every street.

Now, maybe people were waiting for New Year’s Eve or they were waiting for Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to come into town. The hope was for Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints to beat them in the NFL playoffs (which did not happen). Yet, there was just a feeling as you went from street to street that there was a pall over the quarter. I don’t know what the rest of The Big Easy was like. Maybe restaurants are doing well. Maybe people were going out and shopping. However, the tourist area of the French Quarter was hurting really badly. It was so very sad to see such a lively and vibrant place brought to its knees by an invisible enemy that no one has an answer to.

New Orleans is a resilient city. It will come back once people have found a cure for this pandemic. I just hope there’s enough of The Big Easy left for people to want to visit when they do return.