And So it Begins…..

Self-indulgent? Perhaps. Entertaining? The jury is bound to be out on that for some time. Informative? Unlikely! Whatever this blog turns out to be its intention is a bare-boned look from the perspective of a semi-recent implant at the most fascinating and scarred city in the US of A; New Orleans. Coming from the comparative anonymity of 4 million+ strong Sydney, my self-imposed exile is in the significantly lesser-populated, pace slower than a senior citizen jumping hurdles, city of my dreams. A city where food is porn and porn is for middle-aged conventioneers from Idaho, in my mind New Orleans is what should represent when we foreigners think of America, rather than The Kardashians, laughable gun control, or championship wrestling. With a literary history you can touch, a life-changing music scene that transcends everything and an unrelenting, 40+-festival-a-year appetite for good times, the Crescent City is incomparable to anywhere and is inspiring and dysfunctional in equal portions.

Understandably those that are from here or who have spent a lengthy amount of time living here are intensely proud and fiercely protective of the city’s unique culture and traditions. This is not to say the same are inaccessible to the unaware visitor – on the contrary. Such is the unwavering commitment to these traditions; they’re shared (for the most part) with a genuine warmth and openness at every given opportunity with anyone with the good sense to show interest. This will be my attempt at showing how this beauty is a strange bedfellow with poverty and inequality, and how this city so welcoming and accepting has the ability to free you but suffocate you at the same time with its darkness and heat. To love it means unconditionally as you’re likely to get far more than you could ever give back and there will be times where frustration brings you to tears and you shake your head entirely too often. But once you get past the eye-closing misfortune you see almost every day, crime statistics that will age you prematurely and political corruption that could rival any African country you care to not be able to find on a map, New Orleans is the proverbial phoenix that rises over and over from the ashes. Talk of Katrina and any of her other destructive cohorts will be kept to a minimum as I find it disappointing when natural disasters and neglect are the images people use to define this extraordinary place.

And so I write to y’all from the world’s tiniest apartment in a building where horses once slept and there’s razor wire atop the front gate. Despite the fact I arrived on one of the busiest weekends of the year and was relegated by budget and availability to a “hotel” in a less-than-salubrious neighbourhood, where you had to surrender your room key at the front desk upon leaving the premises and show ID to get it back….classy…..I’m still here 18 months later and happy about it every day. The depth of this city goes far beyond Bourbon Street and breast flashing, so get comfortable peeps!