New Orleans: Still down, but far, far from out

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NEW ORLEANS – Call it a coming-out party.

This weekend and last weekend in New Orleans mark a turning point in the city's post-Katrina history, a point beyond which all arrows seem at last to be pointing up.

Just ask any of the 350,000 people – a record crowd – dancing and partying at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, a signature event, bigger than Mardi Gras, back at full strength after two years with makeshift facilities.

The Neville Brothers and Santana were scheduled to play today; other headliners among the 557 bands in the seven-day lineup included Buckwheat Zydeco, Sheryl Crow, Billy Joel, Tim McGraw, Stevie Wonder, Diana Krall and Jimmy Buffett.

Not a bad way to fais do-do into the future.

"When you think an entire civilization was wiped off the face of the earth (by Hurricane Katrina), the amount of activity and life that's come back in these two short years is amazing," says festival producer Quint Davis. "We look at the festival as a metaphor; it's very much a microcosm of the city of New Orleans."

Almost three-quarters of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population is back, city officials say. Tourism – the city's No. 1 industry – has rebounded by a similar proportion.

True, square mile after square mile of the city remains a sorrowful sprawl of vacant lots and furious rebuilding. But the tourists' New Orleans – the French Quarter, the Garden District, the music, the food – is, on a superficial level at least, the same place it was before the August 2005 storm.

Sandra Shilstone, president of New Orleans Tourism, wishes the rest of America would realize as much.

"The misperception are still out there," she says. "We're constantly surprised by how many people think we're still under water, that we're not ready for business.

"And there's a new challenge, the challenge of people saying, 'We'll wait, because those people have been through so much' – never realizing that coming here is the best way to help the economy."

In a city known for its distinctive cuisine, restaurants have been among the first businesses to bounce back. "Ironically," Shilstone adds, "we have more restaurants in the city now than we did pre-Katrina."

Museums and other cultural institutions are open again, too. Add to that an estimated 103 music clubs, and the recipe is right for a getaway to what remains one of the country's most culturally distinct cities.

It's raining roses

Fourteen years had passed since I last visited New Orleans, and I was skeptical. Wanting to look past the ready-for-business hype and glimpse for myself how the city was recovering from Katrina, I boarded a Gray Line bus outside my French Quarter hotel for a tour of areas flooded by the storm (see Janet Fullwood's column, Pages M1 and M2). It was sobering, to say the least, but optimism was apparent in the population's determined efforts to move on.

Back in the Quarter, I step off the bus ... smack into a wedding parade.

Talk about a mood changer.

Music is everywhere in this beguiling historic district dating to the early 18th century. If it's not blowing out the doors of a club, it's marching live down the street. And where there is music, there is dancing.

As Davis said: "In New Orleans we dance until we die. You can't stop us from dancing."

So along comes a procession of strutting musicians blowing joyous jazz, and behind them a joyful bride and groom in a green carriage with red-spoked wheels. More carriages follow, with members of the wedding party tossing flowers at spectators who stop on the sidewalk to gawk.

Four long-stemmed roses land at my feet without solicitation, spreading a smile across my face.

Yep, this was the New Orleans I remembered.

Quicker than you can say "jazz," a conga line forms. A gray-haired couple in matching Hawaiian shirts strut next to a scruffy-looking gent flapping his arms to the music and drinking from a brown paper bag. A family with three kids watches wide-eyed from the sidewalk as a woman in a barely-there ensemble of hot pants, stilettos and bra falls into line. In New Orleans, you see things juxtaposed in combinations unimaginable almost anywhere else.

About the writer:

• Call Bee travel editor Janet Fullwood, (916) 321-1148.

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