Falling for the Big Easy, Part 1 - New Orleans, LA

With Alabama well behind me I was soon crossing a broad, flat bridge over Lake Pontchartrain and passing downtown New Orleans. I tell you, without hesitation, that I've never taken to a place as rapidly and unreservedly as I have with this city. From the moment I arrived, I was completely and utterly enchanted by the place.

One of the Interstate highlights of the drive down

My host in NOLA was Tommy Slattery, a native of this city and every inch a Southern Gentleman. He was larger than life character and an associate at one of the most prestigious law firms in town. I felt quite certain that he was destined for great things.

We had met at University and become good friends while he was spending the summer in London. We even moved in together for a brief period. He possessed a strength of character, joie de vivre and generous nature that set him apart from most people you meet. He could happily charm the skin off a snake and doubtless (if pressed) sell ice to an Eskimo. For five years I had repeatedly promised a visit and I was finally honouring it.

To prepare visiting friends he had put together an intimate and very personal city guide that I had skimmed before my arrival. It opened with a Maxim stating that in 'New Orleans we like to say that we are not the worst-run city in America, but we are the best-run city in the Caribbean'. and that 'New Orleans natives enjoy no compliment more than a visitor stating the city feels like its own country'.

After spending a morning wandering the French Quarter on a guided walking tour, I soon came to realise how true these statements were and why this place really does feel like no other city on earth.

To the immense frustration of our rather rotund guide Stacy, the walking tour got off to a less than magical start. We entered a dark alleyway off Jackson square and were confronted by a man clutching what I can only describe as the biggest penis I've ever seen (on the internet or otherwise). Poor Stacy was so taken aback that she involuntary blurted "CHRIST THAT'S A BIG DICK!" A sentiment that was vociferously echoed by a fellow female tourist in her late 70s.

Poor, sweaty Stacey desperately herded us to another, less diverting, street and we proceeded to learn about more wholesome aspects of the city. A brief introduction to the city's history is the best place to start in understanding why there is such an essential sense of difference here.

New Orleans had only really come to being as the result of a rather desperate, and completely fraudulent marketing campaign. Founded by the decorously named Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (JB for short) in 1718, the colony initially proved to be a hard sell. I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. Back then it was a veritable abundance of alligators, poisonous snakes, insects, disease, murderous indians, extreme humidity and rampant criminality. The question really should have been, who wouldn't want to go there?

JB, Founder of New Orleans and marketing Mad Man

Undeterred, JB wrote a series of marketing pamphlets describing the place in terms very much unlike those mentioned above. For good measure the pamphlets also described a towering mountain so filled with gold that it practically haemorrhaged it.

He diligently sent them all over Europe, presumably with his fingers and toes tightly crossed. Most people who received them had the good sense to realise that this was total pugwash. However a gang of German would be colonists didn't quite see the wood for the swamp and merrily set sail. It would be a gross understatement to say that they were a tad dismayed once they had finally braved the arduous, five month sail.

As a result the first large group of settlers here were actually Germans and not the French or Spanish as you may have supposed. You can see evidence of this on the tombstones of the old Lafayette cemeteries but mercifully not the food, beer or sense of humour. They were later joined by larger numbers of French and eventually, the Spanish.

Domestic policies in France didn't exactly do wonders for its desirability as a colony. During the 1730s, in an effort to kill two birds with one stone, King Louis XV completely flushed out the contents of one of Pairs' biggest prisons and then shipped them to this new, inhospitable colony. Many actually begged to be reincarnated in France once they had heard of their final destination.

The crew included pimps, rapists, murderers, thieves and prostitutes. Just the sort of people you want to help you build a happier and more prosperous future. JB had not been given much advance warning of this influx of new guests and you can only imagine his delight when the first ship arrived.

It's little wonder then that the place quickly developed a reputation for extreme iniquity and depravity. At one point things were so bad that even the prostitutes were high tailing it. In an effort to satiate his sex starved colony, JB sent men into the bayous to kidnap local Indian woman. As you can imagine, the Indians didn't much care for this and despatched these men without a great deal of impunity.

In desperation, JB resorted to sending weekly letters to Louis begging for more women to be shipped to the colony. His wish was duly granted and after a mere 14 months, another ship arrived.

Unfortunately for New Orleans, Louis had a rather dry sense of humour and had delivered the colonists 200, presumably terrified, nuns to to play around with. Thankfully for the nuns, God was still the most revered force around and they were just about the last people on earth you would fuck with, so to speak.

Charles II of Spain gained control of Louisiana (and consequently New Orleans) from France in 1763, until Napoleon reclaimed it briefly in 1803. In need of a few quid to fight his wars with the British, Napoleon sold Louisiana for $15m (then a territory that stretched from the south all the way to the Canadian border) to the United States.

At the time, The US was also a little strapped for cash and borrowed the money from Britain. How Britain didn't have the foresight to realise that by lending the US money, they were effectively financing a war on themselves, is a question for someone more qualified than myself to answer properly.

Already you can see a picture appearing of a place that did not self-identify as American. The Spanish and French descendents of these settlers developed a separate Creole identity and were culturally distinct from the rest of America, and remain so today to some extent.

New Orleans also differed from all its other neighbours in the way it treated slaves. Thousands of refugees from the Haitian Revolution of 1804 arrived in the city, including 3000 free people of colour and 3000 black slaves. Because of the precedent set by such a large number of free blacks (25% of the population), slaves in the city were given the unique opportunity to buy their freedom. This was part of a special French set of laws governing slavery known as 'Code Noir'. It allowed them to work on Sundays and keep any earnings for themselves in order to achieve this end.

Although the Code Noir was still highly restrictive, it led to a much higher percentage of free slaves in the state (13.2% in Louisiana compared to 0.8% in Mississippi). They were also more literate, healthier and much more prosperous than their southern neighbours.

Toussaint Louverture, leader of the 1803 Hiatian uprising. Generally considered to be the genesis of the civil rights movement

Although it was still nowhere near to an equal rights society, compared with other parts of America at the time this was positively enlightened. There was also a strong streak of matriarchy and high tolerance for interracial marriage. Even today, blacks and non-blacks here enjoy a state of race relations better than the vast majority of the country and especially in relation to the its southern neighbours.

Throw in a liberal splash of both voodoo and more liquid spirits and you begin to see why this is one of the world's most bewitching and captivating cities. It also boasts a number of notable achievements including the invention of the cocktail, Poker, cotton candy, movie theatres, America's oldest running boozer (Lafitte's, 1770) restaurant (Antoine's 1840), street car system (1835) and, of course, Jazz.

A quick pootle around the various bars in the French Quarter also revealed that the people here are friendlier, better educated and a great deal easier on the eye then those of their bordering states. New Orleans, it's safe to say, was a real winner.

In the 19th century it seems friendliness of a certain sort was less welcome here. In an effort to guard the chastity of young ladies, wealthy families in the French Quarter would stash them as far upstairs as possible. Undeterred, young bucks would climb supporting balcony poles in order to give their own poles a seeing to. Noticing what was going on, the pillars were then greased by protective parents (or presumably their servants).

This grease still failed to adequately prevent their poor daughters being deflowered so more extreme measures were needed. And so, grizzly looking spikes were added to everything that could possibly prove too tempting for an over sexed 19th century would be Romeo. Given the link between the balcony crawling lothario, they were given the very cutesy name of 'Romeo Catchers.'

In the evening Tommy introduced me to the best fried chicken I'd ever had (Willy Mae's). Never entirely satisfied, we made our way to a local bar called Scooter Browns. There we guzzled on 30 cent oysters and beer until we were almost sick. The local way of taking them was on a salted cracker and smothered in lemon and cocktail sauce. I was, as they say, in hog heaven.

Another, very handy thing about New Orleans is that you can carry alcohol in an open container almost everywhere. They even have drive through liquor stores if you're too drunk to walk. Although we may take it for granted in Europe, the right to drink in public is very much the exception here in America.

Outside of the bustling city centre, New Orleans has a deeply sensual and mystical aura that you bathe in as you wander its streets. By night, gas lit lamps gently dance outside many of the homes and streets are still washed in a hazy amber glow from its streetlights. Although the latter are being phased out by bright white LEDs which is frankly mortifying.

The more time I spent in the city, the more things I found to recommend it. Unlike most American cities, you can actually cycle here without the almost certain chance of being eaten by a lorry. They even, and this is a real shocker, have a few actual cycle lanes.

Over dinner Tommy helpfully explained the layout of the city and the different characteristics of each neighbourhood. Of these, the most attention grabbing was the West Bank neighbourhood. Being American and chronically incapable of dealing with more than two syllables, this has, a tad predictably, been shortened to just Wank. And of course people from his district, with a great deal of pride and total ignorance of its British meaning, refer to themselves as Wankers.