Rob Walker - Letters from New Orleans

Rob Walker is a columnist for The New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at The Times Magazine, Money, and The American Lawyer, he has also written for Slate, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Details, and The Nation, among others. He was born and raised in Texas. With E and El Rey de los Perros, he left New Orleans on August 23, 2003, for reasons that remain unclear.

Just before January 1, 2000, I moved from New York City to New Orleans, with my girlfriend, E. I began to write about our new home, eventually distributing The Letter From New Orleans --"pointless, sporadic, and free" --via email, to friends and, later, to strangers who were interested for one reason or another. All fourteen Letters, and some other dispatches concerning New Orleans, follow. They appear chronologically, but can, and maybe should, be read in some other order of your own devising. This is not a memoir, a history, or an expos. It is a just a modest series of stories about a place that means a lot to me. I never figured the Letters would end up in a book.

Because the first edition of this book was published a month or two before Hurricane Katrina, Letters from New Orleans is now something else, something it was not really meant to be. Now it's a time capsule, a portrait of the city at a particular time, from one person's perspective. Many things in this book read differently after Katrina than they did before. And when the time came for a second edition we decided that, for better or worse, none of those things should be changed or adjusted or tweaked with the benefit of hindsight. We added this paragraph, and a brief afterword, but otherwise left the letters as they were written when they were written.

So, here is how it was, for me.

ROB WALKER

Random bullets are a problem in New Orleans, especially on New Years Eve. Apparently its something of a tradition among certain locals to step outside and pop off a few rounds. I just moved here with E, my girlfriend, and we didnt know about this. Then she noticed a billboard showing a hand firing a gun into the air and the warning Falling Bullets Kill. And I read in the paper that police officials urge residentsto avoid firing weapons into the air. Somehow avoid seems a little nonchalant to me. I think one avoids fatty foods; one simply does not fire weapons into the air in an urban setting, even on special occasions.

But maybe that just goes to show that I have a lot to learn about my new home.

The Time Out Guide to New Orleans notes: Orleanians are proud of their culture. Visitors are expected to be as enthusiastic about the city as the natives are. If you like the city, tell everyone; if youre not happy in New Orleans, keep it to yourself.

In addition to falling bullets, the reasons not to move to New Orleans include: a largely moribund economy (though its perkier than it was), a high crime rate (though this, too, has improved), crushing summer heat, and the legitimate possibility of being wiped out by a hurricane or flood. These are good reasons. The population here has fallen from about 628,000 in 1960 to 466,000 in 1998.

So why are we here? Were here, actually, because we really are as enthusiastic about the city as the natives are. This is the second time Ive moved across the country; the first was from Texas, which is where Im from, to New York City, where I spent the last eight or so years. I had a good job as an editor (at a big-deal magazine), and E had a good job as a graphic designer (at a big-deal design firm). We liked New York and we have many wonderful friends there.

But to make a long story short, we just like it here more right now. Were in this great big duplex or half double, as the local parlance has it instead of our awful little Greenwich Village railroad apartment. We live in a quiet, pretty neighborhood. Its been about 75 degrees and sunny every day so far. We like the food, the music, the way people talk. And, maybe more to the point, its been such a short time that it still feels like were on vacation. What we have is a big, huge crush on New Orleans. Were walking around thinking, Oh, falling bullets, thats not such a bad thing, Im sure its just a phase.

When you move a long way, to a place you dont know very well, life is a weird mix of quotidian tasks and were-new-tothese-parts wandering. Yesterday, Sunday, we hunted down a New York Times, stopped at Ace Hardware for some paint, and bought some coffee filters. Then we shifted to tourist mode and drove around to various points on the levee that keeps the Mississippi from flowing across New Orleans streets, some of which, I gather, are as many as 18 feet below sea level. Eighteen feet! I just finished John Barrys excellent book about the 1927 Mississippi flood, Rising Tide which a New Orleans acquaintance insisted I read before crossing her threshold again and I wanted to look at the river.

I cant say I feel quite at home yet, although I came close on New Years Eve. First we went down to the French Quarter, but it was choked with foolish young drunkards from the four corners of the New South, so we scurried back to our new neighborhood Bayou St. John, or Faubourg St. John, or simply Over by the Whole Foods and went to the local bar. Liuzzas by the Track, this place is called, and there were four people there at 11:20. We ordered drinks. E is a little obsessed with Liuzzas, because it seems like a real neighborhood place, its very unpretentious, the gumbo is good, there is Abita on tap, the clientele is friendly and so is the bartender. At 11:35 or so people started showing up. Regulars. Everyone in the bar knew everyone else, I think, except us. Some brought their own bottles of champagne; some brought their own champagne glasses; one woman literally danced through the door with both. With maybe 20 people, the place felt full by 11:45. A guy bought a round for the house. Janis Joplin sang Bobby McGee on the jukebox. We all looked at the TVs for the big countdown. It was a wonderful moment.

The next morning I walked over to the Circle K and bought the paper, which said that five people had been hit by random bullets, fallen from the sky.

Before we moved here, I figure I had spent a total of 20 days in New Orleans, over a period of 12 years; I guess E had spent about 15 days here over two years or so. So its silly to claim we have favorite local spots, but theres a bar called Donnas where weve spent a couple of great evenings, and we are going again tonight. Donnas is known for traditional brass-band music, and one of the cool things is the number of young musicians we have seen there.

Its interesting to think about traditional music. We took a trip to Ireland over the summer, and one of the best experiences we had there was seeing a little traditional band play a set-dancing gig in a big barn in Kilfenora. I grew up in a small town in Texas (but not as small as Kilfenora). And it occurred to me that many of the people I basically looked down on there the kickers (as we called them) who wore Wranglers and chewed tobacco and listened to KIKK, the big country music station out of Houston those people were