What's New: An Online Update for Frommer's New Orleans

November 2004 -- A 2004 national travel survey sponsored by Travel & Leisure magazine gave New Orleans top marks for restaurants and nightlife but deemed it the dirtiest city in the country. The only thing shocking was that no one was shocked -- this is, after all, the place where otherwise sane individuals come to let it all hang out and throw caution, and the attendant detritus, to the wind. Still, tourism officials made a rallying cry to change the mind-set of both locals and visitors, and invest in a few more trash cans.

Dirt is one thing; glorious decay is another. One of the deepest pleasures of New Orleans is that it isn't new; it's old. Really old. It seems like it was old when it was built. Part of that is illusion, of course: a result of the ever-active decay that lends a patina of charm to everything it touches while heavily touching the wallets of hapless building owners trying to stem the tide of water and insect damage. To be honest, the really old bits all burned up 200 years ago in two different fires, and the city has been at times as egregious as any other about knocking down historical delights in favor of some more modern structure.

Still, this is the kind of town where, on our first visit, a friend who was herself back for the first time in a decade took us right to her favorite tiny French Quarter bookstore, confident that it would be there because it always had been. And it was. Heck, this is a town where there are restaurants that have been open for 150 years.

That is slowly changing, however. Indeed, that very bookstore, along with some other stores of similar character, is now gone, thanks to greedy French Quarter landlords who upped the rents and lost longtime tenants and gained T-shirt shops. It's a great pity.

Luckily, things move at a snail's pace in New Orleans, compared with, say, Vegas, where 9 establishments have opened and 12 closed since you started reading this paragraph. And while that doesn't ensure that some places listed in this book might not be with us by the time you go to see them, the majority will, and will continue to be. We took a certain father we are related to for his first trip back to New Orleans in over 30 years, and he said that apart from some of the Bourbon Street music being on tape rather than live and the addition of strobe lights, everything else was exactly the same, which is not to say there haven't been some improvements, with more to come. Thanks to the ever-booming convention business, new hotels continue to pop up, often, happily, utilizing old buildings; the Ritz-Carlton took over the Maison Blanche department store, and a Wyndham renovated the Whitney bank building into The Whitney - A Wyndham Historic Hotel. Another new arrival is the stylish Loews, which, as part of its agreement to renovate an old office building, pledged to also restore the Piazza D'Italia, a curious bit of public art that honored the city's strong, but often overlooked, Italian population. This restoration (a plaza with fountains and the oddest use of neon light you've ever seen) is well worth a little stroll, especially in the early evening. The new Renaissance Arts Hotel uses its Warehouse Art District location (better known to old-timers as a former furniture store) to give a distinctively New Orleans spin on the standard business hotel, with artworks by local artists (many from the Arthur Roger Gallery on the ground floor) in each of its 217 rooms.

The physical face of New Orleans will change somewhat now that the new Canal Street streetcar line (www.regionaltransit.org/news/canal/index.php) is off and, well, running. This development (which includes an extension down Carrollton to City Park) should bring a boom to the deserving Mid-City area. The local transit authority was wrestling with a few bugs in the system that were causing delays, but those appear to have been ironed out.

The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (www.ogdenmuseum.org) at long last opened and is already, in the best New Orleans tradition, creating a scandal and a fuss. The museum has planned an expansion in the historic Patrick Taylor Library, named after the benefactor who donated the ornate former 1889 building to the organization that owns the Ogden, but delays have driven up the cost of the original Ogden, which is now seeking some public funds for the expansion's completion. Taylor claims public money was not to be used for the museum and is threatening to take away his building. Roger Ogden, the New Orleans businessman whose collection makes up a substantial portion of the museum's holdings, is threatening to withdraw his collection if the museum has not moved into the library (which will house works from the 18th and 19th centuries) by 2006. Various politicians have stepped in to arbitrate, with no success, and as we write this, articles and accusations were flying about in various media.

Speaking of politics, several former business associates of former Mayor Marc Morial have recently been subpoenaed by the federal government, who may be interested in generous contracts they received during Morial's tenure. The current mayor, Ray Nagin, has signed a controversial lease regarding hotel development in the city's World Trade Center. And locals in the Bayou St. John neighborhood are concerned about a recent controversial vote that put slot machines (available 24 hr.) in the Fair Grounds racetrack.

A darker change, or return, is crime. Overall, crime statistics were down for 2003 (the most recent data available as we went to press), but residents were shaking their heads in despair over several high-profile murders -- among them three tourists -- as well as the January shooting (in the leg) of Ray Davies, leader of the British rock band the Kinks (while he was trying to foil a companion's purse snatching), and finally, a fatal shooting following the funeral of local musician legend Tuba Fats (the owner of Joe's Cozy Corner is accused of killing a man selling drinks outside the bar, where the funeral's second line finished up). Travelers are urged to exercise caution, especially around the Frenchmen Street and Faubourg-Marigny neighborhoods at nights.

On a more positive note, the city announced plans for a multistage renovation of the historic French Market. Also on the drawing boards are plans to beautify Canal Street, making it more pedestrian-friendly even as the new streetcar line brings in more foot traffic than ever.

The Besthoff Sculpture Garden (www.noma.org/html_docs/sgarden) opened next to the Museum of Art, 5 acres of marvelous statues and abstract figures, all in a park setting. This is one of the finest additions to New Orleans and a great boon to the cultural and arts scene. And it's free!

An odd and unexpected change was the drop in attendance for Mardi Gras 2004 (where for the first time, enough hotels were left underbooked that it was rumored that the hotel industry would reverse a longstanding tradition and begin to book conventions and conferences for the weekend before Fat Tuesday) and for the 2003 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (www.nojazzfest.com). The latter continues to be an astonishing amount of fun, even though cranks have complained for 10 years that it's gotten too crowded (oh, like they were there 30 years ago when they were giving tickets away, trying to scrape together an audience that topped three figures). In 2003 the powers that be made a welcome change -- Jazz Fest added a new day, Thursday of the first weekend -- but unfortunately it was not well attended enough for organizers to try it another year. But we can keep hoping -- we love it when there aren't a lot of crowds! The 2004 Jazz Fest was notable for a couple of other, more troublesome firsts. It had its first rain-day closure in 14 years, and we all wish that was the worst thing that happened. But to everyone's deep sorrow, on the second Saturday, a long-time attendee was murdered some blocks away walking back from the festival to his car. The latter is the first violent crime in the 35-year history of the Fest.

In a city where past and present are so vitally intertwined, old traditions have a habit of reasserting themselves. Congo Square, in Louis Armstrong Park, was in the 19th century the site of weekly drumming sessions, a secular voodoo celebration by slaves and free people of color. These attracted the attentions of non-voodoo practitioners, including the nearby madams of Storyville, who, legend has it, hired some of the musicians to entertain in their houses, leading, more or less, to the birth of jazz. The city recently began sponsoring weekly Sunday-afternoon drumming circles in Congo Square, open to the practiced and the novice alike, who want to either get with the beat or just enjoy a piece of New Orleans history come back to vital life again.

New Orleans loves football -- it's fun to observe how empty grocery stores are when the Saints are on TV -- and so the city gleefully joined in the madness when the LSU Tigers went up against the Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl, played right in New Orleans's own Super Bowl. You can only imagine the mayhem in the streets when LSU won -- it probably helped the sting of yet another losing Saints season. As it happens, this past year saw the debut of arena football in New Orleans, with a team called the Voodoo. It has long been speculated that the Saints were paid for their hubris (in naming themselves something so holy and perfect) with a voodoo curse. Let us note that the Voodoo are (as we type this) undefeated.

In the entertainment world, the long-awaited movie version of A Confederacy of Dunces has been shelved. Will Ferrell was cast as Ignatius, a controversial choice to many. Meanwhile, the El Matador club was sold to TV actor and longtime magician Harry Anderson, who plans, at this writing, to turn it into a showcase for his magic act. And local politician Jackie Clarkson became the proudest mother in the city when daughter Patricia was nominated for a 2004 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Pieces of April.

One of the most unexpected changes is that Anne Rice, the city's greatest booster ever, has not only sold most of her properties, she even put her beloved First Street house (memorialized in The Witching Hour) on the market. Ms. Rice intends to move to the suburbs of Kenner, a state of affairs so shocking that most locals feel faint when discussing it.