Random bullets are a problem in New Orleans, especially on New Year’s Eve. Apparently it’s 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 didn’t 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 residents … to 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 you’re not happy in New Orleans, keep it to yourself.”
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In addition to falling bullets, the reasons not to move to New Orleans include: a largely moribund economy (though it’s 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. Incidentally, the population here has fallen from about 628,000 in 1960 to 466,000 in 1998.
So why are we here? We’re here, actually, because we really are as enthusiastic about the city as the natives are. This is the second time I’ve moved across the country; the first was from Texas, which is where I’m from, to New York City, where I spent the last eight or so years. We liked New York. I had a good job as an editor (at the New York Times Magazine), and E had a good job as a graphic designer (at a big-deal design firm), and we have many wonderful friends there.
But to make a long story short, we just like it here more right now. We’re in this great big duplex–or a “a half double,” as the local parlance has it–instead of our awful little Greenwich Village railroad apartment. We live in a quiet, pretty neighborhood. It’s 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, it’s been such a short time that it still feels like we’re on vacation. What we have is a big, huge crush on New Orleans. We’re walking around thinking, “Oh, falling bullets, that’s not such a bad thing, I’m sure it’s just a phase.”
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When you move a long way, to a place you don’t know very well, life is a weird mix of quotidian tasks and we’re-new-to-these-parts wandering. Yesterday, Sunday, we hunted down a New York Times, stopped at Ace Hardware for some paint, 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’s streets, some of which, I gather, are as many as 18 feet below sea level. Eighteen feet! I just finished John Barry’s 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 can’t say I feel quite at home yet, although I came close on New Year’s 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–which is called Bayou St. John, or Faubourg St. John, or simply Over by the Whole Foods–and went to the local bar. Liuzza’s, this place is called, and there were four people there at 11:20. We ordered drinks. E is kind of obsessed with Liuzza’s, because it seems like a real neighborhood place, it’s 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 in 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.
