Different Rules Apply: The Otherness of New Orleans

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Postcard photographers have been trying for a long time to get the shot that captures New Orleans; but, unless they concoct some way to engage all the other senses at once, it's likely to remain a frustrated pursuit.

Sure, there are iconic photos of French Quarter balconies hung with tropical plants and laced in iron filigree, of riverboats paddling the brown Mississippi River like grand floating wedding cakes, of motley street performers blowing sweet and lowdown on impromptu sidewalk stages, of the neon-glowing, 24-hour carnival midway of gaudy Bourbon Street.

Evocative images, certainly, but the key to New Orleans is contrast and the alchemy of unlikely combinations - and that's something read by the ears, through the nose, over the palate and on the skin as surely as it is with the eyes. New Orleans is, in part: the thump and wail of a brass band leading a slow-moving parade thrown not for a holiday but whimsy alone; the smell of jasmine creeping over a courtyard wall to smother the tailpipe emissions of carriage-pulling mules; the throw-your-fork-across the table intensity of Louisiana seafood from a Creole kitchen; the omnipresent humidity, a tangible presence as hard to ignore as a third party in a honeymoon suite.

New Orleans is opulence and squalor sharing an apartment, resilience and decay working at cross purposes, explosive abandon and graceful reserve saluting each other from across the boulevard.

By turns exuberant and brooding, the city's character runs much deeper than its infamous identity as a party town. It is that, and has been for a long time, earning the 19th Century moniker of the "great Southern Babylon" and, later, "the safety valve of the South," mottos no chamber of commerce would invent but apt nonetheless.

This reputation stems from something more important to the essence of New Orleans than great music and free-flowing liquor. When it gets right down to it, New Orleans is a place where different rules apply, from the actual laws on the books to the unwritten codes of social conduct. For all the city's modern tourist attractions and historic properties, its festivals and museums and sporting events, this otherness, this exoticism underlying the familiar, has been the root of its distinct appeal - the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it sounds and tastes.

It's been this way for a long time. Two distant imperial powers, the French and Spanish, swapped the city's early governance between each other with the frequency of poker fortunes before America adopted it for long-term parenting. The standards and expectations of the rest of the country never could cut through the experience of the city's formative years, however, and that still helps set it apart from today's America. The city is as different from its Southern neighbors just over the state line as Seattle is from Boston a continent away.

The different tenor of life here has been a source of enormous creative license in the everyday lifestyles of residents and the never-never land vacations of visitors. This dynamic manifests itself in examples both historic and contemporary, grand and trivial. In antebellum days, for instance, African slaves were allowed unusual freedoms in New Orleans, including the opportunity to congregate and make music together in the slave market now known as Congo Square. A few generations after Emancipation, their descendants invented jazz on the streets and legalized bordellos of Storyville and changed the world of music.

Another example shows up in the city's love affair with dressing in costumes. A tradition set aside for Halloween or children's games elsewhere, fancy dress is a deeply ingrained part of celebrations year-round in New Orleans. With the liberation of masking, locals and visitors step out of their lodgings and into fanciful indulgence, changing at least their own world for a day.

People come to New Orleans to celebrate - whether for a weekend or for a lifetime - and as at any good celebration they aim to wring pleasure from each moment. The city obliges with bars that stay open forever, an embarrassment of musical riches and a regional cuisine that starts with its own language and ends with addicting anticipation of the next meal.

New Orleans has no monopoly on debauched revelry in modern America, but its atmosphere remains one of a kind. What happens in Vegas may very well stay in Vegas; what happens in New Orleans could only happen in New Orleans.

Ian McNulty is a freelance food writer and columnist, a frequent commentator on the New Orleans entertainment talk show “Steppin’ Out” and editor of the guidebook “Hungry? Thirsty? New Orleans.”