"America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."
- often attributed to Tennessee Williams
New Orleans is often called the most interesting city in the world, and that may well be true. It is also unlike any other American city.
The city's greatest asset has always been its people. New Orleans never accepted the premise that a person is defined by their profession. People here hold demanding careers and are also serious cooks, musicians, fishermen, and devoted students of local history and tradition. Joy is not optional here; numerous celebrations are built into the calendar throughout the year. It shows.
It shows in the music, which is simply everywhere. Brass bands, second lines, jazz funerals that end in celebration: a lineage running from King Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton to whoever is playing on Frenchmen Street tonight. The Carnival season runs from Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, five to nine weeks of parades, parties, king cakes, and community, and at its heart it is about people showing up for one another joyfully. It shows in more than 130 festivals a year, anchored by the Jazz and Heritage Festival and French Quarter Fest, and in major headliners, the Saints, and the Pelicans filling the Superdome and Smoothie King Center. And it shows in a culture that takes genuine pleasure in making fun of itself, from elaborate Carnival krewes to the 610 Stompers, a beloved marching troupe in tube socks and gold sneakers.
Founded in 1718, shaped by French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences, New Orleans has a history as complex as it is rich. Faulkner and Tennessee Williams both claimed it as their creative home. Tulane, Loyola, Xavier, Dillard and LSU New Orleans bring distinguished academic traditions and a student energy well beyond the city's size.
And the food — the food! — is celebrated as some of the best in the world. Po-boys, beignets, crawfish étouffée, and gumbo, but also neighborhood dives, seafood joints, Vietnamese bakeries, and old-school dining rooms. A meal here is something people plan around, debate, and linger over.
New Orleans is also a surprisingly livable city: a twenty-five minute commute is considered a long commute, the airport is eleven miles out, and the Gulf Coast is within easy reach. It is also among the most architecturally beautiful in the country — the Garden District, the French Quarter, the live oak canopies of Uptown. We have great parks and public spaces, Audubon Park, City Park, the Audubon Zoo, and the Audubon Aquarium and Insectarium as well as nearby state parks providing easy access to our marshes and bayou, and the wildlife they shelter. We are also home to the extraordinary National World War II Museum which has grown into the City’s most visited attraction.
New Orleans has real challenges, as many great cities do. These very challenges, weathered together, generation after generation, have forged the resilience and the fierce, defiant culture that make this city what it is. Some of its most devoted residents are its most honest critics. But that is because they know what is truly at stake: a city with a soul unlike anywhere else in the world. As long as that spirit endures, New Orleans won't just survive, it will continue to teach the world how to live.
