Party Towns
My friends have been asking me why I love New Orleans so much, since I can’t really stand New York’s party neighborhoods on the weekends when the streets are full with party people having fun. In New Orleans it’s a completely different person on the streets enjoying themselves. New Yorkers “work hard and play hard,” they are wound up all day in stressful jobs, which they let loose from every night, exploding on one of the villages or the LES. New Orleanians, and those who come to New Orleans, just spend their days partying, they’re not partying with any specific goal, not trying to release any stress, they just enjoy themselves. Those coming to New Orleans get into the laidback atmosphere and party their stress out the first night on Bourbon Street, then they can be themselves. I hear it’s hard to grow up in this atmosphere if you ever want to do something with your life, but if you just want to have fun and just love everyone, it’s a good place to be.
No other place has quite the same interactions between strangers. I’ll never get on an elevator in New York after hearing the party before the doors open and 6 older Southerners in Alabama sweatshirts and boas drunkenly proclaim “careful, there’s jissssmmmm, everywhere” (there wasn’t). It’s just a bizarre place that cuts down a lot of people’s filters and I hope it’s not another 5 years before I go again.
