Every August, They Return
You can set your calendar by it. Somewhere around the second week of August, before the heat has even thought about breaking, the migration begins. SUVs with out-of-state plates double-park on Broadway. Parents in pressed khakis haul mini-fridges up narrow staircases. And just like that, the college kids are back.
New Orleans is home to Tulane, Loyola, Xavier, Dillard, UNO, and SUNO, among others. That is a staggering number of universities for a city this size, and every single one of them deposits a fresh crop of eighteen-year-olds onto streets that were relatively quiet all summer. The transformation is immediate. The Uptown neighborhood, which spent June and July in a languid haze of locals walking dogs and old men sitting on porches, suddenly sounds like a never-ending house party. Because it is.
The Bourbon Street Education
They come for the academics, sure. Tulane has a fine reputation. Loyola produces excellent musicians and communicators. Xavier sends more African American students to medical school than any university in the country. But let us be honest about the unspoken recruiting tool: this city itself. The promise of a four-year immersion in a place where the drinking age feels like a suggestion and the music never stops is a powerful draw.
The freshmen hit Bourbon Street in the first week like it is a required course. They discover the Hand Grenade. They discover the Huge Ass Beer. They discover that their fake ID from suburban Ohio does not actually fool anyone, but nobody cares. By October they are regulars at The Boot, the legendary college bar on Broadway that has launched more hangovers than any institution of higher learning in the South.
The Uptown Invasion
For the residents of Uptown, the return of the students is a seasonal event on par with hurricane season. Both involve a lot of noise, some property damage, and the occasional need to call authorities. Streets around the universities become obstacle courses of abandoned scooters, red Solo cups, and young people who have not yet learned that walking four abreast on a narrow sidewalk is not how we do things here.
The rent goes up. The parking disappears. The corner store that served the neighborhood for decades suddenly stocks more White Claw than Abita. And every Thursday through Sunday night, the sound of bass-heavy music thumps from houses that were built in 1890 and were never meant to host a DJ.
But Here Is the Thing
Some of them stay. That is the secret that the grumbling locals do not always admit. Some percentage of every incoming class falls so completely in love with this ridiculous, beautiful, broken city that they never leave. They graduate and get apartments in Mid-City. They open restaurants in the Bywater. They become teachers and lawyers and artists and, eventually, the kind of locals who complain about the next wave of college kids showing up in August.
New Orleans has always been a city that absorbs people. It takes outsiders and, if they are willing, turns them into locals. The college kids are just the most visible version of that process, showing up in droves with their parents' credit cards and their complete ignorance of how to drive on St. Charles Avenue, and slowly, year by year, becoming part of the fabric.
So yes, be careful driving down Broadway in September. Watch out for the kid on the electric scooter who just discovered daiquiri shops. And try to remember that you, too, were probably insufferable at nineteen. The city will do what it always does. It will teach them. And the tuition is steep.
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