What Not to Do in New Orleans: A Local's Guide

The short version: don't spend your whole trip on Bourbon Street, and don't treat New Orleans like a theme park that closes when you fly home. People live here. They raise kids on these blocks and argue about which po-boy shop is best. The visitors who have the best time are the ones who act like guests in somebody's neighborhood, because that's what they are.

We've been watching visitors from behind the counter on Magazine Street and Chartres Street for twenty years. Most people get it right. The ones who don't usually make the same handful of mistakes, so here they are, from the people who live with the aftermath.

Don't Spend the Whole Trip on Bourbon Street

Go once. Walk it end to end, get a drink, take it all in, and make up your own mind about the smell. We wrote a whole piece on Bourbon Street Sauce if you want to be prepared.

Then leave. The city most of us actually live in is somewhere else. It's a Tuesday night at a corner bar in the Bywater or a Sunday afternoon on the levee at the Fly, watching the ships come around the bend. Take the streetcar up St. Charles. Get lost in Mid-City. You'll figure out pretty quickly that nobody here gives directions in north and south. It's River. Lake. Uptown. Downtown., and once you learn it, you'll start using it at home and confusing everyone.

Don't Call It "The Big Easy"

Nobody who lives here says it. Not ironically, not after a few drinks, not ever. "New Orleans" works. "NOLA" works. If you really want to blend in, just say "the city."

While you're at it, take a crack at the street names before you embarrass yourself in a cab. Chartres is CHAR-ters. Burgundy is bur-GUN-dee. Calliope is CAL-ee-ope, and Tchoupitoulas is CHOP-uh-TOO-lus, which takes most people about a week to say without flinching. Our If You Can Read This You're A Local shirt is built on exactly this problem.

And please don't try the accent. Hollywood has been getting it wrong for decades, and we've written about the movies that missed the mark. New Orleans doesn't sound like the rest of the South. Plenty of people say it sounds closer to Brooklyn, which surprises most visitors.

Don't Walk Out of a Bar With a Glass

You can drink on the street here, which is a fact visitors find out early and then can't stop talking about. But it goes in a plastic cup. Ask the bartender for a go-cup on your way out and they'll pour it over without blinking. We think the go-cup deserves its own museum wing.

The freedom comes with an unwritten rule: you're a guest walking through someone's neighborhood with a drink in your hand. Act like it. Don't leave the cup on somebody's stoop.

Don't Treat a Parade Like a Free-for-All

Carnival season has more rules than people expect, and locals take them seriously. The city's NOLA Ready parade guidelines say ladders can't be taller than six feet and have to sit at least six feet back from the curb. You also can't put your stuff out on the route more than four hours before a parade starts, no matter how early you got there.

The unwritten rules matter just as much. That ladder with a kid's seat bolted to the top belongs to a family that has stood in that same spot for thirty years. Don't touch it, and definitely don't climb it. Never cut between floats, even if the gap looks wide. The bands and the flambeaux need the street. And nothing will make a local sigh louder than someone diving for beads in front of a six-year-old.

If it's your first Carnival, start with our guide on what to do during Mardi Gras. Then go to a parade on a weeknight Uptown, when it's mostly families, and watch how people do it. In the fall, the Superdome has its own rules, so read up on what to wear to a Saints game before you go.

Don't Just Stand There at a Second Line

A second line is a parade put on by a social aid and pleasure club, and the second line is the crowd that follows the band. That's you. Walk with it. Dance a little, even if you're bad at it. Buy a beer from the guy with the cooler on a shopping cart.

What you shouldn't do is treat it like a performance put on for your phone. The clubs spend all year and a lot of their own money on suits and permits. Here's what a second line actually is, and if you want to find one, check the calendar at WWOZ. Same goes for the brass bands on Frenchmen and the musicians on Royal. If you stop and listen, put money in the bucket. That's the deal. Our Do Watcha Wanna shirt was made in their honor.

Don't Wander Into St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Alone

New Orleans' oldest cemetery has been closed to independent visitors since 2015, when the Archdiocese started requiring a licensed tour guide after years of vandalism. NPR covered the change when it happened. Book a tour if you want to go in. Don't draw on Marie Laveau's tomb, ever.

If you'd rather wander on your own, St. Roch Cemetery is one of the most interesting places in the city and a good deal quieter.

Don't Eat Where You'd Eat at Home

There are chain restaurants in the French Quarter. We will not be naming them. You came all this way, so eat something you can't get back home.

Start with a po-boy, and when they ask if you want it dressed, say yes. Our local's guide to po-boys will get you to the right counter, and the Po'Boy Patent Print will help you remember it. In spring, find a crawfish boil. In summer, stand in line for a snowball, and don't call it a snow cone. Our snowball guide has the stands worth the wait.

Eat lunch and talk about dinner. That's how it works here. There's a reason we printed New Orleans Is My Favorite Restaurant.

Don't Fight the Weather

You will sweat. Your hair will do whatever it wants. Pack for the humidity and not the forecast high, because 88 degrees here feels nothing like 88 somewhere dry. Something loose and sleeveless helps, which is why Died of Humidity is a tank.

Summer afternoons usually bring a thunderstorm that comes out of nowhere and floods a few streets for an hour. Don't drive through standing water. And if you're visiting between June and November, keep an eye on the tropics. Our hurricane prep guide is written for locals, but visitors can use it too.

Don't Rush

This might be the hardest one. Restaurants take their time. The streetcar comes when it comes. A five-minute errand turns into forty because you ran into somebody's cousin outside the grocery store.

You can fight it, or you can give in. New Orleans: so far behind, we're ahead. The people who love this city figured that out on their first trip, and a lot of them never left.

Come Back

The city's not hard to love once you stop treating it like a backdrop. Talk to the bartender. Say "where y'at" back when someone says it to you. Come find us on Magazine Street or Chartres Street and we'll tell you where we're eating this week, and point you to the souvenirs that aren't embarrassing.

Then go home and be a New Orleanian, wherever you are.

What Not to Do in New Orleans: FAQ

What should you avoid doing in New Orleans?

Don't spend your whole trip on Bourbon Street, don't call the city "the Big Easy," and don't carry glass on the street. Respect parade-route rules and tip street musicians if you stop to listen.

Can you drink on the street in New Orleans?

Yes. Bars will pour your drink into a plastic go-cup when you leave. Keep it out of glass and treat the neighborhood like someone's home, because it is.

Can you visit St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 without a tour?

No. Since 2015 the Archdiocese of New Orleans has required visitors to enter with a licensed tour guide.