Lakefront Airport: The Art Deco Jewel Huey Long Built on the Lake
The Art Deco Jewel on the LakeLakefront Airport is what happens when a dictator with grand ambitions and a Depression-era workforce build an airport. Constructed in the mid-1930s under the directio...
Kaldi's Coffee Shop: The French Quarter's Living Room That Rent Killed
The Living Room of the French QuarterBefore the coffee chains colonized every corner in America, before "third wave" and "pour over" entered the vocabulary, there was Kaldi's — a coffee shop on Dec...
Potholes: Fill Them With Beads, Crawfish, Hopes, and Dreams
Fill Them With Beads, Crawfish, Hopes, and DreamsA pothole is a structural failure in the road surface — usually asphalt pavement — caused by water in the underlying soil structure and traffic pass...
River Rats: They Live in the Palm Trees and They Want Your Dinner
They Live in the Palm Trees and They Want Your LeftoversRiver rats are the uninvited dinner guests of the French Quarter — sleek, fast, and bold enough to scamper across a restaurant table while yo...
Traffic Cameras: The Greatest Bane of Opening Your Mailbox
The Greatest Bane of Opening the MailboxThere are few things that can ruin a New Orleanian's day faster than opening the mailbox and finding a traffic camera citation. That slim envelope — the one ...
Carpetbaggers: The Outsiders Who Arrived With a Plan to Fix Everything
The Outsiders Who Know BetterThe word "carpetbagger" dates to Reconstruction, when outsider opportunists from the North moved South with their belongings in cheap carpet-fabric bags, perceived by l...
Nutria: The Orange-Toothed Rodent Eating Louisiana's Coastline
The Orange-Toothed Rodent Eating Louisiana's CoastlineThe nutria is a herbivorous, semiaquatic, web-footed rodent with bright orange incisors and a face that only a mother nutria could love. Origin...
Porch Package Pirates: They See Your Amazon Box Before You Do
They See Your Amazon Box Before You DoPorch package pirates scamper around New Orleans night and day like mice going after cheese. They can be found on porches and stoops across the city, from Upto...
Bourbon Street Sauce: The Corrosive Stench of a Damn Good Time
The Stench of a Good TimeNobody knows exactly what Bourbon Street Sauce is. It's not a recipe. It's not a condiment. It's the corrosive, vile, nausea-inducing film that coats the streets and sidewa...
Bike Thieves: The Special Place in Hell Reserved for These People
A Rite of Passage You'd Rather SkipA handful of experiences in New Orleans can be considered a rite of passage to living in the city — getting the baby in the king cake, having your car towed durin...
Hangovers: The Price of Admission to New Orleans' Nightlife
The Price of AdmissionThe hangover is New Orleans' most democratic affliction — a bipartisan, interfaith, cross-cultural experience that unites tourists and locals, saints and sinners, in the share...
Traffic: The Daily Pileup of Anger, Potholes, and Honking Horns
The Daily PileupNew Orleans traffic is not like traffic in other cities. In most cities, traffic is a function of too many cars and not enough roads. In New Orleans, traffic is a function of too ma...
Fire Ants: The Invisible Army That Ruins Every Picnic in New Orleans
The Invisible Army Beneath Your FeetFire ants are everywhere in New Orleans — in parks, driveways, sidewalk cracks, and usually right where you just sat down to watch some live music. You don't see...
The Possum: New Orleans' Ugly, Misunderstood, Mosquito-Eating Neighbor
The Misunderstood MarsupialThe possum is New Orleans' most unfairly maligned neighbor. They're ugly — let's get that out of the way first. With their ratlike tails, beady eyes, and tendency to hiss...
Sweat: The Common Denominator That Binds All New Orleanians
The Common DenominatorSweat is the great equalizer of New Orleans. It doesn't matter if you're the mayor or a busker on Royal Street, a surgeon at Ochsner or a line cook on Magazine — from May thro...
Parking Tickets: The Orange Envelope of Doom Under Your Windshield
The Orange Envelope of DoomThere are few sights more gut-wrenching in New Orleans than returning to your car and seeing a bright orange envelope tucked under the windshield wiper. That envelope con...
Termites: They're Eating Your House and Dropping Wings in Your Drink
They're Eating Your House Right NowSomewhere in New Orleans, at this very moment, a colony of Formosan subterranean termites is quietly consuming someone's home. They don't knock. They don't announ...
The Krewe of Chad: The Dude-Brah Motley Krewe Claiming Your Neutral Ground
They Came, They Claimed, They Spray-PaintedEvery Mardi Gras season and Jazz Fest weekend, a familiar pest emerges from the suburban hinterlands and descends upon the neutral grounds of New Orleans:...
Wasps: The Official Jerks of the New Orleans Insect World
The Jerks of the Insect WorldWasps have earned their reputation as the jerks of the insect world, and in New Orleans — where warm weather, abundant vegetation, and old wooden houses create wasp par...
Bachelorette Parties: They Travel in Packs and They Are Here for the Best Night Ever
They Travel in PacksYou will hear them before you see them. The shriek of coordinated excitement, the click of matching heels on cobblestone, the chant of a name — usually "Brittany" or "Jessica" o...
