Tag Archives: New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS: Roll, Zulu!

Zulu king, Mardi Gras, New Orleans — image property of nola.com

Mardi Gras Day this year falls in the middle of Black History Month. You can see some of that history in motion this morning when the Krewe of Zulu rolls through the streets of the Crescent City.

New Orleans is the city that taught America how to party, and every year during Carnival season, it gives a refresher course. For the last three weeks, it’s been parades large and small, day and night, fancy-dress balls known as cotillions, floats and flambeaux.

It all comes to a raucous, joyous head today, Fat Tuesday — or in French, Mardi Gras.

By now, the Skeletons, or Skull and Bones gangs, have already awakened the sleepy residents of predominantly black neighborhoods, dressed head to toe in black-and-white skeleton costumes and banging pots, pans and tambourines as they shout, “WAKE UP! YOU NEXT!”

But the official kickoff of Mardi Gras Day comes at 8 a.m. Central time, when the Krewe of Zulu rolls their parade through the streets of New Orleans, members dressed in their traditional black face, Afro wigs and grass skirts, handing down their now-famous Zulu coconuts.

(NOTE: In New Orleans, all Mardi Gras parades roll. To say anything else instantly marks you as a tourist.)

And that’s the moment when Carnival and Black History Month converge.

The krewes are the private social organizations that put on the big parades, with marching bands and gaudily decorated floats towed by tractors, each manned by costumed members throwing all manner of trinkets — some of which require parental guidance — to hundreds of thousands of spectators.

Zulu was the first black krewe officially recognized by the city. These days, the Krewe of Zulu holds equal standing with Rex, one of the oldest original all-white Mardi Gras krewes, which originated many of the Mardi Gras traditions that still exist today.

The kings of Zulu and Rex formally open the festivities together the day before on Lundi Gras, Fat Monday, when the mayor officially turns over the city streets to them.

But it hasn’t all been smiles and good times for Zulu. When the organization began back in the early 1900s, fun wasn’t really the point.

Zulu began as what’s known in New Orleans as a “social aid and pleasure club,” which collected due from its members. Together with black churches, these clubs formed a financial and social safety net for black New Orleans, a role both still play today.

The club dues collected served as a kind of life insurance, a pool of funds that members could tap into when times were hard — a frequent occurrence for black working men in the NOLA. And when you died, your dues paid for your funeral, which club members would put on for you.

Zulu banner

Zulu was not the only such club in New Orleans, but were easily the best-known, and still are.

New Orleans Online offers a detailed history of Zulu here.

The early 1900s also was a time when black New Orleanians weren’t allowed to take part in the “mainstream” Mardi Gras activities. Joining the established krewes was “by invitation only” — and if you weren’t white, you weren’t invited.

You didn’t even show your black face on the main parade routes of St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street except at your own — considerable — risk.

The response of black neighborhoods was to hold their own Carnival parades and create their own Mardi Gras traditions, one of which became the Zulus, who set out to mock every aspect of “traditional” Mardi Gras.

Their parades were sponsored by neighborhood bars, a marriage of convenience for both the parade goers and the local “watering holes,” which could count on overflow crowds on parade days.

Not until 1968 did the Zulu parade roll on St. Charles and Canal. It’s been a mainstream parade ever since.

Zulu has had its share of controversy, especially back in the 1960s, when a lot of black folks in town felt that its black face and grass skirt get-ups were demeaning to an increasingly self-aware Black America. At one point, their membership shrank to a mere 16 men.

One of them was my father, who was as proud of being a Zulu as he was having been a Navy Seabee in the Pacific during World War 2.

Stubbornness is a major character trait — some would say character flaw — in New Orleans. It was that stubbornness that led those last 16 to hold out and hang on in the face of all the scorn heaped upon them.

In the years that followed, Zulu not only survived, but grew and ultimately flourished. The annual Zulu Ball became of the city’s major Carnival events, and one of its most highly prized invitations.

Today, Zulu finds itself at eye level with every other major krewe in New Orleans, known as much for its charity work, feeding poor families during holiday seasons, and for sponsoring local schools and college scholarships as for its noisy, gaudy parades. Their continued existence is a testament to the creative, defiant, joyously stubborn spirit of black New Orleans.

And they’re rolling right now. If you want to see them live, and you have the time, go to the WDSU webcam…right this second.

Roll, Zulu!

THE ZULU COCONUT
After Zulu started rolling on the mainstream parade routes in 1968, it didn’t take long for the Zulu coconut to eclipse the doubloon as the most cherished of all Mardi Gras “throws.”

These are real coconuts, each one individually gilded and decorated by hand by Zulu members, who make up the designs themselves.

But there was a problem.

Tossing out plastic beads and fake gold doubloons was no big deal, but throwing Zulu coconuts could be life-threatening. More than a few parade goers who lacked the receiving skills of, say, a Jerry Rice ended up getting brained by these things. Zulu became the target of so many lawsuits that insurance companies wouldn’t go near them.

Finally, the Louisiana legislature stepped in, passing a law that exempted Zulu from liability — provided they handed out their coconuts to the crowds. No more throwing.

Every so often, some overly exuberant Zulu member forgets himself and flings one, but for the most part, they stick to the rule. Which means spectators can go home with their beloved coconuts — without a detour to the emergency room.

It also meant that fewer parade goers would even get a shot at going home with a Zulu coconut, making them even more prized than they already were.

ALSO CHECK OUT:
All on a Mardi Gras Day
NEW ORLEANS: Streetcars and Baby Dolls

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.10.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Hong Kong fireworks — © Farang | Dreamstime.com

Wishing peace, health and prosperity to our IBIT friends in China and Chinatowns around the world as they ring in the Year of the Snake on this Lunar New Year.

EAT, DRINK AND GO TRAVEL
Every so often, I go back through old digests of mine to look for recurring themes — and if you’re a regular reader of the IBIT Travel Digest, there’s at least one you’ve spotted already. Nearly every digest, it seems, features at least one mention of food or drink.

So starting today, FOOD & DRINK gets its own section in the digest — and it kicks off with two subjects equally dear to my heart and my tastebuds.

New Orleans was a foodie town long before someone invented the term “foodie.” The word itself is out of favor these days among the blogerati (not that I give a damn), but the NOLA’S flare for flavor will never die.

From its beginnings, New Orleans cuisine has blended a mélange of influences — French, Spanish, Native American, African, Italian, Irish. Starting with the 1980s, though, a new taste fell into the city’s gumbo pot — the flavors of Vietnam.

San Diego was the first American city to receive South Vietnamese refugees en masse following the 1975 fall of Saigon, which made it the first to be exposed to Vietnamese dishes in a big way.It didn’t take long for pho and banh mi, with their fresh ingredients and vibrant mix of flavors, to become staples here.

And for you gumbo purists out there (and you know who you are): Yes, they do put in okra on request.

But while the Vietnamese cuisine tsunami was washing over San Diego, other refugees gravitated to the Gulf of Mexico to resume their lives as fishermen. Inevitably, many settled in New Orleans.

A city that already treated po’boys and gumbo as basic food groups had little trouble embracing pho soups and banh mi sandwiches. And among the Vietnamese and their descendants who grew up in the NOLA, the feeling seems to be mutual, as the New York Times recently discovered.

Today, within an easy drive from my house in San Diego are at least two Vietnamese restaurants whose menu is a mix of Vietnamese and New Orleans Creole dishes, run together by people from both locales. The nearest one features a daily special that includes half a banh mi and a bowl of gumbo.

But the best place to see the result of this marriage of cultures is in the Crescent City itself and you’ll see it below in the inaugural FOOD & DRINK section of the IBIT Travel Digest.

IBIT says: Bon appétit…or perhaps, chúc ngon miệng!

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WILL TRAVEL FOR JAZZ
Back at the turn of the 20th century, as Europe was plunging into the first of its two disastrous world wars, Paris witnessed the arrival of blacks from America, mostly soldiers, who brought with them a style of music Parisians had never heard before.

The Americans called it jazz, and Paris promptly fell in love with it. And as Jonathan Lorie discovered when he went roaming Ernest Hemingway’s old Parisian haunts for London’s The Guardian newspaper, the love still burns.

Jazz may be an American invention — perhaps the best of all American inventions — but there may be no better place to enjoy it than Paris. And as you’ll see in Lorie’s article, there are a lot of venues in the City of Light where you can enjoy it.

Lorie’s piece also links four other famed Jazz Age authors — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham — and their jazz hangouts from New York to Germany and even Sri Lanka.

But if all these folks were still around today, they all might leave their hearts in San Francisco. The reason is SFJAZZ, which opened late last month in the city’s Hayes Valley neighborhood.

It is the first concert hall in the United States — and maybe the world — built expressly for jazz. It features an auditorium, an ensemble room, rehearsal areas, a digital learning lab, and even a sidewalk cafe.

IBIT says: Hemingway would’ve dug it…once he got used to the no-smoking rule.

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AND FINALLY…
USA Today reports that Kate Hanni, head of the airline consumer organization FlyersRights.org, is stepping down as the group’s executive director, walking away from the outfit she founded in 2006.

You can read the entire USA Today story here.

She formed Flyers Rights after being stuck on the tarmac aboard an American Airlines flight in Austin, TX — for nearly nine hours — and getting little more than lip service from the airline. Her outspoken efforts since then led to federal regulations governing how the airlines handle flight delays.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Hanni didn’t make a lot of friends in the airline industry during her time with Flyers Rights, but she did prove that consumers who organize at the grassroots and speak truth to power can make a difference.

IBIT says: Thanks for all you did, Kate, and all you tried to do.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from the Los Angeles Times
In the eternal hunt for airfare bargains, booking too early can be as costly as booking too late.

from Travel Weekly
You may soon be able to watch in-flight shows and movies on-demand on Southwest Airlines flights, streamed to your own personal electronic devices. That’s the good news. The bad news? You’ll be paying extra for it.

from Budget Travel
A survey of travel agents says that when it comes to booking their clients on connecting flights, Atlanta-Hartsfield is one of their most favorite airports. It’s also one of their least favorite airports. Am I confused? No. I’m just booking non-stops.

from Travel Weekly
Frequent-flier miles…from an airport? Starting in June, the parking, food, merchandise or airport hotel stay you buy at Dallas-Ft. Worth International (DFW) will count toward airline miles.

from FareCompare
When is a “free” airline ticket not really free at all? FareCompare’s Rick Seaney counts the ways, and there are five of them.

LAND
from Condé Nast Traveler
The world’s ten most beautiful train stations, according to CN Traveler, right on time as New York’s Grand Central Terminal marks its 100th anniversary. Some are classic, others ultra-modern, and some brilliantly mix old and new. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
For the third time since it first opened in 1981, San Francisco is set to expand its Moscone convention center.

SEA
from the New York Times
Lust and luxury aboard the Queen Mary 2. Just don’t call it a “cruise.” It’s just not done, you know…

from Travel Weekly
Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s old airport, where almost every landing seemed like an adventure, is returning to the travel business — this time as a gleaming $1 billion cruise ship terminal that can handle the largest vessels in the business, even Royal Caribbean’s behemoth Oasis-class ships.

FOOD & DRINK
from the New York Times
In New Orleans, they know their pho — and their yaka mein. If you don’t know either, read up. WARNING: Your mouth may involuntarily water while reading.

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AFRICA
from Travel Weekly
The Radisson hotel chain opens its first Radisson Blu hotel in Mozambique.

from TechZim (Zimbabwe)
New travel startup, Zimbabwe Bookers, aims to make finding hotel rooms easier for travelers in one of Africa’s growing tourist markets.

from Tanzania Daily News (Tanzania) via allAfrica.com
Tanzania draws up plans to aggressively promote tourism in overseas markets. Its top four markets — Britain, the United States, Germany and Italy.

from Angola Press via allAfrica.com
Angola’s environmental agency building bungalows, other facilities in the country’s national parks in a bid to boost ecotourism.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
When your mother takes you on a sailing excursion to Central America at the age of six, just the two of you — and it lasts for four years — school field trips may have a hard time holding your attention after that.

from the New York Times
A look at San Juan, Puerto Rico, starting with one of my favorite spots — Condado Lagoon. SLIDESHOW

from The Guardian (London UK)
Are you into “Girls?” I’m referring here to the HBO hit TV series, set in Brooklyn. A look at the neighborhoods that give the show its inspiration.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Washington Post
Singapore spent so many decades living with the reputation of being the straight-laced capital of Asia, that it’s hard to imagine this city-state having a quirky side. But it does have one. Yes, it does.

EUROPE
from France 24
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of…graffiti? The city’s Shoreditch neighborhood is becoming a mecca for lovers of street art.

Edited by P.A.Rice

SUPER BOWL XLVII: The scammers are coming

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Bourbon Street, New Orleans — ©Ericsch | Dreamstime.com

Actually, they’re already in New Orleans, selling non-existent rental rooms to tourists ahead of the big game. Don’t get conned.

It’s inevitable. Major events draw criminals, all of them out to separate you from your money. And no annual event in America is bigger than the National Football League’s championship game, the Super Bowl, being played this year in New Orleans.

This game is an annual magnet for larceny, regardless of where it’s played, but New Orleans, meanwhile, more than a few “grifters” of its own. There are folks in this town who would sell you fresh air if they thought they could get away with it.

So it came as no surprise when local television station WWL reported that visitors trying to rent rooms in the French Quarter were being conned.

You can read the entire WWL story here.

Modern technology is making these scams easier than ever to pull off. Phony online ads. Bogus Web sites that look “legit.” Unsupervised online ad sites like craisglist and couchsurfing sites like airbnb. Crooks will exploit any avenue they can find, and the Web gives them plenty.

When you put it all together, it’s all too easy to wind up on the wrong end of that famous passage from Malcolm X:

“You been HAD! You been TOOK! You been…HOOD-winked! BAM-boozled! Led a-STRAY! Run a-MUCK!”

Or in this case, left without a place to sleep in the run-up to Super Bowl Sunday.

There are no absolute guarantees against this kind of fraud, but there are ways to make yourself a harder target for con artists. Here are a few ideas:

DO YOUR HOMEWORK
The crooks may have online resources at their disposal, but so do you. Use them. Hook up with local tourism organizations like the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau and New Orleans Online. Ask their advice on finding a guesthouse in “the Quarter” — or anywhere else in the Crescent City.

Here’s a good tip from the vacation rental site Homeaway: “Contact the owners for information not included in the property description.”
USE YOUR HEAD
Remember the old saying, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Think. Ask questions. Be skeptical.

Make use of review sites like TripAdvisor. Check for reviews on the place you’re being offered. If there are none, treat that as a red flag. If there are, contact the reviewers. Ask questions. Use Google to locate pics of the location. Above all, make sure the name of the guesthouse matches the address you’re being given.
GIVE YOURSELF SOME CREDIT
Be wary of those who insist on cash deposits up front, and never use a debit card to pre-pay a room. Either way, if there’s a problem, there’s no way to get your money back. Look instead for people who accept deposits by credit card. If something goes wrong, you can at least call your bank and cancel the payment.

Of course, you can avoid all of these problems by staying in a conventional hotel or motel, but a lot of visitors want the feeling of staying in guesthouse or apartment in New Orleans, and why not? It can be a great experience, and save you a ton of money, besides.

With some due diligence and a few good-sense precautions, you can rent your room and have a Super time in the NOLA. Laissez les footballs voler!

NEW ORLEANS: Streetcars and Baby Dolls

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St. Charles Avenue streetcar, New Orleans | ©IBIT/G. Gross

A pair of once-familiar sights are set to make comebacks this year in the Crescent City. One figures to delight visitors to the Superdome. The other may turn Mardi Gras upside down.

“Welcome to New Orleans. Come for the Super Bowl. Stay for Mardi Gras.”

That’s the pitch that the Crescent City is making to visitors in February. It’s an offer the city has made before, and one that hundreds of thousands of tourists will find impossible to refuse.

But those who take up that offer this year will be witness to a couple of street revivals.

New Orleans takes its traditions seriously, even the ones it periodically turns its back on, and two good examples of that are poised to return this winter to “the NOLA.”

THE STREEETCARS
The first is a new streetcar line through the city’s Central Business District that links the French Quarter to the Superdome. If all goes as planned, the new line should be ready to roll by Feb. 3, in time for Super Bowl XLVII.

But the importance of this line goes far beyond one over-hyped football game. It’s part of an ongoing effort to undo one of the dumbest things New Orleans city government ever did.

City Hall spent the better part of four decades ripping out streetcar lines — at least 15 of them that I can find — and replacing them with buses. New Orleans has largely regretted it ever since.

Maria C. Montoya of the News Orleans Times-Picayune probably put it best: “Tennessee Williams never would have written ‘A Bus Named Desire.’ ” (emphasis mine)

Preservationists managed, barely, to save the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line (seen above) that runs down through the city’s über-scenic Garden District. It’s now a working icon of New Orleans history, used and beloved daily by locals and tourists alike.

In the late 1980s, the city fathers reluctantly acknowledged what a lot of their citizens had been telling them for years, namely that when it comes to efficiently moving people around a city, buses are no substitute for streetcars. And as the St. Charles line clearly showed, they lend a character to a city that no bus ever could.

So they decided to bring them back.

The first came in 1988 with the opening of the short Riverfront line, linking “the Quarter” to the New Orleans Convention Center. But the real resurrection began in 2004, when streetcars returned to Canal Street, the city’s main downtown thoroughfare.

There are ambitious plans to restore other lines. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 temporarily derailed all of that, but now the revival appears to be back on track.

[ FREE — AND NEARLY FREE — DELIGHTS IN NEW ORLEANS ]

This actually is one of the ways I prefer to get around a major city when I travel. Definitely faster and more comfortable than a bus, and you get to see a lot more than you will on a subway. The streetcars (or as they call them, “trams”) in cities like Amsterdam, Geneva, Switzerland, and Lyon and Strasbourg, France are sleek, state-of-the-art dreams.

The New Orleans streetcars are still largely old-school in appearance. Their two major concessions to modernity are automated fareboxes and air-conditioning, the latter of which you will bless in the summertime. But they’re just as handy when it comes to getting around.

And the way IBIT sees it, any kind of public transit that can save me the cost of a rental car is a good thing.

THE BABY DOLLS
The other comeback this winter involves an all-but-forgotten Mardi Gras tradition — and I’m not sure if even New Orleans is ready for this one.

The Baby Dolls are back.

When the Krewe of Zulu rolls their parade to open Mardi Gras Day, Feb. 12, there will be a troupe of Baby Dolls among them.

Mothers may want to hide their children — and their husbands, too.

When blacks weren’t allowed to take part in the “mainstream” Mardi Gras parades and activities downtown, black communities promptly came up with their own ways to “laissez les bon temps roulez.” The Baby Dolls were one of them.

The original Baby Dolls were a product of Storyville, the infamous red-light district famed equally for its prostitution and its jazz joints.

In a sense, the whole thing grew out of one of those Uptown-Downtown rivalries common to New Orleans. When word got out that some downtown hookers were planning to stage a Mardi Gras parade, the working girls of Storyville took that as a challenge that could not go unanswered.

They took the nickname their pimps had given them and turned it into a fashion statement, literally dolling themselves up in bonnets, bloomers, knickers and what-not, and staged a parade of their own.

But these definitely were no Barbies.

Storyville itself was torn down during World War 1, but by then, the Baby Doll idea had caught on in black neighborhoods. Before long, first-graders, their mothers and even grandmothers were rocking the Baby Doll look.

You no longer had to be an “industrial debutante” to be a Baby Doll.

Soon, they were as much a part of the black Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans as the Mardi Gras Indians, second-line clubs and Skeletons.

The Skeletons were the first to hit the streets in “the ‘hood” on Mardi Gras morning. Ghostly figures dressed head to toe in black-and-white skeleton suits and fierce-looking masks, they went from block to block, banging on pots and pans and yelling:

“WAKE UP! YOU NEXT!”

Then came the neighborhood parades, following no preset schedule or route, with their Indians and jazz bands and second-line clubs&hellip,and the Baby Dolls.

Over time, as other black Mardi Gras traditions gained recognition and acceptance from the mainstream, the Baby Dolls gradually disappeared from the streets — but not from memory.

Now, they’re making a comeback, updated to include one of New Orleans’ newer creations — “bounce music” and dance.

These days, you don’t have to be a prostitute, or black or even female. But it’s still a reach back in time to acknowledge the city’s baudy, insolent past…which returns to the present every Carnival season. You may be amused or you may be appalled, but either way, you won’t be bored.

And that’s the NOLA for ya.

the IBIT Travel Digest 12.23.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Tongli, China’s ancient Venice | ©IBIT/G. Gross

UP A LAZY ASIAN RIVER
River cruising has long been a travel staple in Europe and shows little sign of slowing down. But cruise lines and tour companies increasingly are looking to Asia as the Next Big Thing in cruising.

According to USA Today, Viking River Cruises, one of the biggest names in European river cruising, has already announced plans to offer river cruises in Myanmar and Thailand, starting in 2014.

Others aren’t waiting that long. Travel Daily News.Asia is reporting that Travel Indochina is already adding Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and Laos to a river cruise itinerary that already includes Vietnam, Cambodia and Yangtze River cruises in China.

With increasing world interest in Asia and growing middle classes in Asian countries with money to spend and a desire to see more of their own homelands, Asian river cruising could be a hot market for years to come.

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PUTTING A STOP TO MOTION SICKNESS
So far, this is one of life’s ailments that has mercifully passed me by. But there are plenty of people who suffer with this — and “suffer” is the operative term.

At the least, it can seriously interfere with your ability to enjoy travel. At its worst, it may prevent you from traveling altogether.

We’ve all had our share of laughs about motion sickness. Even Hollywood films and cartoons have gotten in on the levity. But every time I see the airsickness bag on the airplane or see folks on cruise ships with that little scopolamine patch on their necks, I’m reminded that motion sickness is no joke.

It’s a physical misunderstanding. Your inner ear tells your brain, “We’re moving!” Your eyes are saying, “No, we’re not!” Your stomach wishes they’d both shut the hell up.

There’s no real cure for motion sickness, but there are ways you can deal with this, and the New York Times breaks it all down at length in this article.

Their suggestions may not rid you of this curse, but they might make life a little easier for you, or your kids.

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CHARGED UP
A lot of us travel with a lot of electronic gear — smartphones, iPods, tablets. They make us productive during those long flights, or at least keep us from dying of boredom.

But even if they’re fully charged when we leave for the airport, their batteries may be no match for that 10-hour or 12-hour transcontinental flight. And finding an available electrical outlet in a crowded terminal during an unexpected delay can be…well…challenging.

Which is why the Summit 3000 battery pack caught my attention. As Smarter Travel points out, it’s neither very light or really cheap, but if you need to keep your devices running in places where a plug isn’t handy, you may be glad you have this.

One especially cool feature is that it’s dual-voltage, which means you can use it overseas with no hassle; all you need is a plug adaptor for the country you’re in. And if you travel with electronic gear, odds are you already have some of those.

Still, it isn’t powerful enough to charge a laptop, which leaves my black MacBook feeling neglected and resentful.

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FLYING YOUR FELINE
Traveling with pets is always tricky, especially if the pet is a cat. It’s tough enough on the sensitive little critters, even without having to deal with the TSA — which actually lost one traveler’s cat in New York JFK airport.

There’s nothing we can do about the TSA, but there are things cat owners can do to make travel easier on their beloved felines, and the folks at Smarter Traveler lay out their suggestions in this slideshow.

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AND FINALLY…
If your Boeing and you want to test how well in-flight wifi works aboard your aircraft, what sort of exotic, sophisticated, state-of-the-art testing equipment do you use?

Why, potatoes, of course — 20,000 pounds of potatoes, right on the passenger seats.

And as proof that I’m neither crazy nor making this stuff up, check out this CNN story on Boeing’s wifi tests.

And please, no mashup jokes.

And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
Don’t look now, but your already miserable experience getting through airport security could get a lot worse two weeks into 2013. It’s all about your driver’s license and an eight-year-old federal law that gone unenforced — until now. IBIT will be exploring this in depth shortly.

from the Washington Post
Spas. Yoga. Luxury food. Fine dining. An international resort? You’ll increasingly find these high-end amenities in the last place you’d look for them — American airports.

from Christopher Elliot
Is the TSA doomed? A respected consumer writer says the powers that be have heard the traveling public’s gripes — and they’re paying attention.

from Smarter Travel
Seven ways to avoid airline baggage fees. SLIDESHOW

LAND
from the New York Times
Have you ever longed to explore ancient historic sites, without having to contend with mobs of tourists? Here are five spots around the world where your wish may come true…for now, anyway.

SEA
from Gadling
Cruise travel is rebounding from a rough year.

from Travel Weekly
Are the Viking River Cruises people building a navy or what? Already with ten new cruise ships on order for next year, they’ve already committed to eight more in 2014. That makes 24 new river cruisers in three years. But given Viking’s interest in Asia (see above), it makes perfect sense.

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AFRICA
from The New Times (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
The national airlines of Kenya and Rwanda hook up in a strategic partnership that eventually could stremaline regional air travel between eastern and central Africa.

from The Point (Gambia) via allAfrica.com
A village on a pristine coastal stretch of the Gambia becomes the anchor point of an ambitious experiment in ecotourism.

from Vanguard (Nigeria) via allAfrica.com
A state government in Nigeria wants to turn the site of the country’s first recorded plane crash into a tourist attraction. Uhhh…

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
We think of New Orleans mostly as a grown-ups’ playground, but come Christmastime, it becomes a magical place for kids.

from SFGate.com
Good news from Mexico: There’s a hotel building boom underway in Cancun.

from the Washington Post
A foodie’s tour of Peru. SLIDESHOW

from the Sacramento Bee
Hollywood has its stars, but in California’s Anza-Borrego Desert, you’ll get an unrestricted view of the real ones.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNNgo
Riding waves of modernization, gentrification and newly made Chinese money, there’s never been a better time to visit Hong Kong. An insider’s look at one of the world’s perpetually energized destinations.

from CCTV (China)
China and Nepal sign a commitment to promote tourism between the two countries.

from the Jakarta Post (Indonesia)
Have you ever poured Thousand Island dressing on your salad and wondered if such a place actually exists? It does. It’s in Indonesia, and the governor of the nation’s capital, Jakarta, would love to see the Thousand Islands region become a tourist attraction.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Walk through history in the ancient city of Toledo, a city holy to Catholics in Spain. Its religious importance saw it escape multiple wars almost untouched.

from The Guardian (London UK)
How Vienna waltzes through Christmas.

from The Guardian (London UK)
The world’s oldest monument was discovered only about a decade ago. It’s 11,000 years old. And it’s in Turkey.

from the Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette (IL)
For most travelers interested in Europe, Slovenia doesn’t register as a worthwhile destination. And that’s kind of a shame.

OT: Dave Brubeck, 1920-2012

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Dave Brubeck, 1920-2012

Today, IBIT strays somewhat from the topic of travel to mark the passing of an American jazz legend.

We lost Dave Brubeck today, and for anyone who grew up with a love and respect for jazz, the loss is immense.

If you’re of my generation and come out of New Orleans, jazz almost seems to be coded into your DNA. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and so many others.

You may even have jazz notes hanging like musical fruit from your own family tree, as I do.

But as a kid, I didn’t really connect with jazz on a gut level until I heard “Take Five” for the first time in 1962 — courtesy of an AM radio station in San Francisco.

I heard it while clutching a cheap plastic transistor radio the size of a small shoe, with “made in Japan” in raised letters on the bottom and a small, tinny-sounding speaker not fit for “elevator music.” The alternative was to plug in the somewhat uncomfortable oversized earphone, which in those days went into only one ear.

For me, none of that mattered. “Take Five” was the song that turned “cool” from a state of mind into a sound. More than that, it was the signal that my musical tastes were no longer those of a child — even though I still was one.

Most artists want to be known and respected for their body of work, not just one piece of it. In Brubeck’s case, though, it’s probably unavoidable, for “Take Five” is not just his song. It’s his signature.

I grew up thinking this was strictly an American thing, that we were the only ones who loved jazz. How wrong I was.

Black American musicians first exposed the rest of the world to jazz in Europe, just before and especially during World War 1, when Parisians listened to the Army bands of America’s racially segregated black units, a pattern repeated in Europe and occupied Japan after World War 2.

Which is one big reason why today, you can find a jazz club in the capital city of every major nation on Earth.

Another reason was the Cold War.

Back then, both sides tried to use culture as a weapon of sorts. When the Soviet Union was trotting out classical orchestras and the Bolshoi Ballet on worldwide tours as cultural proof of its superiority, Washington countered with the likes of Ellington, Armstrong, Basie…and Dave Brubeck.

Fast-forward to 1976. Tokyo, Japan. I’m sitting in a second-floor nightclub wedged into a small office building in the Ginza, drinking Kirin beers from a glass boot…and listening to young Japanese musicians playing American jazz.

Including Brubeck’s “Take Five.”

Soon after, I learned that there were countries all over the world with jazz radio stations — and even more, hosting their own jazz festival lasting days.

Montreal and Toronto, Canada. Paris and Nice, France. Copenhagen. Vienna. Montreux, Switzerland. Havana. Jakarta, Indonesia. Macedonia, Moldova, Algeria and Azerbaijan.

Jazz. For days.

Regular IBIT readers know I’m not big on traveling the world to experience American culture. My skin crawls at the sight of a McDonald’s on the Champs Elysee or all over the Recoleta in Buenos Aires.

For music, however, I make an exception.

I delight at listening to black African choirs put their own interpretations on black American gospel music. I truly enjoy listening to hip-hop and rhythm ‘n blues via London or Marseilles or Salvador in Brazil’s Bahia state.

Above all, I love hearing everybody’s spin on jazz.

Dave Brubeck was one of the geniuses who brought this uniquely American creation to the world, and the world has never let go of it, or him. Play this cut on the streets of almost any big city, anywhere, and someone will stop to listen. Not just because they like it, but because they know it.

David Warren Brubeck would have been 92 years old tomorrow. His music will live on a lot longer than that.

The good stuff never dies.

AIRFARE ALERT: Southwest — $100 or less

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This one-day fare sale will get you to a lot of Southwest’s destinations for a Benjamin. If the return fare is decent, it could be a bargain. IF…

It looks as if Southwest Airlines has come up with a fresh gimmick for a fare war, but don’t expect its competitors to match this one.

According to the folks at Smarter Travel, for today only, Southwest is putting 750 of its routes up for a most usual sale — nothing over $100.

And thanks to the federal government’s new rules for advertising airfares, that’s not $100 “plus taxes, surcharges and fees.” Nowadays, the airlines are required to quote you the entire fare up front.

So when Southwest says $100, that means $100, period.

There is still a catch, however. Three of them, in fact.

The first is that the sale applies to most, but not all of Southwest’s entire route system.

According to Southwest, it flies to 97 destinations, including the ones covered by AirTran, which Southwest now owns. According to ST, the sale applies to 77 cities. Whether the sale prices apply to AirTran as well as Southwest flights is not made clear.

If a sale doesn’t apply to a destination that interests you, it’s not of much use, and airlines tend to apply these sales on the routes on which they have the most trouble filling airplanes.

Still, according to ST, places like Los Angeles, Orlando, New Orleans and New York are included in this sale, so this could be worth something.

The second catch is summed up in two words: one-way.

Southwest will happily show you the total round-trip purchase price, but the bargain-basement fares apply in only one direction. If you actually want to come back, you’ll be paying more. It’s a standard airline sales gimmick.

The third, according to the ST crew: You can only use it for travel on four days in the month of December, including Christmas Day.

Even so, if you can get one of those rock-bottom fares to some place you actually want to go, and the return fare is decent enough, you can still come out ahead.

Again, this is a one-day deal, which means you have until 11:59 tonight. After that, this sale turns into a pumpkin.

Here’s the Southwest Web site. Good luck!

Let go of the rail

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Incredible experiences await us when we travel, if we’re willing to venture just a few steps away from the familiar.

This time last year, I was wrapping up my first visit to China. Easily one of the best trips of my life.

And yet only two days in, I knew I was missing somethng major, something “real.” I realized it the minute our tour guide took our group to lunch at a Beijing hutong.

Before we get into what a hutong is, I need first to explain what it’s not. Contrary to the impression we were given, it’s not a traditional Chinese home.

The homes themselves are known as siheyuan, sometimes referred to as “Chinese quadrangles.” Basically, these are four-sided compounds, each side composed of one or more rooms, which together form an interior courtyard. The room themselves are arrayed end-to-end, not unlike the traditional New Orleans “shotgun house.”

The exterior walls of these homes form a warren of gray, unadorned alleyways, with the siheyuan on both sides. These clusters of quadrangle homes are the hutongs.

More than just old-school Chinese neighborhoods, they represent a way of life that predates the time of Christ.

In Europe, a lot of people live their lives outside the home. Restaurants become dining rooms. Cafes become parlors. For many Europeans, especially in the great cities, home is little more than a place to sleep, shower and change clothes.

In China — at least, traditional China — it’s just the opposite.

There isn’t a lot to see walking through a hutong. Not a lot of commerce in the alleyways. No well-manicured gardens or expansive lawns as in suburban America. Not even so much as a outward-looking window. Just one narrow, gray corridor leading to another, and another, and another. Just wide enough for the mailman, the delivery guy or the garbage collector to pass you as they make their rounds on their motorbikes.

About the only real color may be on the heavy double wooden doors that serves as the entrance to a siheyuan, often painted bright red to bring prosperity and happiness to those who live within.

It’s on the other side of those doors where the neighborhood life happens.

Babies take their first steps inside the family courtyard, safe from the cars and other hazards outside. Families take their meals together. Homework is done. Chores are shared.

The rooms whose outer walls form the central yard serve as shields against the noisy, smoky, chaotic intrusion of the city beyond. Inside, there are trees, benches and chairs, maybe a small patch of grass, perhaps even a small cage or two bearing songbirds, living wind chimes to gently break the almost perfect silence.

This is the slice of Chinese life you get within a hutong, the kind of real-life experience centuries removed from your all-too-familiar Western-style hotel, where the vast majority of tourists end up.

How cool would it be to stay in one of these quadrangle homes inside a real hutong?

As it turns out, you can. A cursory Web search found these quadrangle homes and hutongs that have been converted to inns and hotels in Beijing alone:

Like any other lodging, they vary in price, comfort and amenities offered, but there are plenty that have been adapted to the needs of 21st century travelers, right down to wifi. You just have to look for them — and with Beijing hutongs turning up on Web sites like Expedia and TripAdvisor, even the search isn’t that hard.

It would be a truly eye-opening experience for a first-time China visitor to spend even one night living as the Chinese live.

Most, however, never will.

A big part of that is because the tour groups popular with newcomers to China just automatically book their groups in Western-style hotels. It doesn’t even occur to them to opt for a hutong.

But an equally big reason is that it doesn’t occur to us travelers to ask. Physically, we may travel halfway around the world, but psychologically, we barely leave the house.

We cling too hard to the things we know — the brand-name hotel, the resto with the familiar food and the menus in English. We confine ourselves — some would say condemn ourselves — to sanitized, artificially Americanized versions of the world.

The result: We learn that you can get a Big Mac as easily in Beijing as you can in Baltimore, but we learn little else. We see the sights, but gain little insight.

So afraid of having a bad experience, we return home really having had no experience.

That’s sad, because in many parts of the world, our chance to have that authentic, eye-opening travel experience is diminishing — and the Beijing hutongs are a prime example. Hundreds of them have been demolished over the past decade or so, and the bulldozing continues as you’re reading this.

Many were razed to clear land for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but many more were torn down to make way for gleaming high-rise office towers, expansive ultra-modern hotels and massive, block-like shopping malls, their exteriors ablaze in neon lights from roof to sidewalk.

This is the new China, the rapidly modernizing China. But is it the real China? Is this where you find the heart and soul of the land known as the Middle Kingdom?

Or are you more likely to find that in its hutongs?

Travel is nearly always a good thing. But our travels can enrich us so much more if we’re willing to let go of our cultural guardrails and take even a few brief, hesitant steps into the unfamiliar.

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 11.4.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

Liverpool | ©IBIT/G. Gross

DANCING WITH HURRICANES
For most of the last week, travelers have been coping with the chaos created by Hurricane Sandy. Clem Bason, president of the Hotwire Group, offered some really helpful tips for travelers to get through it.

But it doesn’t require a “storm of the century” to unleash havoc on the US aviation grid. All it takes is a strong storm lasting a day or more that hammers an airlines’ hub airport city like Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta or New York.

If nothing else, Sandy’s swamping of East Coast airports may get travelers thinking about how to deal with such crises in the future, and that’s a good thing. Because the realities of climate change mean we probably haven’t seen our last superstorm around here.

Bason recommends keeping your airline’s phone number in your smartphone. In addition to that, make sure you have one or more good travel apps in your phone that give you fast access to airlines, hotels, rental car agencies, whatever you need to get through the crisis.

But really, the best thing you can do for yourself during a travel emergency is to have a previously established relationship with a travel agent and keep that person on speed dial. A good, experienced travel agent not only can find alternative flights and lodging for you, but can book them…and probably a lot faster than you can.

Just a little something to think about, especially if you travel a lot — and before one of Sandy’s meteorological siblings shows up.

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“F” IS FOR FEES
As in airline add-on fees, those extra charges for checking your bags and even the “privilege” of sitting in an exit-row seat. The airlines drained an extra $22 bilion out of your collective pockets last year on fees alone.

We all know and loathe them, but we don’t know all of them.

Until now.

The crew at SmarterTravel, one of the best travel Web sites going, has produced a guide listing every single add-on fee charged by every domestic airline in the United States. Fourteen different fees — and their varying amounts — from 14 different US airlines.

It’s a PDF entitled “Ultimate Guide to Airline Fees.” To download it, click here.

Bookmark that link on your computer. Keep it on your smartphone. Print it out. If you fly a lot, this is one list you definitely want to keep handy.

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JAL SELLING COMFORT
For many years now, Japan Air Lines, that nation’s original national flag carrier, has been flying in the jetwash of rival All Nippon Airways. It looks now as if JAL is trying to take the fight to ANA with a promise of more comfort in the sky.

It’s giving their extended-range Boeing 777s a major interior makeover. When done, its cabins will be divided into four classes — Economy, Premium Economy, Business and First.

The latter two classes will be lie-flat seats in their own self-contained shells, but JAL is promising that all the seats will be more comfortable, even in sardine class.

They’re calling these reconfigured 777s “Sky Suites,” and the first of them will go into service next Janunary between Tokyo Narita and London Heathrow. Eventually, however, they will be coming to America.

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ALL ABOARD FOR BEER
You may have heard of the Napa Valley Wine Train up in the Northern California wine country. It’s a great experience, and IBIT will have more on that in a future blog post.

Meanwhile, have you heard about the Beer Train in San Diego? It may sound like the punchline to a bad joke, but it’s anything but.

Unlike the Napa Valley Wine Train, the Beer Train doesn’t have its own rolling stock. Instead, it turns a Coaster commuter train into a rolling pub. Pub grub and short walks are part of the package.

Sounds like a sweet ride, does it not?

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CARIBBEAN SPRUCE-UP
Travel Weekly reports that both Barbados and Martinique have plans in the works for new cruise terminals capable of handling the largest cruise ships out there. Which means that, in a year or so from now, passengers will be able to step off the ship directly onto the dock and head straight into town.

Caribbean ports need to do this, for the same reason that the world’s major airports have to build larger terminals to accommodate the Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet.

Some struggle to handle the larger new super-cruisers. Others can’t dock cruise ships at all. They have to use small, cramped tenders to ferry cruise ship passengers to and from shore, a time-consuming and somewhat risky process disliked equally by the ports, the cruise lines and their passengers.

Meanwhile, Caribbean cruise ships have been growing almost exponentially in size since the 1990s. Royal Caribbean International and Carnival, the two largest lines going head-to-head for the Caribbean cruise market are both building seagoing behemoths that would make the Titanic look like the SS Minnow.

It’s hardly a coincidence, then, that one of the principal partners in the new Barbados cruise terminal is Royal Caribbean. One look at their Oasis of the Seas will explain everything.

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AND FINALLY—
Travel media just love making lists — best this, cheapest that, coolest whatever. If you look long enough, you’ll probably find someone making a list of the best travel lists.

But the prize for the most counter-intuitive travel list goes to Budget Travel. Its “winning” entry: the world’s 25 must-see tourist traps.

Normally, when travel writers say anything about tourist traps, it’s to advise you — usually with great disdain — to avoid them. This slideshow does just the opposite. It lists the top 25 destinations that invariably are crawling with tourists, but worth a visit, anyway.

To look at it another way: These places are all teeming with visitors for a reason.

So if a certain sight or destination really piques your interest, don’t automatically let the travelerati put you off from it.

And now, here’s the Digest:

AIR
from SmarterTravel
from CNN Travel
Window or aisle: What does your choice of airplane seat say about you?

from SmarterTravel
Eight airline perks that are — are you sitting down? — still free. SLIDESHOW

from the Los Angeles Times
First, airlines started tapping into celebrity chefs. Now, American Airlines will let passengers in First and Business Class reserve their choice of in-flight meals. The biggest shock? There’s no fee attached.

from Travel Weekly
JetBlue plans to offer satellite-based wifi beginning early in 2013, which it says will be better than the ground-based airborne wifi being offered by their competitors. It also plans to offer at least a basic version of it…wait for it…at no charge.

from Travel Weekly
Lufthansa launches a new low-fare carrier in Europe, Germanwings.

LAND
from SmarterTravel via USA Today
Five tips to make the most of that carry-on bag.

from Budget Travel
When it comes to unexpected travel costs that can ambush your wallet, we all know about the airlines and their hated baggage fees. But there are at least a half-dozen more that BT wants you to know about.

from Reuters
The streetcar, thought to be obsolete a half-century ago, is making a comeback in New Orleans. One more reason to visit the Crescent City.

from Associated Press via Yahoo
From bike-sharing programs to building bicycle “superhighways, European cities are embracing cycling like never before.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Norwegian Cruise Line doing away with its discounts for children under age 2. A money-making idea, or a way to force parents to leave their babies at home with grandma?

from Travel Weekly
The Love Boat in unfamiliar waters. Princess Cruise Line’s Pacific Princess will offer a 10-day Caribbean cruise next January.

from Travel Weekly
New cruise industry safety rules now require cruise ship crewmembers to do lifeboat drills that involve actually putting the boats in the water and maneuvering them while being filled to capacity. If you’re guessing this is a consequence of the Costa Concordia disaster, you’re right.

AFRICA
from The Guardian (London UK)
A few days in the bush in Zimbabwe.

from Le Monde (France)
African migrants are increasingly abandoning dreams of reaching Europe or America. These days, the “promised land” is increasingly becoming South Africa. But while the dream destination may be different, the hardships and sorrows of the journey are the same.

from Monkeys and Mountains
Shark diving in South Africa — with camera and without a cage.

from Capetown Festival of Beer
When the world thinks of alcoholic beverages and South Africa, it automatically and for good reason thinks of South African wines. These guys would like to change that.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Like some sort of post-apocalyptic epiphany on wheels, New Yorkers living in the wake of Hurricane Sandy are rediscovering their bikes…and liking them.

from Travel Weekly
Government bureaucracy plus consumer confusion is making a muddle of new rules governing legal U.S. travel to Cuba.

from Travel Weekly
The Imperial Palace hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip is undergoing both a year-long makeover and a name change. When it’s all done, some time around the end of 2013, it will be known as The Quad.

from the Associated Press via SFGate
The San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana is often touted as the world’s busiest world crossing, and often cursed as the world’s most congested. It’s now getting a makeover intended to streamline the traffic flow going south. Northbound travelers…*shrug.*

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNNgo
Vietnam puts its own spin on fast-food dining. It usually involves two motorized wheels and some seriously fresh and tasty eats.

from Travel Weekly
What it’s like to tour quake-shattered Christchurch, New Zealand. Just one example of “dark tourism.”

from Travel Weekly
Get ready to rock out in in the Middle Kingdom. Hard Rock International is bringing its rock ‘n’ roll-themed hotels to China starting in 2015, including one on the island of Hainan.

from Travel Weekly
China’s on-again, off-again issuance of permits for foreign tourists to visit Tibet is off again.

EUROPE
from The Guardian (London UK)
Missed Halloween last week? No worries. You can always catch up at the Witches Night festival next spring in Prague. Parades, witch burnings (in effigy only, mind you) and some of the world’s best beer.

from Travel Weekly
The British travel company Trafalgar is planning a 13-day tour of European battlefields from both world wars. Included is a visit to the Belgian cemetery that inspired the famous World War 1 poem, “In Flanders Fields.”

from Typically Spanish
Spain has long been a traditional warm-weather refuge for British tourists. These days, they’ve increasingly got company, from an even chillier Mother Russia.

from the BBC
Paris for lovers…of chocolate.

Edited by P.A.Rice

The NOLA — Freret Street

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Second in a series

Ancora, a new Freret Street eatery specializing in pizza and salumi.

SERIES INTRO

In the midst of the cleanup and rebuilding after Huricane Katrina, a movement of sorts is taking hold within the city’s Uptown neighborhoods, one with the potential to remake the face of American cities.

If you want to get a feel for New Orleans today and where it may be headed, you need to venture beyond Canal Street, the French Quarter or the Central Business District and into the neighborhoods where this city really lives.

Specifically, you need to find an eight-block stretch of Freret Street between Napoleon and Jefferson avenues.

Being perhaps the most European of American cities, New Orleans has always had streets that served as linear corridors of neighborhood commerce, each with its own history and personality, reminiscent of the London “high street” or the Paris market street. The oldest and best-known is Magazine Street. Boutiques for blocks, cafes for days, shops of all sorts.

There’s also Oak Street in the Carrollton district and Maple Street near the Tulane and Loyola university campuses.

And then, there’s Freret. If you lived in the neighborhood, as I did in the 1950s, you knew this street well.

PAPER RAINCOATS
Canal-Villere, across the street from the old Chinese laundry, was where you went to “make groceries.” It was the first supermarket most of us had ever seen.

If you got caught in a sudden thunderstorm, the cashiers would cut three holes in their largest grocery bag to fashion a raincoat for small children. The parents had to settle for covering their heads with a donated cardboard box that smelled of fresh lettuce.

Evening out on Freret Street

Freret Street was where you got new soles and heels for your shoes, filled the prescriptions you’d got from Charity Hospital, stopped off at the Brown Derby for a drink after work on a Friday night. And it was where the neighborhood po’boy stand turned out the perhaps the best oyster loaf south of Canal Street.

You could walk to everything, and most people did.

Then came the 1960s, 70s, 80s. Decline. Decay. Demise. Businesses folded. Whole blocks seemed to be boarded up. Those families that could afford to leave, left, often replaced by drug dealers and thugs with visions of becoming cocaine millionaires.

For Tulane and Loyola students, Freret became a no-go zone above Jefferson Avenue. For residents living closest to the Magnolia projects — one of the most dangerous public housing projects in the United States — it became a zone to get away from, if you could afford to escape. Freret Street became a ghost walk after dark.

And that was years before Hurricane Katrina flooded the entire neighborhood.

But just before Katrina showed up on Freret, Andy Brott and Kellie Grengs showed up. Husband and wife. He’s an artist, a glassmaker. She designs theater costumes and teaches at Loyola University New Orleans. They decided to create Andy’s studio on Freret. They put their own money, time and sweat into it.

STARTING OVER, TWICE
“The building is a hundred years old. The neighborhood is horrible. But we can’t afford anything else,” Grengs recalls. “We spent eight months — plumbing, electrical, proof. We did it all on our own.”

Andrew Brott and Kellie Grengs

Their final city inspection was on Aug. 20, 2005. Katrina arrived nine days later. By the time the hurricane left, their rehab job had become a tear-down.

It set them back, but it didn’t stop them.

“We got the first deconstruction permit in Orleans Parish, took the building apart one nail at a time and recycled everything,” Grengs said. “We now have a building rated for 300 mph winds.”

Just like that, Freret Street had a pulse. But they weren’t done. They now set out to revitalize the whole corridor.

“Now, I’m on a tear,” said Grengs. “How can we get this street all together and look like we know what we’re doing? How do we promote this corridor and get people to come back?”

A newly formed merchants association evolved into what is now known simply as “The New Freret,” with Grengs as one of its driving forces. Over the next seven years, more folks moved onto Freret to set up shops.

Fast-forward to June 2012. I take a late drive on a Friday night through my old haunts. I turn off Napoleon onto Freret. For a moment, I fear I’m on the wrong street.

OLD STREET, NEW LIFE
Cafes. Bistros, sushi houses. The sidewalks are jammed with people out enjoying the night. College kids are out riding their bikes. Freret is alive with energy.

“The New York Times calls us newly trendy,” Grengs said. But she and Andy Brott aren’t looking to clone Magazine Street, which she describes as “semi-walkable” and “boutique-y.”

“Not everybody can afford a $100 pair of shoes,” she says. “We want to be a safe, walkable neighborhood.”

The key word there is “walkable.” The whole corridor is a mere eight blocks long. But within those eight blocks, you’ll now find a hardware store, a private guest house, a garden supply shop, a bike shop, an optometrist, a thrift shop, a coffeeshop, a cocktail bar, a pizzeria, not to mention a jont that specializes in po’boys and doghnuts.

In other words, it’s a neighborhood again. It looks like one, feels like one, works like one. The scale is right. The “vibe” is right.

AMERICA’S NEIGHBORHOOD CHAMPION
Jane Jacobs, 1916-2006, believed in community planning that started with the community itself, not with top-down dictates from City Hall.

She also favored finding creative ways to revive older neighborhoods instead of razing them and starting over.

Neither a developer nor a trained urban planner, she regularly tangled with both. Her battles in the 1960s with New York builder Robert Moses are legendary.

Today, her book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” is studied by urban planners worldwide. A non-profit organization, Center for the Living City, continues her work.

Meanwhile, more than 30 cities in 23 states annually host Jane Jacobs Walks to show people how neighborhoods really work. Three of those walks are in New Orleans, where she has become almost a patron saint for many of those leading the city’s urban revival.

“People use the word ‘sustainable’ all the time, but they don’t understand it,” said Andy Brott. “She did.”

What’s happening along Freret represents turning away from “suburbia” with its dependence on the automobile, and a return to communities built to a more human scale. Jacobs’ “radical” ideas of 50 years ago are finding expression today across the urban heart of New Orleans, and beyond.

“I went to art school. I didn’t mean to get into urban planning,” Brott says.”We mixed Jane Jacobs with a little Le Corbusier to come up with a modern take on city living. This is just basic common sense.”

Freret Street is now a nightly hotspot for Tulane and Loyola students, indeed, for anyone who wants to avoid to the torist crush in the Quarter and still have a good night out.

Evening out on Freret Street

FROM NO-GO TO LET’S GO
They’re drawn to places like the High Hat Café, which specializes in catfish, and Origami for sushi.

There’s a pizza joint, Ancora, that lists salumi among its specialties. Not “salami.” Salumi.

Those with smaller budgets head for Dat Dog, featuring sausages made with everything from traditional pork to duck, crawfish and alligator – not to mention the Guinness sausage.

The thirsty opt for Cure, described by Travel + Leisure magazine as one of the best cocktail bars in America.

The Freret Market — equal parts outdoor art, flea and farmers market — is a monthly event and there’s an annual Freret Street Festival that’s pulling crowds.

For all of that, though, Freret also may be the most “homey” of the corridors. Revitalized charter schools stand at the southern end of the street. At the northern end, the long-troubled Magnolia housing projects have been razed and replaced with fresh, modern townhomes.

Both have made a difference, said Grengs.

GENTRIFICATION?
“Now people will feel safe to rent an apartment and walk this corridor,” she says. “They will be confident to buy a blighted property and use tax credits to renovate it and bring the tax base up. And we’re seeing that right now. Families are coming back.”

But The New Freret is not a feel-good story to everyone.

There are those in New Orleans who point to a glaring absence of darker faces into those sidewalk crowds, despite the fact that the surrounding neighborhood is predominantly black in a city whose population is 60 percent African-American.

What they see are young white “hipsters” with money to invest moving in, and less-affluent blacks — and others — being forced out by rising property values and rents.

A lot of the people who see things that way happen to live in the very section of town being targeted for the latest wave of post-Katrina renewal.

And IBIT is headed there next.