"The French Quarter is not Disneyland"

Kimberly Butler may still disagree, of course, but this interview with representatives of the French Quarter Citizens neighborhood group is worth considering in regard to the recent controversy over police enforcement of noise ordinances.

Neither Furness nor Bissell had seen the 10,000 member Facebook group that has been set up to protest the enforcement of the curfew law against brass bands. People in the group are saying that tourists come to the French Quarter for the bands and the atmosphere that those bands create. Is that something that Bissell and Furness can sympathize with, or do they feel that perhaps some of the concerns of the residents are more important?

“I think we can certainly sympathize,” says Furness. “We can understand their point of view, we certainly hear it a great deal…but I think what makes the French Quarter truly unique and authentic is the fact that people actually live here. The music is one part of that. But the fact that this is a living neighborhood, a neighborhood that’s passionate about its architecture, its quality of life, and that I think is something we very much need to protect.”

Reading through the comments on that Facebook group, I've noticed a common fallacious opinion that FQ residents issuing the noise complaints are recent arrivals to the area bent on changing or gentrifying it in some way. What these out-of-town Facebook users fail to understand is that the Quarter is home to the local residents first and a playground for visitors second.

But we've entered a stage in the history of this city where the needs of outsiders who visit to puke on our doorsteps or who think they know everything about us because they have HBO is more important than the needs of those of us who grew up, live and work here.

{Edit}

The sudden outrage at this is amusing to me. French Quarter quality of life ordinances have been a controversial issue for as long as I can remember and I'm starting to get sort of old myself. It's hilarious to me to see so many people getting so bent out of shape over them now as though we'd never had this discussion before.

I don't think most Quarter residents are asking for QUIET so much as they are looking for some relief from the intrusion of the NOLA-Disney infrastructure that has cropped up over the past 20 or 30 years in the form of loud bland frat-house music and puke factories on Bourbon, the insultingly stupid "Haunted History" tours that crowd the sidewalks and shout late into the night in the supposedly residential sections of the Quarter, the T-shirt and Zydeco cubes that seem to occupy the vast majority of the commercial space not already taken up by frozen Daiquiri outlets, and the overall impression that the Quarter and by extension the city exists primarily for the benefit of transient luxury.

It's unfortunate, and in my opinion, unreasonable and unfair that NOPD has chosen to pick on the most vulnerable street performers first in their attempt to meet the demand that some balance of dignity be restored in the Quarter. But, as we all know by now, the hotel operators and club owners aren't going to be held accountable by this or any other administration.