Escapes
SEPTEMBER 2021
50
HOW TO
BE
A GOOD
TOURIST TO
THE
MARIGNY
// 5 4
A
RESPITE
KEEP NOLA WEIRD
AT PALOMA
LAKE
W
KNOW NOL A
My Marigny
IN THE FACE OF GENTRIFICATION, A STRAND OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD’S ECCENTRICITY ENDURES
I
Story by Chris Turner-Neal • Photos by Alexandra Kennon
t’s been a rough few years for the Marigny, although it might not look like it from the outside. The “cool” neighborhood next to the French Quarter has been well and truly discovered, bringing the mixed blessing of tourist traffic and a wave of real estate speculation that has threatened to price out both the locals and the very businesses that originally made the area so attractive. A flash flood from Hurricane Barry’s rainbands cracked the area’s 50
high-ground hubris—and all this before 2020, which we needn’t discuss. In a city where nostalgia is a way of life and where what used to be is often more relevant than what is, the inevitability of change can seem like a personal insult. One of the many half-joking truisms about gentrification is that you always want to be the last person to move to a neighborhood. I moved into the Marigny in late 2017, and I already want the changes to stop. The grimy gay bar
S E P 2 1 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
where I went on my first date with my current partner has been repainted and made into a “pub”; more ominously, the city is repairing streets and sidewalks. Ostensibly this is because they needed fixing, but the consensus suspicion is that it’s being done to cater to the tourist influx expected from the rebounding AirBnBs and almost-completed hotels and condo blocks dotting the area. Elysian Fields has parking lanes. Gene’s Po-Boys has closed (sorry, it ain’t
dere no more), and the building next to it has become an art bar. (I don’t know what an art bar is, and when I emailed to interview them for this article, they never answered but put me on their mailing list). Gossip addresses which developer has purchased what property at least as often as it reports who was seen canoodling with whom. It would be hyperbole to say the Marigny is turning into Cleveland, but in a sense it feels like it’s turning into Uptown, a suspicion
