My Marigny

My Marigny

IN THE FACE OF GENTRIFICATION, A STRAND OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD’S ECCENTRICITY ENDURES

Story by Chris Turner-Neal • Photos by Alexandra Kennon

It’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and a wave of real estate speculation that has threatened to price out both the locals and the very businesses that originally made the area so attractive.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 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 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 emphasized by a recent trend among realtors to refer to a chunk of the Seventh Ward as the “New Marigny”.

And yet. I had a chance to move to Austin and I didn’t. I had a chance to move Uptown and I didn’t. Even as the bachelorette parties and bro-weekend groups return to the newly-leveled sidewalks, there’s still a mighty streak of eccentricity underpinning the neighborhood, a core of people who threatened to run away to New Orleans and then did it. Change has come and some of it has been bad, but the cultural assets that have made the neighborhood a draw persist. Here are some recommendations for a day in my Marigny, what I show visitors and what keeps me here.

Alexandra Kennon

Caveat: the formal dividing line between the Marigny and the Bywater is Press Street, which is Homer Plessy Way for part of its length and which abuts the train tracks. Some people put the line at Elysian Fields, and others combine it all into the Marigny-Bywater, following the example of Austria-Hungary. Some of these fun-day recommendations are technically in the Bywater, but they’re all close enough for an easy, walkable day.

Breakfast

Flora is breakfast in the Marigny. The cozy coffee shop on Franklin Avenue escaped disaster during Hurricane Zeta when its venerable oak collapsed into the street and not onto the building. Breakfast pastries are made fresh daily—you can show up too early—and the curry breakfast burrito is a treat that will fill you up for the morning. You can also swing by the new, but already thriving Baldwin & Co., a Black-owned coffee shop and bookstore that encourages browsing while you wait for your coffee and breakfast. Petite Clouet, a newish café in a cheery yellow that bravely opened during the pandemic, has an impeccable quiche game and offers whimsical coffee specials (think dalgona, the Korean whipped coffee craze from last summer).

Perambulating

Walking around is a classic urban activity, and taking in the pretty painted cottages and lush gardens, many of which spill onto or over the street, is the perfect way to get in a little activity before the day gets too hot. People here tend to add cool little lagniappes to their properties; look for rust gardens of creatively-arranged scrap metal, the sweet-sad grave of a sugar glider named Liam, sassy signage, and other tweaks to the urban environment. Crescent Park runs along the river and is perfect for a waterside stroll, with the occasional bonus of people practicing dance, skate tricks, or soccer drills. When you are ready for something that’s more explicitly an “activity,” head for Studio Be, the warehouse-turned-gallery curated by Brandan “Bmike” Odums, the guerrilla artist known for his all-building murals on abandoned properties in the east of the city. The massive space houses both Odums’ and other artists’ work, with room for big pieces and installations to stand on their own.

Alexandra Kennon

Lunch/Dinner

I hate whimsical menus—it comes from being too vain about my own jokes (and too fussy about my food). Despite this prejudice, I don’t even need to grit my teeth to order from Arabella Casa di Pasta, home of the delectable John Lemon, the scrumptious John Belu-cheese, and a coveted mushroom sauce that they haven’t named after anyone yet (Fungus Grissom?). Newish Budsi’s offers Thai food based on the recipes of upcountry Thailand, near the Laotian border—Thai food fans will recognize the flavors while being surprised and intrigued by the different regional takes. (The happy hour is an unfathomably good deal.) Paladar 511, a dream for diners who like to share, is single-handedly responsible for more of my credit card debt than I care to disclose. Wash whatever you have down with beers at Brieux Carre, the best of New Orleans’s deep bench of good little breweries with aggressively quirky branding.

Alexandra Kennon

Nightlife

A surprising number of the neighborhood bars survived the challenges of the last year. For an upscale cocktail, visit the bar at Hotel Peter + Paul; I badly, badly wanted to dislike this hotel in a deconsecrated church (and in fairness I do hate the curtains) but the drinks, attached ice cream parlor, and occasional distribution of Bellegarde bread to the neighbors after bouts of construction won me over. Music and comedy are coming back to the Hi-Ho, which hosts occasional pop-ups for a late-night snack. Across the street is the AllWays Lounge, a cabaret and performance space that hosts drag, burlesque, experimental Shakespeare, musical theatre about notorious murders, a traveling cat circus, and various other acts only classifiable as “miscellaneous.” Nearby Kajun’s is the only place in the city really worth doing karaoke; battle the crowds on weekends to belt “Angel of Montgomery” or play hooky on a weekday afternoon for a less crowded experience that might lead, as it once did for me, to watching a singer rework lyrics to praise Keanu Reeves. If you catch the right bartender in the right mood, they’ll make you a drink out of interesting ingredients they’ve found; I still remember the clean coldness of a colloidal silver-based tipple from several years ago.

Alexandra Kennon

I could go on. There’s a bar with toilets for seats, a bar where a drag queen might call you fat, murals of Black excellence, junk stores, obscene graffiti, preachy graffiti, art spaces, and a convenience store that sells costumes. Nothing lasts forever—not even in New Orleans—and between the city government’s promotion of a specific idea of tourism and development, the ever-hungry Gulf, and whatever economic crisis follows this one, it’s more likely than not that the neighborhood will lose its charm. (People who’ve lived here longer than me might say it already has.) But several local coffee shops persist years after a Starbucks opened, and the only fast-food outlet is a Rally’s that’s been serving “emergency fries” to late-night drinkers since time immemorial, so there’s a chance that even in the face of the accelerating changes encroaching upon the world’s tourist cities, something of the neighborhood’s quirk may endure. New Orleans has long been a place where creative people do strange things near excellent restaurants, and maybe that can happen in the shadow of condos. While this neighborhood is here and while it blooms, come see it: shop and eat at the Black-owned, gay-owned, experimenter-owned places that make it a place tourists need to see.

Then, go away.

Alexandra Kennon