Guest Post: Gracie, New Orleans

The following post was written by my friend Gracie, a fellow Summer of 2007 Democratic National Committee canvasser who graduated from Tulane University in 2009.

New Orleans was built by French people in the 18^th century. If you’re familiar with DC, you know what that means. Roads don’t always lead where you would expect, streets are too narrow for two cars to pass each other, and if you don’t already know how to get where you’re going, you’re lost. It’s a city built for walking and horses, not for SUVs. Biking, though, is ideal.

I reveled in New Orleans for four years on my baby blue Trek and loved every minute of it. It’s really a bike-friendly city: the ground is pancake-flat, it’s always warm, and so many people are on bicycles that drivers know how to be considerate. Once you learn how to dodge the potholes and ride through floods, you’re better off on a bike than anything else.

My bike was particularly useful when I first moved down about a year after Katrina. The streetcar wasn’t running yet (it’s still running on its own charmingly unpredictable schedule), and anyone with a car had to plan well in advance where they were going to find an open gas station. New to the city, I went exploring in different neighborhoods around Uptown, New Orleans East, and Mid-City. I got to know my new home and feel the chilly silence of empty neighborhoods. I biked up and down abandoned streets with my pals, all of us singing Yellow Submarine as loud as we could.

As the city came back, bikes became more and more popular. People in New Orleans are fully aware that they’re at risk total annihilation from global warming, so New Orleans is coming back green. Everybody bikes now. Families take weekend rides in matching helmets, hipsters ride vintage road bikes at the bottom of Magazine Street, and teenage boys in the Hollygrove (where Lil’ Wayne’s from) ride down the middle of the street with no hands. There’s always a party going on somewhere in New Orleans, and the tiny streets make parking iffy at best. For Mardi Gras, when the streets are crammed before and after every parade and you can’t find a spot within five miles of the French Quarter, a bike is the only way around. I once watched a parade, and then cut through streets around it so I could watch it again and still made it home two hours before my friends who took their car.

New Orleans is and always will be a town that doesn’t know how to hurry; it’s not called the Big Easy for nothing. Biking’s not fast, but it’s just the right speed for Nola. Pedaling slowly and feeling the breeze coming off the river, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else in the world.