New Orleans: The Better Bourbon Street

Bourbon Street has been advertised to tourists as the party central of New Orleans since the 1880s. Men from around the country used to filter in for promises of cheap whisky, gambling and some mighty fine company. Jazz took off in these parts in the 1900s when the red light district strategically set up shop a few blocks down on Basin Street. It was in the brothels that music pioneers like King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton first got their start.

This was taken in 1907 at the brothel where Jelly Roll Morton got his break. He's at the piano.


As the decades passed the debauchery raged on, but the appreciation for the high quality music and creole cuisine that first gave Bourbon Street its character was left behind. Jazz venues turned into bars with cover bands playing one hit wonders, whisky turned into blended cocktails in massive neon plastic cups and the prostitutes became "dancers." 

Within the last thirty years, local musicians tired of the commercialism packed up their instruments and marched a few miles over to Frenchmen Street. It's become the hang for residents and visitors in the know who are in New Orleans to experience New Orleanian things. What a concept!

There each evening you'll find one amazing band after the next tearing it up, a brass band starting their own miniature festival on the corner, grilled oysters being cooked in a truck parked on the curb, a small street market with easels of paintings and tables of handmade crafts and a warehouse turned art gallery open until the wee hours.

                

Frenchmen Street's certainly not for prudes. It's got its fair share of people drinking and smoking the night away just like on Bourbon. The only difference is that the cocktails are accompanied by a magical ambience you can only find in the city of New Orleans.