The Dilemma

We have been trying to describe why we are crazy in love with this city to other people and failing miserably...but we must, so here's another attempt.

It's the people - they are amazing here - humble, laid back, smart with a great sense of humor...the architecture is breathtaking...it's the atmosphere, the amniotic fluid, the intangible SOMETHING that makes your spine relax as you come over the Lake Pontchartrain bridge and glimpse the CBD, small but shimmering on the horizon...

The pace is humane here. The heavy, humid air is redolent with jasmine and honeysuckle. Food and music take priority over the acquisition of worldly treasure. Why can't we put it in a nutshell so all of our friends and family can understand?

To look at, New Orleans can sometimes be a little bit of a rumpled bed...not every storefront is spit shined...not every restaurant has immaculate linoleum floors...in fact some of the best places in town to eat have a hand scrawled sign, and you wouldn't even know they were there until you stumbled on one, poked your head in the door out of curiosity, and the place was packed!

You die a little when you leave here, and almost addict-like search the airwaves for any mention of the city while you're away...a headline about the governor...Louis Armstrong on the radio...a Food TV show on a diner you've been to down the street...

There's a song they play on WWOZ that is as ubiquitous in this city as resurrection fern on the live oak trees (no, not When The Saints Go Marching In, which you will come to have an inner shriek of joy when you hear if you move here)...but Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans? - you resonate with the sentiment so strongly that the song practically becomes an anthem, and it really does underscore the dilemma - trying to describe why we are crazy in love with this city to other people and failing miserably...