Bienvenue

I just moved back to New Orleans ten days ago. Having also lived in cities like Boston, Dallas, and San Diego, I can safely say that New Orleans is really the only place that I've truly felt comfortable in my own skin aside from my hometown of San Francisco. I lived in New Orleans as a Tulane law student from 2000-2003 and fell in love with the city. Now that I'm back and I see how much and how little the city has changed, it strangely feels as if I never left. Since moving back, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what it is about New Orleans that I love so much, and why I feel so at home in a city so far from my home. Ultimately, I feel like I have a special bond with this city because if New Orleans were a person, I think we would have a ton in common. I think New Orleans would understand me. New Orleans is complex and multi-faceted, hard to fully grasp unless you really get to know her and appreciate all of her flaws with all of her talents and beauty. New Orleans has endured serious trauma and somehow manages to muster all of her strength and come back. She's unpredictable, has a stormy past, a vibrant flavor, a distinctive sound, a beauty marred by scars and blight -- telltale signs of the storms she's weathered. She's mysterious, she's haunted, she is a juxtaposition of southern charm with a voodoo past, a cajun flavor with a jazzy sound, a world of refinement and high society mixed with debauchery. And this is why, as soon as I drove into New Orleans and smelled that familiar burnt-wood smell of the Saint Charles street car and when a few days later I sat on the porch at the Columns sipping my Kir Royale, I felt like I had come home. I heart New Orleans.