Trask Avenue

New Orleans shows the world its bright, colorful face. As well it should. The city vibrates with music and fun and eccentricity and laughter and food. Musicians walk the streets with tubas and trombones poised for action. The oldest continuing running streetcar service in the United States takes people most anywhere they need to go for a reasonable buck and a quarter. It is the festival epicenter during Mardi Gras, a place where inhibitions melt away like ice cream surrendering to hot fudge. It is quite difficult not to get swept up in New Orleans joyful embrace. But, like everyplace else, another side of the town the French named La Nouvelle-Orléans exists, a side not all about jazz riffs, bursting colors and the inescapable scents of Cajun cooking.

New Orleans is also a city battling financial depression, personal demons, and, lord help them, epic natural disasters. For every thriving business, another one lays shuttered or limps along. For every person enjoying a cocktail, others overindulge. And when a hurricane barrels through – as it inevitably does – economic casualties accompany the human ones. This New Orleans, real and bruised and strugging to keep from drowning, still possesses the city’s ensuring spirit. It just cannot always overcome life’s harsh realities.