After New Year’s Day terrorist attack, New Orleans tries to balance tourism and grief

Whether you’re clamoring for a bedazzled shoe from Muses on St. Charles Avenue, relaxing at the New Orleans Fair Grounds during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, chasing Mardi Gras Indians on St. Joseph’s Night in the 7th Ward, or mirroring the moves of the Black Men of Labor parade on St. Claude Avenue, you’re likely to have the most fun in New Orleans when you’re outside and surrounded by crowds of people.

The New Year’s Day terrorist attack on Bourbon Street was as deadly as it was because it exploited one of the city’s best traits: its culture of people happily gathering in large numbers outside. It was after 3 a.m. on Jan. 1, and still there were enough people out that the man who drove around a barricade to turn onto Bourbon Steet in a Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck was able to kill 14 people and wound dozens more. Who knows how many more people the driver could have killed if law enforcement officers hadn’t shot him dead?

An immediate result of the attack, at least as evidenced by some of the more outgoing New Orleanians on my social media feeds, was a vow to not be outdoors as much during Carnival season (which starts Monday) and Super Bowl LIX (scheduled for Feb. 9).

Even so, less than 36 hours after Wednesday’s attack and before we knew the names of all of the victims, the city reopened Bourbon Street to pedestrians. And the Sugar Bowl matchup between the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and the Bulldogs of the University of Georgia was played in the Louisiana Superdome on Thursday after a postponement of less than 24 hours.

The NFL announced hours after the attack that its big game won’t be derailed and that “we are confident attendees will have a safe and enjoyable Super Bowl experience.”

In a city that’s so dependent on tourism, an attitude that “the show must go on” isn’t surprising. Still, it left some New Orleanians expressing a long-standing sorrow that what’s good for the people who visit this city is always prioritized over what’s good for the people who call it home.

The rush to clean up the city, pave over its potholes and fix its traffic lights, a new “New Orleans Walk of Fame” on Canal Street, the heartless sweep of people living in tents beneath bridges who can’t afford rent in the Big Easy, the imminent return of the Super Bowl “clean zone” where the rights of commerce and speech are abridged. Concerns about what’s best for New Orleanians don’t motivate any of those projects.

Quickly returning to football and revelry, even as the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office was saying it had more autopsies to conduct and family members to notify, certainly wasn’t done with the interests of residents in mind.

From New Orleans to Asheville, North Carolina, to the islands of Puerto Rico and Maui, this is the bind that locales reliant on tourism often find themselves in after tragedies: how to carve out the time and space to grieve when playing host to company pays the bills.

One of the enduring traditions of New Orleans is the jazz funeral. In its purest form, a brass band playing a dirge leads a slow-moving cortege out of the church and to the cemetery. Once the body is interred — or “cut loose,” to use the common phrase — the band picks up the tempo and “the second line” joyfully dances in celebration of the life of the departed. But for decades, I’ve heard traditionalists complain that too little time is being spent playing the dirge — if it’s played at all.

More than 15 years ago, when I was a columnist for The Times-Picayune, I attended the funeral of a 2-year-old whose father chose to slit his throat rather than pay the $4,000 he owed in back child support. The pastor of the church, who’d observed a brass band at a prayer vigil the night before, told the congregation, “I thought we started the dancing a little too soon.”

In the present moment, when residents’ emotions are the most raw they’ve been since Hurricane Katrina, it doesn’t feel like New Orleans is choosing to dance but being made to dance, lest it lose the patronage of those who come demanding a good time.

As New Orleans was debating whether it should observe Mardi Gras six short months after Hurricane Katrina and broken levees left bodies floating in the streets, I argued that it was important that those of us who were living among the ruins and contending with the pervasive stench have some levity. And it was important that we have the final say. That argument cost me the friendship of a New Orleanian who disagreed.

My feelings haven’t changed: New Orleans should decide when it feels like being New Orleans again. But because the College Football Playoff and the Super Bowl are in play, New Orleans wasn’t and won’t be asked to decide.

You’re not supposed to dance before the body is cut loose. And definitely not before next of kin have been notified.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

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