Poor Poor French Quarter dwellers
"I'm sorry we are so poor we had to move to Bourban Street."
Or something like that!!!!!
My how times have changed!
I don't know how things were in the '50s, but these days you have to be a zillionaire to be able to afford to live in the tourist district of the French Quarter of New Orleans. Now I live in the southwest edge of the state, about 200 miles west of New Orleans. I can't afford to live any closer.
shareI don't know either, but maybe King Creole had a positive effect on French Quarter property values. It was what made me want to visit New Orleans, for one, especially the French Quarter, no matter if it was a slum or not. Always made me wonder about how such a cool place could apparently be so affordable. When I did visit in the 70's, I don't know about the housing, but I did stay in a fleabag hotel right there on Bourbon Street. The street vendors were gone, but the jazz clubs were all around of course.
Property values really skyrocketed in Louisiana after the millennium. And like most big cities, real estate is pretty high in New Orleans. A lot of that has to do with the lack of land in that area. New Orleans is surrounded by water and the city itself is below sea level. Honestly, I'm surprised a disaster like the breached levees during Hurricane Katrina didn't happen decades ago. I ended up with a house full of relatives during the hurricane. I'm glad they all lived near the airport on the west side of the city and not in the city itself where the worst flooding actually occurred although I do have one cousin who ended up losing her home. She said the water was nearly up to the roof. I guess anywhere you live some kind of disaster can happen whether it's hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, wildfires and earthquakes out west or blizzards in the Midwest and northeast. Even Hawaii could get hit by a tsunami or a volcano.
shareI lived in the French Quarter in 75 and 76 in an apartment overlooking Bourbon Street. I rented from Chris Owens and lived right above her nightclub with the front of the apartment looking at the Al Hirt club across Bourbon Street. On the cross street across from me Fats Domino and Gatemouth Brown often played in one of the many open door clubs in the Quarter. It was quite an experience to say the least. I worked on the space shuttle at Michaud on the second shift. Getting home around 1:00 AM when the festivities were winding down it was very easy to sit on my balcony and find a young lady looking for a place to spend the night. BTW, my rent was only $150.00 per month at that time.
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