NEW ORLEANS When Carol Stauder started giving Hurricane Katrina tours, she couldn't get through them without crying. Seeing the devastation caused by the flooding four months earlier - friends' homes destroyed and neighborhood after neighborhood abandoned - was too painful.
Almost three years later, most of those homes are still broken and deserted, but what saddens Stauder even more are the empty lots sprinkled among them. The houses have been razed, the debris removed, and all that's left are rectangular patches of grass or weeds.
"They're not coming back," Stauder says somberly of the families who have left for good.
The 63-year-old guide wants her city and its neighborhoods back. And she wants the 10.1 million tourists who visited the year before Katrina to return, too, because they're as much a part of the city's festive scene as the cool jazz and Cajun cuisine.
The truth is that tourism in the Big Easy - its No. 1 industry - is bouncing back, big time. This year's Mardi Gras Carnival season drew about 850,000 revelers, approaching the 1.1 million who partied months before Katrina. The 39th Jazz & Heritage Festival "went marvelously well," in spite of torrential rains, organizer Quint Davis says, as about 400,000 people flocked to see the Neville Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Jimmy Buffett and 570 bands perform.
When the seven-day festival wrapped up at 7 each night, all those people needed food, entertainment and lodging. About 130 restaurants have opened since Katrina, joining such icons as Antoine's, Brennan's and Arnaud's, to restore the city as a culinary destination.
Davis says he counts at least 103 clubs in the French Quarter and in clusters around the city, showing that the musicians are back. It was front-page news when favorite son Aaron Neville decided to return, and on a rainy Friday night, I couldn't get a ticket to see jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis - father of Wynton and Branford - play at Snug Harbor on Frenchmen Street.
And hotels are up to 33,498 rooms - 87.6 percent of the pre-Katrina number.
Last year, tourism was at 70 percent of the pre-Katrina level that generated $5 billion a year. But the city began this year with four major events - college football's Sugar Bowl and national championship game, Mardi Gras, and the NBA All-Star Game Weekend - plus major conventions. The momentum continued with the French Quarter and Jazz festivals, and more than 16 festivals are scheduled through the end of the year, including Tales of the Cocktail mixing it up this week and the new Prospect 1 - "the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States," planners say - scheduled to start Nov. 1.
There's also a new attraction, the Audubon Insectarium, which opened last month on Canal Street, near the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, an Imax theater, and the Audubon Zoo.
Still, some would-be tourists are staying away out of a sense of respect for everything the city's been through, says Sandra Shilstone, head of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. Those people should remember the city's unofficial motto, the Jazz Festival's Quint Davis says: "We dance when we die."
This year's official slogan is "Come out and play," and that's what people were doing the weekend I was there. Bourbon Street was a little sleepy on Thursday and Friday afternoons, but it sprang to life on Friday and Saturday nights. A continuous stream of visitors of all ages strolled along the pedestrian-only street, many toting plastic "go cups," since open containers of alcohol are permitted.
High school students in gowns and tuxedos dined at some of the fancier restaurants, bachelor and bachelorette parties club-hopped, and families rode horse-drawn carriages through the Quarter and along Jackson Square.
Around midnight, Lucky Dog vendors were busy at the red-and-white stands perched every few blocks, and the Famous Door's famous band, Rockbox, was rocking the house nonstop. The band - and Bourbon Street - would party on till 4 in the morning. Or so I was told.
Most bars never close, which is why some, such as Lafitte's in Exile, didn't have working doors or locks before Katrina, forcing them to board up before they evacuated.
Since the disaster, there have been some surprises in the city's regrowth, Shilstone says.
"There's been a cultural renaissance. Neighborhoods putting on arts festivals and cultural events," she says. "People lost art and are buying again."
And applications are up at Tulane and the other universities and colleges, bolstered by young people who discovered the city as Katrina volunteers, Shilstone says.
There is no official count of the volunteers who have come here, but they're still coming, and they're welcome and appreciated. Some volunteers have objected to the Katrina tours, Gray Line guide Stauder says, "because they thought people were making money from other people's misery. But some of the tour-takers were here to help."
As she shows us the sections of the city hit hardest by the flooding - West End, Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, St. Bernard, and the Ninth Ward - Stauder stresses that she doesn't care why people come, just that they come.
"People have two impressions: that we're still under water, or that everything's fine and back to normal," she says. "The tours have done a lot of good."
Our driver, Kevin Dandridge, who is pushing to get out of his FEMA trailer this month, adds, "I just love people seeing our city."
That spirit fills this city of 327,000 - 72 percent of pre-Katrina - the way Eagles fever energizes Philadelphia. Tour guides, bus drivers, waiters, bartenders, artists, musicians - they all talk about New Orleans with the same pride and passion as we brag about cheesesteaks and the Rocky steps.
James O'Byrne, who spent his life savings - including his children's college funds - and went into debt to rebuild his home, channeled his civic pride into helping produce the city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune, in the midst of and since the disaster. He knows better than most how much work remains and how much help New Orleans needs.
And as the third anniversary approaches, he worries about "Katrina fatigue" - Americans tiring of the news stories and the appeals.
"We need to find a way to love a city back to life."
A TASTE OF THE BIG EASY
Here are some attractions to get your sightseeing started.
AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM
1418 Gov. Nicholls St.
504-566-1136
The museum is housed in Treme Villa, considered one of the finest examples of a Creole villa in the city. It has five restored buildings to visit.
AUDUBON AQUARIUM OF THE AMERICAS & ENTERGY IMAX THEATER
1 Canal St.
1-800-774-7394
www.auduboninstitute.org
Visitors find 15,000 sea creatures, representing nearly 600 species.
AUDUBON INSECTARIUM
423 Canal St.,
Custom House
1-800-774-7394
www.auduboninstitute.org
Opened last month, the museum has 35,000 live residents and 15,000 mounted specimens, including spiders, centipedes, crawfish, ants and mosquitoes.
AUDUBON PARK
6500 Magazine St.
504-861-2537
www.auduboninstitute.org
The park, which opened in 1898, is known for its oak trees, lagoons, and expansive green space. It's minutes from downtown on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line, across from Tulane and Loyola Universities.
AUDUBON ZOO
6500 Magazine St.
1-800-774-7394
www.auduboninstitute.org
The zoo is 58 acres of animals in their natural habitats, including elephants Jean and Panya, the Komodo dragon, and the white tiger brothers from California, named King Rex and King Zulu.
BOTANICAL GARDENS
Victory Avenue, City Park
504-483-9386 www.neworleanscitypark.com
Known for its collection of mature oaks, the gardens are being replanted after being seriously damaged by Katrina.
CABILDO
701 Chartres St., Jackson Square
1-800-568-6968
http://lsm.crt.state.la.us
Built from 1795 to 1799, it's the site of the Louisiana Purchase transfer in 1803. It also served as the seat of the Spanish colonial government.
EDGAR DEGAS HOUSE
2306 Esplanade Ave.
1-800-755-6730
www.degashouse.com
Near City Park, the restored house is where French impressionist master Edgar Degas lived from 1872 to 1873. Degas created 22 paintings of his New Orleans family here, and it is where he began exploring impressionism.
HARRAH'S CASINO
8 Canal St.
1-800-427-7247
www.HarrahsNewOrleans.com
Two-thousand slots and nearly 100 table games in a casino next to the 26-story Harrah's hotel, across from the Mississippi River, and near the Riverwalk Marketplace.
JACKSON SQUARE
751 Decatur St.
Between the Jax Brewery Shopping Mall and the French Market, and in front of St. Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square is named for its bronze statue of Andrew Jackson.
NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM
945 Magazine St.
504-527-6012
www.ddaymuseum.org
It opened in June 2000 as the National D-Day Museum, featuring the Higgins landing craft that were designed and built in New Orleans and used in all the amphibious landings of World War II. Now it covers the prewar era through the end of the war against Japan.
NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART
1 Collins Diboll Circle, City Park
504-488-2631
www.noma.org
The museum houses a $200 million collection in 46 galleries: European painting and sculpture from the 16th through 20th centuries; American painting and sculpture from the 18th and 19th centuries; European and American prints and drawings; Asian, African, Oceanic, pre-Columbian, and American Indian art; photography; and European and American decorative arts.
PHARMACY MUSEUM
514 Chartres St.
504-565-8027
www.pharmacymuseum.org
Housed in the 1823 apothecary of America's first licensed pharmacist, the museum contains a collection of 19th-century pharmacy and medical artifacts, including an exhibition on epidemics in New Orleans.
PRESBYTERE
751 Chartres St., Jackson Square
1-800-568-6968
http://lsm.crt.state.la.us
Built starting in 1791 as a home for Capuchin monks, next to St. Louis Cathedral.
ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL
Chartres Street
504-525-9585
www.stlouiscathedral.org
The oldest continuously active Roman Catholic cathedral in the country. It was originally built in 1727 and rebuilt after a fire in 1788. The present church was dedicated in the 1850s.
STEAMBOAT NATCHEZ
1 Toulouse St.
1-800-233-2628
www.steamboatnatchez.com
Classic Mississippi riverboat sails three times daily, at 11:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Traditional New Orleans jazz is featured, and the evening cruise includes dinner (reservations required).
THE SUPERDOME
Sugar Bowl Drive
1-800-756-7074
www.superdome.com
HURRICANE KATRINA TOUR
Gray Line Tours
1-800-535-7786
www.graylineneworleans.com
Tickets: Adults, $35; children, $28.
GETTING THERE
Southwest, United and US Airways fly nonstop to New Orleans from Philadelphia International Airport. The lowest recent round-trip fare was about $401.
MORE INFORMATION
For restaurants and hotels, see the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. Web site, www.neworleansonline.com, or call 504-524-4784.
(SOURCE: www.neworleansonline.com)
A CITY OF FESTIVALS
JULY
July 31-Aug 3: Satchmo SummerFest
AUGUST
Aug. 27-Sept. 1: Deca Fest & Southern Decadence
SEPTEMBER
Sept. 27-28: Congo Square Rhythms Festival
OCTOBER
Oct. 2-5: Jazz Journey
Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25: Oktoberfest
Oct. 4-5: Steam Festival (Train festival behind Audubon Zoo)
Oct. 9-16: Film Fest
Oct. 18-19: Crescent City Blues Fest
Oct. 24-26: VooDoo Music Experience
NOVEMBER
Nov. 1-2: Swamp Festival
Nov. 1-Jan, 2009: Prospect.1 New Orleans
Nov. 8-9: Fiesta Latina
Nov. 20-24: Faulkner Words and Music Festival
Nov. 23: New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival
Nov. 27: Down by the Riverside
DECEMBER
Dec. 1-31: Christmas New Orleans Style
(SOURCE: The New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation)
Bill Reed: breed@phillynews.com
