Party time. Day and night, with onlookers and visitors who belong as much as the people who create the place.
Color and chaos, hustlers and strippers, music and food, tourists and the homeless. Altogether they make Bourbon Street what it is.
There is a touch of the surreal, as if a visit to the Twilight Zone. Booze is the order of the day with people with “Huge Ass Beers” or a cocktail walking along the streets right next to parents pushing a baby stroller or an elderly couple on a tour. Each seemingly oblivious to the other, they pass the same bars and strip joints with doormen shouting come-ons in their ears. Girls with painted pasties posing for $5 photographs, live statues and street musicians share the length of the block with storefronts. All of them trying to hustle a living from visitors, yet without the rancour or feeling of urgency seen in other places.
No one seems to be quite sure of what they’re looking for or why they are here. Maybe it’s just a taste of the wild life, a visit to the other side of responsibility and correctness. For while they can choose to surrender to it. Some do for one night on Bourbon Street.
