Knowing What It Means...

I'd like to start off this post by saying that while I do like New York and it is exciting to work (and soon to be live!) in one of the busiest cities in the world, I would undoubtedly move back to New Orleans in a heartbeat for a career-track job and a bowl of gumbo. The only reason I really honestly left was that there simply isn't that big career for me there. Sure, there are amazing PR jobs at award winning agencies and celebrated nonprofits (which incidentally- is where I honestly see myself in 20 years anyway), but it will always be small-pond because that's the nature of the city. Why go national when you can go local? Why represent a client in LA when you can go homegrown? Who needs the rest of the country when you live in the best city in it? And, like many other things in NOLA, that is both the reason I left and the reason I miss it. Because no one really understands New Orleans until they are New Orleans (go ahead- the rest of you can roll your eyes) and everything is different there and nothing is either good or bad- it's usually both.

I mean, let's break it down with the elements of Mardi Gras, which is really just a hyper-exaggerated version of what NOLA is like all the time. I think everyone can understand how five days of straight drinking (I am talking get up at 9 for parades, start drinking, don't stop until 4 am, rinse and repeat kind of straight drinking) would be both good and bad. Tourists- good of the economy, bad for my mood. Boobs- good from sorority girls from Mississippi, bad from 65 y/o ladies in dressed only in a fishnet body suit (which is an actual sighting, not a figment of my over-active imagination). Parades- good for 1 hour, bad for 120. You get the idea. And that's the way the city is all the time-- completely ridiculous and nonsensical which is both amazing and frustrating at the same time.

And to me, NY is the opposite. Everything just is in NY. There are pockets of culture and eccentricity here and there, but overall its sort of just is. Not good. Not bad. There is fun to be had here and I am extremely happy, but it will just never have the feel of New Orleans for certain reasons, most of which probably go unnoticed to the unfortunate souls who have never had the opportunity to experience anything else.


To be honest, I was inspired to write this post in the bathroom. Well not in the bathroom—at the door to the bathroom. Because I forgot the key and had to walk back to my office and get it. Why do we have a key to the bathroom on the 16th floor of an office building? Who are we trying to keep out? Or, more importantly, who is trying to get in? Going up to the 16th floor of a nondescript office building on Union Square to use the bathroom hardly seems like most people's definition of a good idea. In New Orleans, not only have countless businesses of which I was not a patron let me use their bathroom, I have actually been invited into strangers homes to use their personal ones**. But not here. Here, we need a key to the bathroom in our own offices sixteen stories above ground. But this is what I mean—its not good, its not really bad, its just the way it is for no apparent reason.

This is one of countless examples of things I run into on a daily basis. And that's not really annoying and its definitely not enough to dislike the city—they are just little observations and reminders of why New Orleans is better and why it is where I belong.