Why do I have such a connection and tie to New Orleans? My parents, in their late 1970’s dharma bum-ish way, hitchhiked across the U.S., and my mom was pregnant with me when they got to New Orleans. Maybe that’s why. Maybe it is because I read so much (and still do) and truly loved anything I could get my hands on that had to do with New Orleans, be it Anne Rice or Christopher Rice or A Confederacy of Dunces. We had a big beautiful Mardi Gras print in above the piano in our living room. All my friends were shocked because it was so racy!
When I was in college, my Urban Studies advisor, and one of my favorite people, Tony Filipovitch, taught a class on the theory of place and how it is generally accepted that there are two types of places. The first is the home – the private place, your personal sanctuary. The second is the workplace – the public place, where you do your business. But there’s another place, called, not surprisingly, the third place – that intersection of public and private, but where you still feel a sense of ownership. So your neighborhood coffee shop, and it’s your favorite wine bar where the bartender knows what you’re going to order, the park where you take your dog, or go to read your book on your lunch break – those are your third places. It is talked about in great detail in Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place.
For me, New Orleans is my third place. All of it.. Whatever it is that brings me to New Orleans, I feel that sense of ownership and a sense of pride from the people who live there and the food and the music to the architecture and the history.
I think it takes a special sort of person to live in NOLA. I don’t think there are a lot of people as tied to their home city like New Orleanians are. Certainly not so much in the Twin Cities. And I love it in Minneapolis, and I can see that I’ll always live here part of the time, but I am seriously considering a seasonal move to NOLA.
I was talking to my auntie on Sunday and I told her that I was considering moving to NOLA for a few months out of the year – why not, we live in a digital world – I can work from just about anywhere. So I asked her if she had any interest in investing in a property in NOLA. And she said yes. Now, the next trip to NOLA means looking at places to call home, and I am really hoping for the Holy Cross Neighborhood. None of this is going to happen overnight, I know that, but if in two years, we are spending our January through March or April in NOLA, I won’t mind.
It has only been a week since I left NOLA and our Historic Green work to go back to my “real” life and my “real” job – but when I am in NOLA, I feel so alive and so real, it makes the things that I do in Minneapolis, while wonderful and challenging (and the food that I love and the friends and so many other things) seem a little bit pale by comparison. Having said that, I can not wait to take my hubby to the Two Sisters for his first jazz brunch experience, and walk with him down Rue Royale, and take him to the Holy Cross Neighborhood, and try that taco truck that everyone's been raving about! I can not wait to take my friend Laura to Cafe Du Monde even though she doesn't like coffee, and share a bottle of wine with Susannah and Christina again at some restaurant! Or just in some apartment or house.
For now I am just dreaming of our next planning trip for Historic Green.
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