{"id":291625,"date":"2021-07-06T03:29:06","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T00:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-nyc-became-the-big-easy\/"},"modified":"2021-07-06T03:29:06","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T00:29:06","slug":"how-nyc-became-the-big-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-nyc-became-the-big-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"#How NYC became the Big Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How NYC became the Big Easy<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s not just the humidity, the tropical rain, the casual way of counting votes: New York City feels more and more like New Orleans. For this former New Orleanian, the\u00a0experience is akin to an unsettling d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The obvious comparison is the ceaseless outdoor drinking. Emperor Cuomo has now randomly decreed that people can no longer buy a drink at a restaurant to go, but they can still sit\u00a0outdoors and drink. Walking up and down Ninth Avenue is like walking through a party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t last summer\u2019s ebullient party, with everyone relieved to be (sort of) out of lockdown, eager to support their months-shuttered local spot and see their friends again.\u00a0This is more like the early-morning hours of a party that started off well last night and only continues because people can\u2019t think of anything better to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This inertia bleeds into core Midtown. New Orleans has long had a half-empty \u201ccentral-business district\u201d it\u2019s not sure what to do with. In the optimistic 1960s and still-in-denial \u201970s, it built dozens of hopeful skyscrapers. But the oil industry moved to Texas, and no other mass-scale industry replaced it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, one such skyscraper is literally worth less than nothing, abandoned by its owner. Since it costs a lot of money each year to keep a building standing, and it isn\u2019t worth spending that money with no tenants, the city has taken responsibility, building a buffer so that passersby aren\u2019t clonked in the head with debris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walking down Sixth Avenue or across 42nd Street these days feels more like walking down Canal Street or Poydras Street. A few \u00adpedestrians, but not that many. Empty store after empty store signals distress, except for one thing: New Orleans is actually better at keeping trash off streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"An
An empty storefront seen on 14th Street in Manhattan.<\/figcaption>
William Farrington<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In core Midtown, the tourists, \u00adalmost all Americans, outnumber the office workers, just as they have long outnumbered the locals in central parts of New Orleans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But they are a different type of tourist than what New York is used to. Usually, our tourists are in a hurry: rush to dinner at 6 p.m. to be done eating by 7:30, to get to the theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, they have succumbed to the general<\/a> malaise, having figured\u00a0that there isn\u2019t much to do but wander around, slowly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The scariest comparison is our newfound indifference to violent crime. New Orleans had 195 murders in 2020, a 60 percent rise over the previous year. With its small population \u2014 fewer than 400,000 \u2014 that gives it a murder rate on the outer edges of developed-nation numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the Big Easy never shows a sustained sense of crisis. Mayor after mayor says he (and now, she) will cut crime,\u00a0then finds a way to blame something else: poverty, guns. The \u201cthou shalt not kill\u201d billboards don\u2019t work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, Mayor de Blasio takes a more than doubling of shootings in two years and declares that it isn\u2019t a problem. When President Biden said that cities should spend more money on police, de Blasio said Friday, the president meant \u201ccertain cities\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 the bad, failing cities, not us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the second tourist shooting in Times Square within six weeks\u00a0had spurred him to at least desultory action. He said he would \u201cflood the zone\u201d with cops, so as not to have a \u201cnegative effect\u201d on tourism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NYPD
NYPD officers at the scene of the shooting in Times Square on June 27, 2021.<\/figcaption>
G.N.Miller\/NYPost<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the New Orleans \u00adapp<\/a>roach: Keep the tourist-rich French Quarter safe (sort of), with the city\u2019s most competent cops. Rich neighborhoods fend for themselves, too, via private-security guards, such as\u00a0where mayoral candidate Maya Wiley lives in Brooklyn. Everyone else is on his own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until now, New York\u2019s attitude was different: The tourist areas were safe because everywhere was safe. We hadn\u2019t had real \u201cno-go\u201d zones in decades; tour guides have even hosted organized forays to the South Bronx.<\/p>\n

Carjackings in New Orleans are so common that people don\u2019t want to stop at red lights or at gas stations. Now, New York is growing accustomed to them: a violent carjacking on the far West Side and in Brooklyn last month got little attention.<\/p>\n

But New Orleans\u00a0is different from New York in one respect: It\u2019s cheap, and, if you don\u2019t mind the heightened risk of crime and the lack of job opportunities, it\u2019s easy to live there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New York is now making an odd sell: a far worse quality of life and greater danger, but at the same high real-estate prices and taxes needed to fund our $98.7 billion budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @NicoleGelinas<\/a><\/em>\n <\/div>\n