New Orleans Neighborhoods

To get an idea of the way New Orleans is structured, it helps to know your way around three main neighborhoods. The French Quarter is probably among the most expensive neighborhoods, and the loudest and most headache-inducing. But because of its constant crowdedness, it's also one of the safest. And the balconies on many of its second- and third-story apartments give a great view of the chaos below. To the northeast of the Quarter, Mid-City is a bit quieter, close to the Quarter but outside the fray, where trees with long branches and bulging roots line the streets. And in the heart of the crescent, Uptown surrounds the main universities and has a more collegiate feel. All three neighborhoods are near interesting restaurants and nightspots and beautiful, historic houses - and all are near each other. New Orleans is a small city of 450,000 that occupies a flat, bowl-shaped space between Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south. Along many of its streets, one- and two-family homes and grassy medians, called neutral grounds, give New Orleans the appearance of a suburb, but with none of the sleepy feel.

Navigating the bowl isn't tough, but it requires its own language. Directions here aren defined, not by the compass, but by the river and lake. Uptown and downtown mean "upstream" and "downstream." Houses are found on the "river side" or "lake side" of the street. The "West Bank" is sometimes the east bank, sometimes the south bank. Trolling the streets of New Orleans also requires new rules of pronunciation. If you've studied French, ignore it. The street named after the Chartres Cathedral is pronounced "CHART-ers," Burgundy Street is pronounced "Bur-GUN-dy," and Calliope Street is "CALL-i-ope." Out in one of the suburbs, an industrial park is named Versailles, but pronounced "Ver-SALES." Get accustomed to the names and you'll be making your out-of-town visitors blush. You'll also get adept at the Native American street names; the most intimidating, Tchoupitoulas ("Chop-it-TOO-less") is easy once you get the hang of it.

The first rule of New Orleans navigation, though, is get a car. Public transportation consists of one-dollar buses, and of a one-dollar streetcar line that runs along only three streets. The city is below sea level, and you'd hit water almost immediately if you dug in the earth. A subway car would have to be a submarine. (Nothing is underground in New Orleans, not even the graves. The city is full of aboveground cemeteries filled with mausoleums, stacked blocks of cold gray stone.)

New Orleans is a car city, but in places, it's not a very good parking city. In the French Quarter, parking requires a half-hour drive around the grid and a sharp eye - or a five- to ten-dollar investment in a parking garage. In the Central Business District by day, it's easier to shell out cash for a garage than to hunt the streets for a space. In most of the other neighborhoods, though, a parking space near a bar or restaurant won't be more than a couple of blocks out of your way.

In general, the cost of living in New Orleans is much lower than in other cities. Monthly rent is lower by as much as half, restaurant prices are substantially lower, even utilities are less expensive, because although air conditioning is a must in the summer, heating in the winter is only an occasional necessity.

The tax system is skewed down here: sales tax is incredibly steep, about 9 percent in the city proper, but property tax is virtually nonexistent. That's due to a handy tool called the "Homestead Exemption," which holds that the first $75,000 of your house is tax-free. That means a large portion of New Orleans residents don't pay property taxes at all.

To find an apartment in New Orleans, you really need only three things: a copy of The Times-Picayune's classified ads (or the real estate section, on the weekends), a copy of the weekly magazine Gambit, and a sharp set of eyes. Apartments are listed on bulletin boards in coffee shops and cafes, as well as on college campuses. And many apartment hunters simply scour the streets for For Rent signs. A note: The Times-Picayune 's listings are generally more comprehensive, though Gambit is free, available in storefronts everywhere. There are a few apartment services that advertise in the newspaper, but they're really not necessary, or particularly helpful.

The main things to keep in mind when considering where to live are safety and style, and willingness to stress over parking. The demographics of most neighborhoods here are similar: checkerboard streets, with many blocks populated by exclusively white or black residents. Older families and twentysomethings often reside on the same blocks - barring some of the posher Uptown streets. New Orleans proper has no particular ethnic neighborhoods; people of a given ethnic group - most notably, the new immigrant Vietnamese - tend to live in enclaves in the city's outskirts.

Parking is passably easy in Mid-City and Uptown, though it's sticky in the French Quarter. And when it comes to safety, matters can change block by block. As a general rule, Mid-City is a little safer than Uptown, and the Quarter is the safest of the three. But those who want complete security end up moving out to the 'burbs.

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