New Orleans' Beach(es)

I've had occasion several times this month to drive to Pensacola, where my brother and sister-in-law live, for family visits. On one drive, Big Man commented on all the Louisiana license plates surrounding us on the interstate. I laughed. "Don't you know," I said to him, "that Pensacola is New Orleans' beach?"

When I was a girl, along the Gulf of Mexico from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi was New Orleans' beach. It was an easy drive along Highway 90, and a family could do as a marathon in one day, there and back, sunburned and sandy, or take a more relaxing weekend and stay in one of the then-innumerable beach strip motels along the way. (Sadly, so much of this strip was totally and completely destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and only now, almost 3 years later, are they just starting to sputter back to life with hotels, shops, and restaurants. Lots of rebuilding going on, which is a good thing.)

When Interstate 10 was finished, the drive to the even-better beaches along the Alabama coast and the Florida panhandle became more accessible, and individuals and families from New Orleans began staking their claim from Gulf Shores to Destin.

It is not quite as segmented as the Philadelphia-Jersey connection, where it has been truthfully said that if you learn what neighborhood in Philly a person is from, you can immediately guess which South Jersey shore town they go to in the summer. But it is true that many New Orleanians would cheerfully argue the relative merits of Gulf Shores vs. Orange Beach, Pensacola vs. Navarre, Fort Walton Beach vs. Destin ad infinitum.

Pensacola, kind of the center of the New Orleans-oriented part of the Florida panhandle, has an ambivalent relationship to the Crescent City. In Pensacola, I saw a Florida license plate spelling out "SAINTS," and there were hundreds of Florida cars sporting Saints bumperstickers, decals, and black-and-gold fleur de lis. Restaurants all down the coast advertise gumbo, etouffee, and even red beans and rice. "Authentic New Orleans Sno Balls" can be found in every beach town as a cooling treat.

A "Tail of Two Cities" is a souvenir that can be purchased in many places in Pensacola; it depicts a nattily dressed pelican, wearing fleur de lis on one side. It is supposed to represent downtown Pensacola and Pensacola Beach. But the artist is a New Orleanian and seems to have captured instead a linking between NOLA and Pensacola.

The relationship between the two is not always close and happy. In last weekend's Pensacola newspaper, there was an article about a night of gallery-hopping that involved both live music and the serving of adult beverages. The article emphasized that this year the police would be enforcing local ordinances about no drinking alcohol on the street, even in non-glass containers, so that gallery-hopping participants in the Arts Night would have to drink up or discard their drink before leaving one gallery for another. There was some protest about this -- apparently, in previous years, law enforcement had turned a blind eye to the strolling gallery patrons with their go-cups. (Me, I can't see why this is an issue, but then, I'm a New Orleanian.) A Pensacola city councilman, interviewed on the little brouhaha, declared firmly to the reporter, "This is not New Orleans, you know!"

Anyway, it was a surprise to Big Man to feel so at-home in the Florida panhandle, until he realized that it's almost, but not quite, New Orleans Far East.

Our plans for the rest of summer include explorations to New Orleans's "old beach" along Highway 90, gas being so expensive and the bay St. Louis-Biloxi arc of beaches being so close. More reports from New Orleans' beaches then!