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Big Easy barkers feeling bite from French Quarter businesses
NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans’ most famous street is a nightly swirl of bright neon and happy tourists strolling with a beverage in hand.
A blend of jazz joints, strip clubs, bars and restaurants, Bourbon Street has everything from four-star dining to sex shows. And visitors can count on being snared by barkers determined to lure them into one place or another, or another, or another.
“It’s cheesy, and, in the last few years, it’s gotten way out of hand,” said Louis Sahuc, a photographer who has a studio and a home in the French Quarter. “Getting past them is like running a gauntlet.”
An ordinance passed 25 years ago was designed to outlaw barkers. But, until recently, it’s been thinly enforced.
Now, businesses and residents say the barkers are straying from the informally tolerated confines of Bourbon Street to other parts of the Quarter and they want it stopped.
The city’s Alcohol Beverage Outlet Control Board and New Orleans Police Department have stepped in.
“The reason we decided to try to do something was because of the proliferation,” said Meg Lousteau, executive director of Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates Inc. “It’s spreading to other streets. I’ve seen them at art galleries, retail outlets, massage studios.”
New Orleans had 7.6 million visitors in 2008, spending $5.1 billion, according to a University of New Orleans study. The French Quarter is the big attraction.
“How do you think being accosted on our streets makes people from Minnesota feel about returning?” Sahuc said. “What do we want, to be known as the Big Easy or the Big Hustle?”
The Bourbon Street tradition springs from the days when doors at strip clubs were closed. A barker would call people over and open the door for a quick peek at a dancer on stage, tempting them to go inside.
Nowadays, the doors are open and photos of strippers posted outside, leave nothing to the imagination. Still, barkers try to steer customers inside, often working in pairs and moving well out into the street to snare passers-by. The practice also can be found at music clubs and other attractions.
