Listen we get it. The French Quarter seems LIKE Disneyland to a lot of people. Certainly since the 1950s, it has grown more for tourists than for locals.

The difference is that it is still a real neighborhood of entrepreneurs, families, senior citizens…And it also has a whole other group of “residents” who are out on the sidewalks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, hustling, hanging, and taking a breather outside during a long work shift. All of them belong , and truly, curious, so do fun-loving visitors are as well. Visitors are, although 10 million of them every year to our 300,000 residents is taxing especially the destructive bros and the overly pushy whoo-hoo girls staying in illegal short term rentals who are always too many and too much.

But still, here we are, gladly once again kicking off a massive tourist season: the LIX Super Bowl followed by Carnival, then French Quarter Festival, then Jazz Fest, then Essence, all before peak summer. We’ll count the coins and sleep in August.

The city has hosted a number of Super Bowls over the past 50 years, 2025’s Lix will be the 11th time for us, which puts us in a tie with Miami for the most hosts.

So we expect it: the city in a snarl over the last 2 months to get contractors to feverishly try to throw some asphalt on long-broken concrete, rounding up all of our unhoused and sticking them in warehouses, public space rented out to the highest bidder, security tactics that don’t make anyone feel safer only that their rights are trampled upon, 10 story high projected advertisements on buildings….

Sigh. We deal. We fight some of it, we accept other parts. it is part of our reality.

But this pic below is one that is just odd. They decided to cover the Cathedral, Cabildo, and Presbytere with this projection every night.

Not only does this projection hide the most beautiful historical buildings from being seen properly, it also highlights odd flaws, and makes one expect to see a Disney princess emerge, waving her dime store wand at bystanders standing around with plastic Tropical Isle grenade sugar drinks, confused and disoriented.

The blanked out windows make it seem even more fake, and the colors are horrific. I wonder if this is supposed to be Mardi Gras colors?

Even more oddly, we actually have a great illumination event called Luna Fete over the holidays that does some gorgeous projections about history, culture, and holiday cheer.

But this is not THAT. Visitors, you don’t even get that.

You might be a first time visitor, end up in the Square, and think you are looking at three hastily erected buildings with plywood behind their garish displays. You would then walk away thinking, what the heck was that about? (I heard someone actually say that as I left after taking this picture).

And you’d be right to think that.

And you would miss out on how gorgeous the Square is at night, as the birthplace of this 300 + year city, and not be able to view its public space that remains vibrant and used by locals and visitors alike, and which still has residents in the Pontalbas on either side and along the nearby streets.

The toll is one we have seen before: that the fakery becomes reality to those experiencing the city for the first time who then leave, thinking what was that?

So visitors, do your best to see behind the facades, and experience a city, not a projection, to talk to kind locals and have some real fun. We don’t want you to pay that toll.