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SFGATE: 'Like a ghost town': Tourists find New Orleans empty

'Like a ghost town': Tourists find New Orleans empty
Published on May 18, 2020 at 05:46AM by David Montgomery and Richard A. Webster, The Washington Post

NEW ORLEANS - On a typical Saturday night, snagging a coveted balcony table overlooking Bourbon Street in the French Quarter would be nearly impossible. But here were Mariah Castille and Tyler Labiche, sharing chips and dip, somewhat stunned by almost everything about this evening.

It was Day 1 of Phase 1 - when the stay-home order was lifted and New Orleans was supposed to begin coming back to life. For the first time in two months, most businesses were allowed to open. Restaurants and food-serving bars could seat customers at 25% capacity.

After a miserable season of canceled music festivals, social isolation, sickness and death, it was time to get the party started again. Labiche, 30, and Castille, had made a weekend getaway from their Lafayette, Louisiana, home a two-hour drive away.

"We thought the first day back, this place would be packed," Labiche said. "It's one of the biggest party places on the planet."

Castille peered over the elegant wrought-iron balcony of the Cornet restaurant down to barren Bourbon Street.

"It feels like a ghost town," she said. "Like we're not supposed to be here."

Across New Orleans, it was the same story: Residents were hesitant to venture back out in a city that once was an epicenter of the novel coronavirus, even though social distancing has paid off with sharply decreased rates of infection.

Tourists were scarce, too. On Bourbon Street alone, three huge hotels with many hundreds of rooms between them sat shuttered.

The streets of the French Quarter were empty enough for six young women on bicycles to ride down the center of Bourbon Street with glow sticks on their spokes. Their shrieks briefly animated the night.

"For a minute, it sounds like New Orleans," said one seafood employee standing on the sidewalk, before he resumed his...

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