Eye-Candy is sweet to look at!

With so many men running around being decadent, it was difficult to stop and connect. Of course I did manage to find a few guys that were willing to pause for a chat-up...

Real Girls infiltrate the made-girl scene.

The boys weren't the only ones being decadent. While the made-girls (aka "drag Queens") were on parade, the real girls (aka "women") had a bit of a wander of their own...

Fighting for the soul of Southern Decadence

With such an influx of tourists, the proponents of several religious fundamentalist groups jockeyed to position themselves as the best religion to convert to. Quartknee.com compares them side by side...

Wow, that's juicy!

With so much beefcake cruising the streets, what's a vegan to do? Well this dog found a new trick at the only vegetarian restaurant in New Orleans...

Do you have any Grey Poupon?

It's quite the culture shock to visit an area that mirrors a second world country. The lack of luxury could be quaint if it weren't so sad. Sure there were luxury hotels and high priced "Gourmet" restaurants, but they were obviously geared towards the tourists. The thing I like most about traveling is that it challenges my basic assumptions about things I usually take for granted. I never really noticed all of the BMWs and Range Rovers in San Francisco because there are so many of them everywhere, while in New Orleans (a major American City) they were virtually absent. In talking to the locals about it, I realized that the economy there sucks. The majority of the jobs are in the low paying service sector that feeds off the marketing storm of the city's history. One of my gripes about San Francisco is that nothing really cool has happened here since the 70s. SF is still basking in the glory of the 60s hippies and the 70s gay liberation movement and hasn't sparked anything innovative or original since. Sure the 90s tech boom and dot-com bubble had an impact, but the major start and focus of that was always down the peninsula in Silicon Valley. Other people have noticed the trend too and now fear abounds that SF will become just another bedroom community for the valley. New Orleans is further along on the arc of decay. It's so tied to it's past as refuge of the Cajuns and the birthplace of Jazz, that it hasn't really contributed much to the evolution of its culture since the 1940s when Jazz was still part of a youth movement and drove an innovative, vibrant culture... Now it's just a cliché marketing everything from mugs and t-shirts to restaurants and hotels. I suppose it's good that at least they have a gimmick, some cities like San Diego don't even have that...