The shop names say it all. Trashy Diva, Voluptuous Vixen, Constant Envy… Walk down Chartres Street in New Orleans's wilfully bohemian French Quarter, with its richly coloured houses and frilly cast-iron balconies gushing with flowers, and it is clear that this is a city where the sensual life matters.
Boutiques selling perfume, corsets and lingerie give way to handsome Jackson Square, lined with purveyors of hope. Fortune-tellers and tarot readers vie for attention with the pencil-point spires of St Louis Cathedral. A uniformed jazz band tunes up as a splendid white carriage with matching horse clip-clops off for a romantic ride through a bewitching ensemble of Spanish, French and Creole buildings.
Set beside a venerable bend of the Mississippi, New Orleans has always been that dreamy, steamy place where Uncle Sam finally throws off his top-hat and goes lindy-hopping. Tennessee Williams, Mardi Gras, Dixieland, voodoo, gumbo – the call is exotic and hard to resist.
Strangeness is everywhere. New Orleans has stalls selling alligator burgers, and tribes of men who dress up as Indians in outrageous feathered costumes that take a year to make. There are bars that resound to the foot-tapping beat of zydeco, and there are fish named pompano and sheepshead. The locals confer using words such as lagniappe (a little bit extra) and po-boy, which is a sandwich, not an impoverished youth.
It seems to have been like this for ever. In 1920, when Prohibition arrived and agents were despatched nationwide to assess the severity of the problem, New Orleans was found to have 5,000 bars.
While it took an inspector 14 minutes to be offered an illegal drink in New York, here it was just 37 seconds – generously proposed by his taxi-driver.
Comparisons with Venice are appropriate. Both cities have ravishing looks, bags of atmosphere and a precarious relationship with water. As we all know, in August 2005 Hurricane Katrina triggered floods that devastated the city.
The verdict is that this was a man-made disaster – levees meant to provide protection failed. This view is banged home emphatically in David Simon's hit television drama Treme, which is named after the city's historic and culturally rich African-American neighbourhood.
Beginning three months after the disaster, the series shows its citizens struggling to transcend the tragedy, with a superb backing track of home-grown tunes. Many locals consider it "hyper-accurate", and a third season is now in production.
"Some say we are the northernmost city in the Caribbean," a resident suggests – which is plausible given the warmth, colour and laissez-faire lifestyle enveloping me. New Orleans is the only city in the United States where it is legal to drink alcohol in the street, with 24-hour bars and signs saying "Cocktails to Go". Every weekend the pedestrianised party-strip of Bourbon Street becomes a raucous, boozy mayhem filled with out-of-town drunkards festooned with coloured beads.
