In New Orleans, A Streetcar Returns

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  01.03.08 | 11:31 AM ET

image

A piece of pre-Katrina New Orleans staged a quiet return last month, to the thrill of storm-weary residents and tourists. The St. Charles Avenue streetcar is once again ferrying passengers from the French Quarter to the Garden District. Reports the New York Times: “The streetcar has represented something else besides the connections through time and space: the city’s living room, a privileged spot for tentative social encounters across lines of race, class and nationality, in a place not otherwise given to them.”

Related on World Hum:
* The Critics: ‘Chasing the Rising Sun’
* Rolf Potts in New Orleans: A Visit to the Lower Ninth Ward

Photo by dbking via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Tags: North America, United States, Louisiana, New Orleans

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


1 Comment for In New Orleans, A Streetcar Returns

John 01.03.08 | 9:33 PM ET

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7D71431F932A25756C0A9619C8B63&sec;=&spon;=

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.