New Orleans, known as "The Big Hustle," is nothing like I expected. The music blasting from establishments in the French Quarter is not really jazz, it's zydeco and blues. It's a colorful, confusing place. Every store sells the same beads ($1.99 a dozen), boas, t-shirts and obscene toys for the same price. By the time midnight rolls around, people with more beads than you could ever want climb up to balconies...
overlooking Bourbon Street (named for a French ruling family; not the beverage you find regurgitated on the sidewalks) and toss them to people packed below, who seem to crave beads in direct correlation to their intoxication.
Those who want beads hoard them until those who had them have divested completely.
