Difference between Uptown and Downtown N. O? (New Orleans, Metairie: crime, neighborhood)

[summer grace]

I've never been to New Orleans, but have an online friend from Metairie, and she has said there's a difference between uptown and downtown New Orleans, and has said she will explain this to me, but has never gotten around to it, so I will be sure to ask her, but in the meantime, can anyone clarify this for me? I'm just curious.

[miserylovesco.]

Uptown is even slower than downtown and we don't have to deal with as many tourists and we accept what NOLA life is vs. what it's conceived as.

[summer grace]

What are the geographic differences between the two? I think Uptown is around St. Charles Avenue and Tulane, correct? I have no idea where downtown is.

[domino]

Technically, downtown is north of Canal Street, and uptown is south of Canal Street. Realistically downtown includes the CBD (central business district), French Quarter, Marigny, Bywater. Uptown includes the Garden District, Central City, Irish Channel, Broadmoor, Audubon Park, Carrolton. In my opinion . . .

[Puddinhead]

I grew up Downtown (Upper Ninth Ward/St. Roch) and about the only times we'd venture Uptown was for Mardi Gras parades (and that was usually only as far as a few blocks before Lee Circle) and school trips to the Zoo. It's not like we were living an isolated existance or anything...we'd spend plenty of time in just about every other part of our locality--the Quarter, of course, CBD, Lakefront, Westbank, Metairie, St. Bernard, the East. There just never seemed to be any reason to go Uptown. I will say that the feel that I and most of my friends agreed that we'd get when visiting Uptown was that it was much more "American" than where we lived. I think by that I mean that to us the people we'd interact with and just the physical surroundings of Uptown more closely meshed with what network TV (which is where we as kids got our ideas of what "America" was) was showing on nighttime series to be "normal" America. We'd leave the Quarter, go a matter of 10-11 blocks downtown and be back in the neighborhood...so to us, Downtown (which included the Quarter and Canal Street to us) was "New Orleans"...funky, dirty, old and somewhat in disrepair, not particularly wealthy, and at the time mostly-but-not-overwhelmingly full of African-Americans and Caucasians with some non-WASPy ethnicity in their background. Uptown was where all of the really white folks (and I'm a white dude myself...but not THAT white..LOL) whose families came to New Orleans from Kentucky or Alabama or some other US state rather than from Central America or Spain or Italy or the Indies or, well, Africa.

I still live on the Downtown side of Canal now, in Gentilly, and I have to say that I still rarely go to Uptown New Orleans. My wife and I did recently traverse the length of Magazine looking for a particular piece of furniture, but most of what we saw was either antique, retro, or trendy. We don't have the design taste needed for any of those...LOL. It's just that there is no quick and easy way to get from another part of town to Uptown, and there's no quick and easy way to get from Uptown to any place other than some other part of Uptown.

[miserylovesco.]

I live uptown and I only go downtown when I need to.

[Puddinhead]

Originally Posted by miserylovesco.

I live uptown and I only go downtown when I need to.

See. It's two completely separate cities, like back when New Orleans actually was three different Municipalities with three different governments. You can't expect one city to be established as a Carribean/European city, and then have an all-American city be established right across the street, and then expect them to seamlessly meld together over time. There will still be differences.

[miserylovesco.]

Downtown is nice and all but I get sick of tourists puking and being loud as well as the whole crime issue.

[Puddinhead]

Originally Posted by miserylovesco.

Downtown is nice and all but I get sick of tourists puking and being loud as well as the whole crime issue.

I think if you paid any attention to the "murder map" accompanying the recent article in the Times-Picayune you'd see that "Crime" doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to which side of Canal St. it's on. In my particular case, being out in Gentilly, you might have noticed that the whole area north of I-610 (which admittedly stretches into the part of Lakeview west of Canal Blvd, ostensibly the "Uptown" side) had I believe 10 murders on the year, compared to the upper-20s for many Uptown areas (and yes, for the Ninth Ward as well). Our Councilwoman (Hedge-Morrell) has explained to our neighborhood group that she often tries to push for more "hurricane recovery" items in the budget, but when she starts having discussions with her Uptown counterparts who say with the crime as rampant as it is in their Districts it's hard to vote for spending money on much other than "anti-crime" measures.

[carbondate]

The Central City part of Uptown is murder-heavy, as are portions of the Seventh and Ninth Wards Downtown. It's about a horse apiece and depends more on the neighborhood than the side of the city. Robberies (usually armed) happen everywhere, but are most heavily concentrated in the FQ -- a big reason I stay away. Contrary to popular belief, the FQ is not safer than the rest of the city.

But it's true: downtowners tend to stay downtown and uptowners tend to stay uptown. I'm an uptowner and I don't go downtown unless I have to. The part of uptown I live in (Touro) is laid back and residential while the parts of downtown I've been to keep me on edge all the time. But if you're visiting, it is a lot more exciting downtown than uptown. Just don't take any bets from strangers.