It keeps the phones ringing off the hook. Brown Sugar knows many callers by voice if not by name.

“I went home and told my wife that I wasn’t never coming back,” one caller says midway through her Tuesday afternoon blues show. “And she told me, ‘Brown Sugar ain’t gonna take care of no poor man.’” They both laugh.

“That’s right, baby,” she says. They flirt while the rest of New Orleans listens to Arkansas bluesman Johnnie Taylor. He’s called her for years but won’t send her a picture. She chats with him every time he calls but hasn’t told him her real name.

Brown Sugar is one of 50 volunteer DJs at 90.7 FM WWOZ (referred to locally as Oh-Zee). From the most shoestring of beginnings, the station has become a fixture in the local music scene and in the city. In the early ’80s, the founders started playing tapes from a transmitter located in a shack across the river. With the arrival of webcasting, OZ is now an international beacon of New Orleans jazz, R&B and all the roots music of South Louisiana. Besides Brown Sugar’s suitors, the station has an intensely loyal listenership.

Before becoming the mysterious voice known to New Orleanians as Brown Sugar, she was an avid listener and frequent caller. She was coaxed over the call-in line to come down to the station and volunteer. When she said hello over the air for the first time the phone started ringing. “It was the fellas wanting to know who that woman is,” she says.

Brown Sugar soon had her own show. Not wanting to share her real name she called herself Sugar. “I played Sugar, Sugar by Wilson Pickett a lot so I used that as a name,” she says. Then one day in the studio, station co-founder Jerry Brock suggested she become Bubbling Brown Sugar. She thought Brown Sugar was good enough and she goes by that for her blues show and her Sunday morning gospel show.

As she got more involved as a volunteer she became membership director. She left behind a music club, a liquor store and a carpet cleaning business to work for OZ at its tiny office just outside of the French Quarter. When her air-time rolls around, she grabs a satchel of her CDs from home and walks across the street into Louis Armstrong Park. The studio is situated in a cozy two-story building. She slips on the earphones, slides in a CD and cuddles up to the microphone to ask New Orleans, “Are you all ready for this action?”

Her voice has become part of New Orleans. It’s her voice coming over the airwaves in the opening scene of The Big Easy. She even found her name in a recent mystery novel also trying to capture the feel of the city.

OZ is a round-the-clock soundtrack for the city. Programming features jazz most prominently. The middle of the day is carved out for New Orleans music featuring funked up R&B by everyone from Dr. John to the Radiators. Any other music with roots in New Orleans can be found sometime during the week. That includes blues, Cajun and Celtic music, African and Caribbean sounds, Zydeco and gospel.

“Jazz Fest is a ten day festival,” says station manager David Freedman. “WWOZ puts on a 365-day festival.” Like the Jazz Festival and unlike most commercial radio stations, OZ’s mission is to present a great variety of music, especially by local musicians. Freedman says that the easiest way to see if you’re in New Orleans is to tune your FM radio to 90.7. “You’ll know,” he says.

OZ is a volunteer-staffed and listener-supported radio station. It’s one of the few community radio stations nationally that is not affiliated with a college or university. Members provide the bulk of support that keeps OZ on the air. The loyalty of those listeners is very important to the station. “We don’t have the most listeners,” says Freedman. “We have people who listen the most.” And they take pride in the station. “We have more bumper stickers than all the other stations combined. Anybody can buy a billboard. But not everybody will mess up their bumper for you,” Freedman says.

OZ has drawn enthusiastic support from its inception. Founders Jerry and Walter Brock came to New Orleans in the mid ’70s to start a community radio station. Just barely in their 20s, they had already helped two other community stations get off the ground before coming to the Big Easy. Though they weren’t familiar with the city’s music before they arrived, they immediately recognized it as an untapped resource. No commercial stations featured local artists.

As they applied for a license, local musicians held benefits to raise money for the project. In 1980, they broke onto the airwaves with 12 hours of daily programming. Jerry Brock spent his nights recording 90 minute tapes. The following day he would take them out to the shack that housed their transmitter. “We didn’t even have a phone out there,” he says.

A short time later, they were offered space above the music club Tipitina’s. A small apartment became their studio. They got their first caller on day one. “Snooks Eaglin called and said, ‘We hear you, Jerry,’” Brock says. Other now legendary musicians did programs for them. Art Neville, James Booker and many more got involved with OZ. Occasionally they hung a microphone in the club downstairs and broadcast live shows. Locals tuned in and the word got out. In the pages of Interview magazine, Andy Warhol declared OZ, “The greatest radio station on earth.”

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the sponsor of Jazz Fest, also recognized OZ as a vital part of the music scene. When the station hit financial woes in the mid-’80s, the foundation stepped in and made a commitment to keep them on the air. The two organizations compliment each other well. OZ now broadcasts live from the festival. They make recordings of those shows and other concerts throughout the year. The CDs are distributed to OZ members and are not for sale anywhere.

Jazz is a mainstay on OZ. On late Tuesday afternoons, Lewis White hosts a three-hour show featuring everything from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue to the newest recordings of New Orleans jazzmen, Terence Blanchard and Donald Harrison, Jr. A retired press agent and newsman from Alabama, White has always had a passion for music. “I can sing you the lyrics of any popular song between the ’40s and now,” he says.

The cool flow of White’s show belies his studio intensity. White is meticulous and finicky in planning his show. He draws heavily on his own collection of jazz, much of it on vinyl. He cues up a record, notes it in his log and ponders what to segue into next. “It helps to feel it,” he says while scanning down a record jacket. “The best actor couldn’t pull this off.” He stops momentarily to listen to Coltrane. “The blues is the key to this stuff,” he says. Then he quickly sifts through another stack of records.

How the DJs feel about the music is one of the only guidelines working at OZ. There are no playlists, which commercial stations use to keep very popular songs in heavy rotation. “Our DJs are happy if they can play something you’ve never heard before,” Freedman says. That fresh, live feel keeps OZ at the heart of the city’s music scene.

Just south of the station, which is gone now, lay the French Quarter. And lining the tracks on the northern side were the saloons, bordellos and cribs of Storyville, the nation’s first legally designated prostitution district. Over its twenty-year lifetime, the district grew more and more crowded with prostitutes, early jazz musicians and saloons. And it anchored the city’s reputation as the Babylon of the South.

Ironically, Storyville was created in an attempt at social reform. But the outrageous district defied many of the sensibilities of its times. And that’s probably why it thrived.

At the end of the Victorian era and in the middle of growing national progressive reform movements (like the temperance movement that resulted in Prohibition), Storyville was created by city ordinance in 1897. Social reformers in the city wanted to limit and regulate prostitution. So they turned a not so nice residential neighborhood into the only district where prostitutes could live and work. Supposedly this would keep brothels from trashing other neighborhoods in either their morals or their property values. More significantly, they created a nationally known center of vice. Councilman Sidney Story, who sponsored the reform, was rewarded by having the district unofficially named after him.

The bordellos of Storyville became great mansions of vice. Many madams became extraordinarily wealthy. As did saloon owners and politicians and policemen who took a large cut in graft. As the years passed, the neighborhood changed so that by the time it was closed down almost every available building was either a bar or a brothel. Much of the money made in Storyville came from the outrageous prices charged for liquor. And while many of the bordellos, like Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall, were lavish and catered to customers who could meet her prices, there were also hundreds and hundreds of “crib” girls, who charged much lower rates and worked out of small one and two room cribs, furnished with only a bed and a chair. They might rent a crib for a night for as much as three dollars. Then they might charge men anywhere from ten to fifty cents. Competition tended to keep the prices brutally low in the cribs.

Some of the better sources of information on Storyville are the “Blue Books,” which were directories of the more expensive prostitutes working in the district. Billy Struve, a former police reporter, published many of the books. At times he kept an office in Lulu White’s saloon. And he was also known to work for Tom Anderson, the unofficial mayor of Storyville. Anderson owned the largest saloon and had a stake in many others.

The Blue Books advertised the beauty and quality of the bordellos and the women who worked there. Sex was never mentioned in the books and no mention was made of prostitution. But the message was clear. One of the early books carried the title “Blue Book” at the top and “Tenderloin 400″ at the bottom. Tenderloin was one of the terms for districts known for prostitution. The 400 parodied a published list of important and influential Americans.

The books contain portraits and descriptions of some of the better known madams. Lulu White, Josie Arlington and Willie Piazza were among the most famous. Before Storyville, White had been arrested countless times on charges of prostitution and assorted civil disruptions, the result of which was that she eventually seemed to know all the right people. During the Storyville era she became very wealthy and was known for wearing diamonds on all her fingers and a wig of wild red hair. In Belle of the Nineties, Mae West’s character was supposedly based on White’s persona. White herself considered moving to Hollywood to break into movies but never did so.

Josie Arlington was another notorious prostitute who reigned in Storyville. Born into the demimonde of society, at seventeen years old she became involved with Philip Lobrano, who introduced her into the world of “sporting houses,” or brothels. She worked as Josie Alton for a while, and as Josie Lobrano, and even Josie Lobrano d’Arlington. As her business acumen improved she opened the Chateau Lobrano d’Arlington. But her more simply titled Arlington was one of the biggest and bawdiest of the bordellos, allowing Josie to support Lobrano and many others who lived in her home. She went on to buy herself an expensive mansion on Esplanade Avenue, and later a lavish tomb in a historic cemetery.

The Blue Books also highlight one of the biggest draws to Storyville, says Katy Coyle, a historian researching the lives of women who resided in Storyville. Politics of the times enforced racial divides. Plessy vs. Fergusson had recently been handed down and segregation was legally instituted everywhere, she says. Segregation legislation was passed in New Orleans in 1894. But Storyville held out the allure of sex across color lines. The books listed prostitutes by race, noting whether they were white (W), Creole (C) or octoroon (Oct.). French women and Jewish women were also designated.

New Orleans had always had a reputation for interracial social mixing, especially because so many free people of color lived in the city before the Civil War. There was a special society niche of mixed race people. Quadroon and octoroon balls were held to match white men and women with one quarter or one eighth black lineage. It was understood that the couples would never marry, and the women were set up like mistresses in homes of their own. Against this backdrop, Storyville’s social mixing was to be expected. And often preferred. White women were known to work in brothels which advertised themselves as Creole establishments, Coyle says.

Aside from the books, not much remains of Storyville. In 1917, the Department of the Navy closed it down saying it was a threat to national security. On the eve of World War One, a military base opened in New Orleans and it was illegal for prostitution to operate within five miles of a base. So the district was officially closed, but not before the mayor went to Washington D.C. to try to save it. He even let the local papers know that that was his mission. He lost the battle because Washington was dominated by social reformers. Prostitution certainly didn’t stop, but it was no longer centralized in the district even though many madams continued to work there.

Eventually, the city razed most of the district to build the Iberville housing development. Most of Storyville’s buildings were lost. Only three currently remain and none are likely to be land-marked or preserved, although two were famous addresses. On the corner of Basin and Bienville streets is part of the building that housed Lulu White’s Saloon, which was adjacent to her famous Mahogany Hall. Only the first floor of the current building dates back to her ownership. Further in on Bienville Street, at the end of the block, is what remains of Frank Early’s saloon. It’s now a convenience store.

Much of what is known of Storyville is archived in the history of jazz. Many early jazz musicians, like Jelly Roll Morton, played in the parlors of Storyville. Though jazz started its development elsewhere in the city in the decades before Storyville, many believe that the music came of age there. As that view became more common, some musicians exaggerated their careers there. Photographs show Jelly Roll playing piano in Mahogany Hall and he later claimed that he played there for fifteen years, but that is unlikely.

Jelly Roll was a “professor,” the term for piano players who worked in bordello parlors. They worked entirely for tips and were expected to know a great variety of music to entertain whomever dropped in. Jelly Roll was renowned for his scandalous versions of all sorts of popular songs. Other famous professors included Tony Jackson, author of Pretty Baby, and Frank “Dude” Amacker.

Many early jazz musicians played in Storyville orchestras and bands, including King Oliver, Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Sidney Bechet and Louis “Big Eye” Nelson. The bands played in the saloons, though there were also establishments that considered the new music vulgar and unworthy of their clientele. Louis Armstrong got one if his first jobs in Storyville, carting coal to the cribs.

Looking back, it’s probably the emergence of jazz that encourages such a romanticized image of the District. Its characters were certainly colorful. But what we know least about are the lives of the women who lived in Storyville. Historians like Coyle are trying to fill in those details. It’s welcome scholarship. While the city never seriously tried to recreate the legal red light district, the curiosity remains.

Pictures and information regarding Storyville can be found at the Louisiana State Museum jazz exhibit at the Old U.S. Mint. (400 Esplanade Ave., 568-6968). Blue Books are archived at the Williams Research Center (410 Chartres St., 598-7171).

Several offbeat museums shed light on some of the city’s more exotic dimensions.

The Musee Conti Wax Museum (917 Conti St., 504-581-1993) offers a dramatic history of the city in tableau. Vignettes capture famous New Orleanians at the height of their impact on the city.

Many of the scenes showcase people and events that are amply memorialized around the city, such as General Andrew Jackson and his victory over the British in the last battle of the war of 1812. Then there’s pirate Jean Lafitte, and Iberville and Bienville founding the colony. There’s the sensationalized and mysterious voodoo queen Marie Laveau and recently convicted four-time governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards smirks and waves.

The wax museum also shows some less well known events. The dice game craps was introduced to the new world in New Orleans. Bernard Marigny, for whom the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood is named, enticed newcomers to the French dice game called “hazards.” But it was soon renamed craps after a derogatory term Americans used to refer to the French, “crapauds”, meaning toads. The card game of poker also developed its modern rules on riverboats shuttling between New Orleans and St. Louis. And in another high stakes confrontation, champion boxers John Sullivan and James Corbett squared off in the city in the state’s first legalized prizefight in 1892. “I can lick any man alive,” Sullivan had often boasted, but he met his match in 21 grueling rounds.

All the museum’s figures were cast in France. The hair is sewn in strand by strand and they’re equipped with glass eyes manufactured for human medical use. And no wax museum would be complete without a few monsters and frights, though some are from Louisiana’s outrageous history.

Perhaps the most scandalized and distorted of local customs is the practice of voodoo. Popularly exploited in film and literature, voodoo has been cast as a dark magic filled with writhing dancers driven by wanton lust and wrapped into little dolls stuck with pins. The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum (724 Dumaine St., 486-2080) can help set some of the record straight.

New Orleans voodoo is a religion based on spiritual beliefs carried to the colony by slaves from West Africa. Those beliefs merged with Catholicism in Louisiana and the renowned voodoo queen Marie Laveau was a devout Catholic who went to mass every day. Yet she was also considered powerful and wise and was consulted as a healer, a nurse, a counselor in all matters and even a hair dresser.

The museum is full of altars laden with offerings of liquor, totems or “ju jus” including skulls and dolls and other representations of reverence for the pantheon of voodoo spirits. A continuously running video also details current practice of voodoo in the city.

The French Quarter is also the site of the first officially licensed pharmacist to practice in the United States. Louis Dufilho was licensed in 1816 and opened his shop in 1823. The site is now the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum (514 Chartres, 565-8027).

In the early 19th century, people were likely to consult a pharmacist before going to see a doctor. The state started licensing pharmacists to assure that they had adequate knowledge of the remedies they prescribed. But some pharmacies also fenced potions for people who didn’t want to be seen associating with the voodoo priests and priestesses who concocted them. They were discreetly available off the shelf. Though the museum has some such jars, it is not known whether Dufilho actually sold them in his shop.

The museum has shelves lined with everything from perfumes and cosmetics to herbs and medicines and paints and varnishes. It even has an early soda fountain. The pharmacy was closed in the decades following the Civil War but the building was opened as a museum in the 1950s.

The oldest museum in Louisiana is the Memorial Hall Confederate Museum (929 Camp St., 504-523-8595). Created in 1891, and opened on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, it functioned for a long time as the state museum. But its founders were Confederate veterans and wanted to memorialize the contributions of Louisiana veterans of the Civil War.

The hall displays a wide array of Civil War memorabilia, from flags, pistols and uniforms to Confederate money and the personal effects of soldiers. Time pieces include a parasol and women’s clothing from the era. Other holdings include the pistol used in the notorious assassination of police Chief Hennessey in 1890. While no-one was ever convicted of the crime, the acquittals set off a violent mob that killed eleven and created an international incident.

The museum has refocused to memorialize the war and not just the Confederacy. Vintage photographs and early portraits provide an intriguing view of the city’s civic leaders during and following the war.

There’s more to Mardi Gras than meets the eye. The annual rite goes back to the 18th century in Louisiana and has recently become grandly memorialized and celebrated. The Louisiana State Museum (at the Presbytere, Jackson Square, 568-6968) opened a large exhibit exploring carnival throughout the state. While the bulk of the artifacts concern the current practices both in New Orleans and in Cajun Country, there is also a section on the European roots of carnival and its relation to Christian and pagan rituals.

The most remarkable thing about Mardi Gras in New Orleans is how many different celebrations occur in the same small time frame. There is a Mardi Gras for everyone, from the oldest clubs of social elites to the newest bands of costumed revelers. Besides the famous parading organizations like Rex and Zulu, there are Mardi Gras Indians, gay balls, and too many smaller carnival clubs, parties and street scenes to mention. The State Museum does an excellent job of bringing them all together in living color under one roof. And then there is carnival in Cajun country, which, captured on video, looks like another world altogether.

More individual Mardi Gras legends are memorialized in hidden pockets around the city. Arnaud’s restaurant (813 Bienville St., 523-5433) has a Mardi Gras museum dedicated to the founder’s daughter, Germaine Cazenave Wells. She reigned as queen of more carnival balls than any other woman. The museum displays 13 of her gowns from the 1939 Prometheus ball mimicking the last emperor and empress of China to her reign as queen of the Krewe of Hera in 1968. Particularly stunning is her gown from the 1954 Sparta ball when she appeared as “Vintage Champagne” with a lavish dress and train in the pattern of grape bunches, vines and leaves. The dresses are accompanied by the faux jewels worn to the balls and by vintage photographs. The museum is free and open during regular dining hours.

Antoine’s, one of the city’s most famous restaurants, also has living memorials to Mardi Gras. The 160-year-old Antoine’s (713 St. Louis St., 581-4422) has grown to occupy three buildings and has 17 dining rooms, four of which are dedicated to Mardi Gras krewes, the social clubs that stage parades and balls.

Founded by Antoine Alciatore, the restaurant was a natural and established favorite with New Orleans society by the time some of the older krewes formed in the 1870s. The official krewe rooms, however, weren’t created for quite some time. Roy Alciatore helped create the first krewe room for Rex in 1942. An addition was built on to the restaurant featuring vaulted ceilings and a terrazzo floor. It is currently adorned with portraits of the kings of Rex and krewe medallions and years of photographs and news clippings. There are also intricately folded, sumptuously illustrated invitations to the balls of the 1880s.

Antoine’s is also home to rooms honoring two other very early krewes. Proteus sits across the hall from Rex and features pictures of its queens. The Twelfth Night Revelers have recently redone their second floor room over the main dining room. A fourth room honors the relatively younger Krewe of Hermes, again with portraits, invitations and more memorabilia. When the krewes aren’t using the rooms they are open to the public for dining and viewing.

One can even take a peek at next year’s Mardi Gras. One of the biggest float designers keeps his prop shop and float dens open to visitors. Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World (233 Newton St., 361-7821) on the West Bank always has classic floats on display and new floats under construction.

The ancient world is bizarrely animated at Kern’s studios. Greek, Roman and assorted figures of history and myth live on in the fantastic floats stored in Kern’s dens. Gigantic glossy busts of Marilyn Monroe, William Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette perch alongside Spiderman, Lady Di and Darth Vader. The den also holds Mardi Gras monsters King and Queen Kong, as well as Bacchusaurus. The main den holds the most modern and grand float, Orpheus’ Leviathan. The three-trailer Asian-style dragon is equipped with a kaleidoscopic fiberoptic lighting scheme.

The easiest way to get to Mardi Gras world is by hopping on the free ferry at the bottom of Canal Street. On the other side, a free shuttle van takes visitors to Mardi Gras World, or one can now opt for the short walk along the Jazz Walk of Fame. The walk along the top of the levee offers a great view of the river and the city. It is being completed with the addition of audio-equipped, French Quarter-style lamp posts heralding the city’s greatest contribution to American culture.

Anyone can be yatty in character or in speech. Simply put, in New Orleans, people have their own way of expressing themselves. Y’at words and accents are among the distinct flavors mixed into the local jargon. There are also Cajun words and inflections, the patois French of the Creoles and all sorts of slang from the raucous early days of jazz.

Unfortunately for those trying to blend in, there’s no simple trick or key. Some local accents follow a pattern, like saying ersters, erl and berl instead of oysters, oil and boil. Other pronunciations defy convention. No one really knows why the locals say bur-GUN-dy instead of BUR-gun-dy. But we do. And who would have guessed that some people would call Clio Street “C.L.-Ten.” But that’s another story.

More often though, we just use different words. Calling the streetcar a trolley, or a crawfish a crayfish is a great way to prove you’re just visiting. It may take many visits to establish your street credibility. In the meantime, the glossary below will help you figure out what the locals are saying to you.

Beignets. Beignets are donuts with corners and no holes. The coffee shop Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter made them world famous. At Cafe du Monde the beignets come two ways, sugared or plain.

Big Easy. It’s difficult to say where this nickname originated. Reportedly, it’s a nick name early jazz musicians gave to the city. It was repopularized in the early 1970s. The Times-Picayune’s gossip columnist of the times, Betty Guillaud, championed its use in response to New York becoming the Big Apple. At the same time, James Calloway, another Picayune reporter, published a novel called The Big Easy. That novel was the basis for the 1984 film starring Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin and John Goodman.

Cajun. Cajun is short for the French pronunciation of Acadian. It refers to the people and culture descended from Acadian refugees forced out of what is now Nova Scotia in the 1750s. Many settled in South Louisiana. Eventually many Cajuns moved to New Orleans, bringing their food, music and joie de vivre with them.

Cher. French word traditionally used by both Cajuns and French speaking Creoles as a term of endearment. Generally sounds like “shaw” or “share.”

Court Bouillon. Creole cooking this is a tomato enhanced fish stew with innumerable recipes and spellings. In his autobiography Louis Armstrong called it “cubie yon.” That’s a pronunciation that tends to work even in more distinguished Creole restaurants.

Creole. Originally referred to the generations of children born in the colony to parents from Europe or Africa. Now everything pertaining to their culture and cuisine is referred to as Creole. Depending on who you talk to, Creole can mean many different things.

Crescent City. The city gets this nickname from the way it is nestled in a swooping bend of the river, from the Uptown Riverbend area to the heart of the French Quarter.

Dirty Rice. A soul food recipe adding liver and spices to rice. Served in Creole restaurants as well.

Dressed. Sandwiches in New Orleans either come dressed – with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise – or they come undressed. See po’ boys.

Etouffee. French for smothered. It’s a Creole and Cajun cooking technique often used with shellfish, like shrimp or crawfish, or even duck. The main ingredient is cooked in a brown sauce with tomatoes, onions and seasonings. Pronounced eh-TO-fay. See roux.

Fais Do Do. Cajun term for a dance party. It literally means “to make sleep.” These large parties were originally held for family and friends in people’s homes. As the music and dancing went late into the night children would eventually tire themselves out and go off to sleep without being told. Hence the name. Pronounced “fay dough dough.”

Faubourg. French for neighborhood. The areas outside the original city limits were given names like Foubourg Marigny, Foubourg St. John, Foubourg Tremé. They are still called that.

Gris Gris. Something magic or a good luck charm. Gris gris bags and little totems are often the symbols of cast voodoo spells. Pronounced gree-gree. See voodoo.

Gumbo. New Orleans’ most famous soup. Comes from the African term for okra, which slaves used to thicken the soups. Gumbos are now thickened in different ways and can include everything (a gumbo ya-ya) or be predominantly seafood, fowl and sausage, or vegetarian (gumbo z’herbes).

Hurricane. Pat O’Brien’s invented and popularized New Orleans’ most famous cocktail. The rum drink is served in a tall glass with passion fruit juice and an orange and cherry.

Jambalaya. A well seasoned rice dish cooked with sausage and usually chicken. It’s a rustic dish meant to be cooked in a large pot to feed many.

Lagniappe. French for a little extra or a bonus. As in “They threw in a little lagniappe.” Pronounced lan-yap.

Laissez les bon Temps Roulez. French for “let the good times roll.” Never taken lightly in New Orleans.

Making Groceries. Y’at-speak for shopping for food.

Muffaletta. An Italian sandwich originally created at the central Grocery. It stacks ham, salami and provelone cheese on a special round loaf of bread and then stuffs it with olive salad. Pronounced “mu-fa-latta.”

Mymomenem. Y’at for “my mom and them” or my family or my mom’s place. When one goes to visit one’s mother, one can say “I’mgoinbymymomenem’s.”

Neutral Ground. In the early 1800s the French and American populations of the city didn’t get along particularly well. Some major streets had a French and an American side. The middle was referred to as the “Neutral Ground” taken from Napoleon’s term for the space between opposing armies.

Parish. Louisiana has parishes instead of counties. New Orleans is in Orleans Parish.

Po’ Boy. A sandwich of anything from roast beef to sausage to shrimp to oysters served on french bread. With tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise it is “dressed.”

Praline. A super sweet cookie made from melted sugar. Originally a French recipe with almonds, the locals have generally preferred the more readily available pecan.

Roux. The basis for much Cajun and Creole cooking, including gumbos, soups, sauces and other dishes. A roux is simply flour and oil cooked in a pan till it browns. Depending on what it will be used for it can be blond or dark brown for richer, smokier flavors.

Second Line. As a noun or verb, the second line is the funky walking/dancing part of a parade just behind the band, which is the first line. Second lines always include marching brass bands. The tradition comes from jazz funerals.

Shotgun. This is the term for New Orleans’ style of long thin houses. Usually they stretch four or five rooms in a row with the doors lined up. A house adjoining two such homes is a “shotgun double.” And a shotgun double with a second floor added in the back is a “Camelback shotgun.’ Camelbacks came about when the city based taxes on how many floors a building had on the street.

Streetcar. New Orleans has had the streetcar railroads since the 1830s. The St. Charles line is the only original line left. The Riverfront has a restored streetcar line. They are not called trolleys or cable cars. You’ll find those in San Francisco.

Vieux Carré. French for Old Square. This is the old term for the French Quarter.

Voodoo. New Orleans has its own brand of voodoo. It is a fusion of the voudun religion of Senegambian slaves and the Catholicism of the European colonists. Marie Laveau was the city’s most famous practitioner. From the 1830s-1870s she attended mass at the St Louis Cathedral every day.

Zydeco. The accordion and rub board led sound of South Louisiana’s Creoles. Zydeco was forged by luminaries such as Clifton Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie, Sr., Boozoo Chavis. A sort of twin to Cajun music but with a rhythm and blues sound.

Robert Florence is like many new New Orleanians. He moved here on a whim. But by odd circumstance he learned from relatives that one line of his family came from New Orleans. He traced his geneology and soon found himself combing through cemeteries looking for the family tombs.

As he became more intrigued by the cemeteries fate threw him another strange card. While pursuing a job with the National Park Service in the swamps of Barataria, a job opened up in their French Quarter bureau instead. He became a tour guide for the historic district and neighboring St. Louis Cemetery I.

Eventually, he started his own tour business (Historic New Orleans Walking Tours). He and his brother completed a coffee table book showing the cemeteries, their beauty and some of the people who care for them, New Orleans Cemeteries: Life in the Cities of the Dead. In 1998, he co-founded Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries, a group committed to tomb restoration.

New Orleans cemeteries are famous for their rich architectural schemes. Predominantly done in classical revival, the skylines of the cemeteries are as compelling as the city’s itself. Elaborate stone tombs are adorned with ironwork, statues and carved marble markers. If the tombs were like small mansions for the dead, then there were also more affordable condos in the form of wall vaults. Long rows of mausoleum-like vaults fill many of the cemeteries and familes used them for multiple burials as well.

Oddly, the city’s cemeteries sit in well traveled areas. Most, when they were laid out, were on the outskirts of the city. But as the city grew they were enveloped. So cemeteries now lie next to some of the New Orleans’ livelier sites and attractions. St. Louis I and II border the blocks where Storyville bordellos once buslted and early jazz came of age. St. Louis III lies behind the Fair Grounds. In the heart of the Garden District, Lafayette I sits across the street from the internationally renowned restaurant Commander’s Palace.

The above ground tombs are part of the local culture. Popular myth explains that they were built above ground because of the swamps and high water table. Parts of the city are actually below sea level. But this misses some of the heritage behind the tombs. Above ground tombs are not uncommon in France, Germany and Spain where early colonists came from. The tradition carried over to the new world. The elaborate tombs were meant for succesive burials by a family. And the family that owned the tomb maintained it through the years.

At first, colonists did attempt to bury the dead on the natural levees created by the river. Some of those coffins resurfaced during floods. But many of the early colonists intended to build above ground family tombs before they learned the Mississippi’s flooding habits.

St. Louis I is the city’s oldest cemetery, founded in 1789. It contains the city’s most famous tomb, that of voodoo queen Marie Laveau. She’s buried in the Glapion family tomb. It sits next to the tomb of former Mayor Ernest N. Morial.

Different organizations own the cemeteries. The city owns some, like historic Lafayette I in the Garden District. The Archdicese of New Orleans owns St Louis I, II and III. Other cemeteries are owned by private companies and secret societies, such as the Masons and the Odd Fellows. Upkeep of tombs is generally the responsibility of the tomb owners, whether they are a family or a fraternal organization, like the Fireman’s Charitable and Benevolent Association. Some cemetery companies and the Archdiocese offer contracts for regular upkeep, but the city does not. Over the years, as families have moved away, many tombs have fallen into disrepair.

It is only fairly recently that the cemeteries have become important to the city as historic treasures. In 1974, there was a proposal to destroy several city bocks worth of wall vaults in the St. Louis cemeteries. Save Our Cemeteries formed out of the successful efforts to save the wall vaults.

Save Our Cemeteries’(525-3377) main mission is to educate and promote preservation. They encourage New Orleanians to think of the cemeteries as outdoor museums. And they encourage people who grew up in the area to locate, maintain and even use their family tombs. “If people don’t use their family tombs then they will become forgotten,” says executive director Louise Fergusson. Her family maintains a tomb in Lafayette I.

Save Our Cemeteries has become more involved in tomb restoration. They also fund the upkeep of Lafayette I, keeping it clean and trimming the grass. They offer tours of Lafayette I to support their preservation efforts.

Tomb restoration is the primary focus of Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries (947-2120). Member tour companies all work in the cemeteries. They are Florence’s Historic New Orleans Walking Tours, Bloody Mary’s Tours, Haunted History Tours, Magic Walking Tours, New Orleans Ghost Tours, New Orleans Spirit Tours, New Orleans Tours and the Voodoo Museum. Their eventual goal is to restore one tomb per year in every historic cemetery. A single restoration costs between $3000-$4000.

Friends creates an avenue to encourage public support and participation in preservation. Some the tour operators also do it on their own. Mary Millan, also known as Bloody Mary of Bloody Mary tours has taken Odd Fellows Rest under her care.

At the end of the Canal Street bus line called “Cemeteries,” Odd Fellows Rest is owned by the Odd Fellows, a world-wide secretive benevolent society. The cemetery is laid out like a pyramid, with a mound in the center forming the eye, just like in the ancient Egyptian symbol printed on the dollar bill, and used by both the Masons and the Odd Fellows.

Bloody Mary chose Odd Fellows because she grew up in and still lives in the neighborhood. She gives daytime tours of St. Louis I and evening tours of Odd Fellows. She visits the Odd Fellows regularly during the day to maintain it, repairing damage from both neglect and occasional acts of vandalism. She also keeps an eye on the increasing problem of cemetery theft, an unfortunate side effect of the popularity of the cemeteries, the fiction of Anne Rice and consequent growth of “gothic” imagery and subculture.

Cemetery tours have helped fund restoration of the cemeteries. They also help educate. And part of the mission is to protect the cemeteries. As popular as Marie Laveau’s tomb is, it is plagued by desecration. It has been marked with X’s, supposedly by those seeking favor. In reality, that’s a gimmick for the gullible. Local voodoo priests and practitioners abhor the myth. Local preservationists dread the practice. And tour operators say there’s only one thing you should take from a cemetery: That’s a picture.

Florence once received a brick in the mail. An unsigned letter explained that it was a brick from Laveau’s tomb. And the perpetrator had nothing but bad luck since taking it. Florence, among others, was only too happy to see it returned to its rightful place.

New Orleans…a courtesan whose hold is strong upon the mature, to whose charm the young must respond. And all who leave her… return to her when she smiles across her languid fan. – William Faulkner

This is New Orleans. Queen City of the South. An exotic temptress. Steamy, sultry and sensual. For three centuries sunken lazily in the bend of a mighty river near the edge of a continent. Suitors come from near and far – drawn by her beauty, intrigued by her sounds and smells, beguiled by her grace, enchanted by her spirit.

This is New Orleans. Feel free to fall in love. Sin at will. There’s always time for guilt tomorrow, or the next day. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Eat more. Drink more. Let it all hang out. Dance wildly. Lose control. Yelp and yowl. Howl at the moon, if you’re so compelled. Or just take it easy. Get a good night’s sleep. Sip café au lait at dawn and watch the rich, muddy waters of the Mississippi turn golden-red with the rising sun.

This is New Orleans. She accepts all, because she’s a product of all. Daughter of Cajuns, Creoles, Native Americans, Spanish, French, Africans, English, Irish, Italians, Germans, the Caribbean and sundry other influences that, all together, shaped her into a city like no other you’ll encounter on land native or foreign.

New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin. – Mark Twain

Sin is a way of life in the city that invented the cocktail and, later, the drive-through daiquiris shop, the city where 200 years ago a game of dice and chance was introduced and came to be known as ‘craps.’

In a city that licensed and taxed its prostitutes well into the 20th century, libidinous appetites are still amply whet; Bourbon Street teems with establishments that hawk the pleasures of the flesh to passersby with such offers as ‘Live Sex Shows’ and ‘Wash The Girl of Your Choice.’ But between lust and gluttony – New Orleans’ two most popular sins – gluttony is always tops.

Per capita, New Orleans is home to the most overweight population with the shortest average lifespan of any city in the United States. And for good reason: from the city’s confluence of cultures centuries ago was born a cuisine that many would say is worth dying for.

The French brought bouillabaisse. Germans brought sausage. Native Americans provided filé powder. African-Americans provided okra. The Senegalese brought rice. The Cajuns provided seafood and cayenne pepper. Stir it all up in the Creoles’ black cast iron pot, and you’ve got gumbo. And if you’ve ever tasted a good gumbo, you know it was worth all the effort.

But gumbo is just a small part of New Orleans’ unique and storied culinary offering. Have beignets for breakfast, red beans and rice for lunch, maybe a nice Trout Amandine for dinner. And, in between, stop at every corner grocery store you pass for a shrimp, oyster or soft shell crab po-boy. There’s a good chance every meal you have in New Orleans will be the best you’ve ever had.

And then there’s the music.

New Orleans, that was a place where the music was as natural as the air. The people were ready for it like it was sun and rain. – Sidney Bechet

Living in New Orleans is living with background music. Die in New Orleans, and you might have a jazz band follow you from the church to the cemetery. If you’re lucky.

Jazz was born here, and it’s still around. Along with brass, funk, rock and roll, zydeco, Cajun, blues, gospel and more. Without much difficulty, you can catch a performance by some of the city’s more celebrated musical progeny – The Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Pete Fountain, Ellis Marsalis, Irma Thomas and the like – or you could drop in any given bar on any given night and catch a show you may never forget. Be having such a good time, you won’t realize that the sun has risen by the time the band’s beginning its third set.

Don’t you just love these long, rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t an hour – but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands – and who knows what to do with it? – Tennessee Williams, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

Decadence and sin pervade this grand old city on the mighty Mississippi. But it’s a graceful decadence, wrought of tradition and joie de vivre. And it’s sin with a kind of purity. Sin that celebrates life, instead of debasing it.

Come spend some time down here in the Big Easy. Take it easy for a while. Forget your cares. Know what it means to miss New Orleans.

By: Jason Otis, Contributor