The New Yorker:

In the wake of the New Year’s attack, party-hard New Orleans staggers to its feet.

By Paige Williams

To prepare for New Year’s Eve, the City of New Orleans sent a tanker truck marked “LEMON FRESH” to wet down the streets of the French Quarter, the oldest part of the city, which was founded in 1718, near where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. Men with circular scrubbers and power washers followed, sudsing the sidewalks of Bourbon Street, which runs for twelve blocks, from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue. In “Bourbon Street: A History,” Richard Campanella writes that the corridor evolved from “a minor and rather middling artery” to “one of the most famous streets in the nation . . . a well-honed economic engine that employs thousands, pumps millions of outside dollars into the city’s economy, and single-handedly generates imagery and reputation about an entire metropolis.” Locals think of it as “a delectable mélange of historicity and hedonism”—or as “crass, phony, and offensive.” On New Year’s Day, a fifty-three-year-old Uber driver who introduced herself as Chanel told me, “Nobody who’s from here goes on Bourbon. I’ve been here all my life and I’ve probably been on Bourbon two times.”

Hours earlier, at around three-fifteen in the morning, an American terrorist from Texas, under the banner of isis, had plowed down a bunch of pedestrians on Bourbon Street with a Ford F-150 electric pickup truck, crashed, and jumped out shooting. Fifteen people, including the attacker, were dead. The French Quarter was now closed off and glowing with the static blue lights of police vehicles. A perimeter had been established, manned by law-enforcement officers in uniform and in tactical gear. Bellhops for the various hotels on Bourbon had been helping guests navigate their roller luggage past yellow crime-scene tape. Agents from the F.B.I. and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were increasing in number; no one was yet sure if the attack was over. The killer had left improvised explosive devices in coolers in at least two locations on Bourbon Street, including one on the sidewalk near a Sheraton hotel; a remote-detonation device was found in his rented truck; and the A.T.F. was investigating a fire at the Airbnb where he was reportedly staying, in another neighborhood. There were concerns about accomplices. The confusion had been magnified when, later that morning, in Las Vegas, an active-duty member of the Green Berets, a special-forces unit of the Army, parked a Tesla Cybertruck loaded with fireworks and fuel cannisters at the entrance of a Trump hotel, then detonated the explosives. Before the blast, he shot himself in the head. He had rented his vehicle through the same contactless app, Turo, that the terrorist in New Orleans had used.

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