Getting Rid of French Quarter Tourist Pee Pee
Dear Councilwoman Clarkson,
Did you know that the people in the Quarter have a common problem with the people of V
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Having cameras would be wonderful. I worked in the Quarter this past year during Mardi Gras. Watching tourists pee, spit, and do other assorted bodily functions on the street REALLY made me angry. Not to mention the fact that they felt like they could just leave trash everywhere. These people don’t do this in their hometown, why should they do it here? I got to the point where I was yelling at people who I found sullying the streets.
Excellent idea! Years back, the TV show “Cops” did one of their Mardi Gras episodes, and they showed NOPD arresting two women who were in Pirate’s Alley, peeing on the cathedral. They were shit-faced drunk, and the cop asks one where they’re from. She said, Memphis, and he asked her how she would feel if he went up there and urinated on Graceland. Priceless moment.
Spying on people with cameras, even with seemingly right intentions, is wrong, period and is not going to solve the issue any more than the existing network of cameras around the city is doing much of anything right now to reduce the rate of shootings, etc.
Should we all work to try to make N. O. cleaner OTOH? Yes, but a truly creative idea is what’s needed more than what’s likely to be another exercise in futility. People come to N.O. because N.O. is different and more European and easy-going. So how do locals react? We seem to prefer that our local law enforcement constantly swoop down on tourists over relatively small stuff and forget that they come here precisely to let their hair down. If people did not want to party they would not be coming and we would not be enjoying their dollars’ economic stimulus. We prove ourselves to be anything but “Big Easy” and we chase tourists off when we desperately need the fuel to the economy from them. A different idea as opposed to cameras spying on everyone: the kind of convenient public facilities that they have in Amsterdam and other places in Europe.
I was recently a tourist in New Orleans, and I even let my hair down (literally) some but I didn’t pee on the Cathedral, “relatively small stuff” as that would have been. Didn’t even think about it. Never occurred to me that peeing fueled much of anything. Nobody swooped on me either; perhaps that was due to my lack of peeing. Nonetheless, and despite not peeing on the Cathedral, I will definitely be back (and I won’t pee on it then, either.)
So you think more spending on more spy cameras, i.e. more Big Brother, is going to help, amount to a lot of good and is the right idea?
Everyone I know who likes to drink, drinks precisely because they want to loosen up. So, trying to shame people who are drinking is going to be effective? I can’t see it and I also can’t see how if the idea is to re-make the Quarter into another Disney locale that folks won’t opt for the real Disney World and leave us to ourselves. Moreover, I haven’t seen where this great network of spy cameras is really helping anything even as appealing as I imagine the concept sounds to some — although the potential for abuse is distinctly there as it would be in any city, not to mention how the local law enforcement has not exactly been free of controversy and allegations of heavy-handedness in their handling of certain situations.
Take down the cameras. The city won’t be any less safe without them. Sell them, instead, and use the funds to build more convenient facilities for everyone.
I think I’ve already beaten the hell out of the point that our elected officials can’t handle fiscal responsibility. I don’t think selling the cameras would do much of anything.
You seem to imply that people can’t control where they go to the bathroom when they drink. There are many people in this world that enjoy alcohol responsibly and don’t use the world as a public toilet.
The cameras - which are already in use apparently, though I haven’t seen any myself - aren’t going to help by themseleves obviously. No one is implying that the quarter should be turned into disneyland (even though the number of travel articles written within the past 6 months about how New Orleans is “family friendly” might try to convince you otherwise). Again, this isn’t a concept. The cameras are here. They might as well put them to good use for our amusement. If you’d like to see the cameras down, well, that’s a subject for another thread.