New Orleans has one of the highest returning citizen rates in the nation. Many families have lived in New Orleans for generations, this serving as the foundation of many family businesses that are embedded in New Orleans history such as Perlis, a men’s clothing store that has provided the white tuxedos that most private schools in New Orleans require the young men to wear for graduation, as well as Canal Barge, a barge company that controls most of the shipping and export boats that make up much of the economy of the city, and that is run by the Lanes’, one of the most influential and rooted families in New Orleans.
This generational commitment to New Orleans is certainly inadvertently (and perhaps advertently as well) rewarded with the carrot on the stick being societal stature for the select privileged in the form of debutante balls for one’s daughters where they are presented in white Cinderella-esqe finery with the grand pomp and show once dedicated to the of-age women looking to find a suitable gentleman to marry, but now reduced to opportunities for ostentation, one-upmanship, and hubristic displays of wealth. This prestige is also reflected in the Mardi Gras Krewes, for which familial legacy often determines which lucky few have the honor of throwing cheap plastic, and often liquor-soaked, beads and personalized throws from floats to the screaming sea of purple, green, and gold, all the while in what are basically the equivalents of extremely expensive, more blinged out versions of clown costumes. Indeed, what in many northern states is dedicated to the hardly-bent pages of the society section of the newspaper, takes more of a center stage here in New Orleans—a consequence of being part of the Deep South in general. However, in all seriousness, there is a certain je ne sais quoi to the city that causes people to fall in love with it and never want to leave, which is why so many citizens have ancestors who have lived in New Orleans for generations, and probably family that lives in the city currently. |