French Quarter

Blanche DuBois isn't the only hot gal in the new Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" that opened Sunday night. Her sister, Stella, is also full-steam ahead in a production that makes sense of the attraction between Stella and her husband, the explosive Stanley, by giving them the bond of passion for one another. And Stanley? Pretty hot, too. Temperatures are rising all around at the Broadhurst Theatre, where Tennessee Williams' 1947 play, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is a great American classic with iconic characters, is being given a superb revival with a mostly African-American cast.

Here in New Orleans they call it a lagniappe, a local term for bonus. It could be 14 oysters for the price of 12, or eight postcards for the price of six. If, for instance, you show any enthusiasm for the local cuisine, it might be an extra biscuit on your plate at lunch. Or, if the pralines look good and you say so, you just might find an extra one in your bag. The true lagniappe, of course - the real bonus of a New Orleans visit - is the natives' exceptional hospitality, strongly laced with a Gallic sense of joie de vivre.

Outside the French Quarter, some of the city's streets were brimming with water, and others were covered with tree limbs, bricks and roof tiles. A few somber souls walked along the avenues, slowly taking in the destruction Hurricane Katrina had brought hours earlier yesterday. There was a lot of head-shaking and lip-biting. The French Quarter was a different story. In the symbolic and tourism heart of New Orleans, Vaughn Mordenti - 60, shirtless, and in good shape - was bellowing from his balcony: "We are so lucky!

In the late 1970s, an amusing English-language newspaper, Paris Metro, opened its office in a magisterial, crumbling building in Paris's moody, old Marais section. Once the fashionable home of 17th-century kings and courtiers, near the center of Paris, the historic Marais lost its cachet as people moved to the east of Paris, following new trends and fresher air. By the 20th century, the Marais was, in part, a Jewish ghetto, with some reasonable rents, ruined mansions called "hotels" and only one fine restaurant.

You can chart the steady return of tourists - the lifeblood of New Orleans - to the city in many ways. The convention bureau tracks the numbers, and so do the city's marketing agency and the airport. Even parking-lot attendants will make educated guesses. But if you want an indication that tourists have returned in strength to a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina three summers back, take a look at the landmark Caf? du Monde, the most famous coffeehouse in America, and arguably the world.

If you squint and wander among the muraled dining rooms of the new Cafe Nola, it isn't hard to imagine you've taken a detour through the French Quarter. Neptune hovers over the bar to your left, baubled with sequins and beads and wielding his scepter as if hailing the drinkers from his carnival float. Jackson Square and Cafe du Monde await you farther on, warmed by the sun and framed in arches of palm fronds and lush New Orleans greenery. Step down into Hurricane Alley, and its vine-covered brick walls, lanterns and trickling fountain make a convincing courtyard scene - the trompe l'oeil painted ceiling even twinkles with the sapphire sky of a Crescent City dusk.

Stephanie Stokes is an assistant editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune After Hurricane Katrina forced my family to live in Baton Rouge, an hour away from our flooded, uninhabitable home, I comforted myself during the long drive on I-10 with music from my adopted hometown of New Orleans. The wistfully optimistic "We'll Meet Again," performed by local trumpeter Wendell Brunious, held new meaning. And I shook my head at comic songwriter Benny Grunch's post-storm update to "Ain't Dere No More," his bittersweet homage to shuttered New Orleans stores and eateries.

Nobody would ever confuse Camden's Admiral Wilson Boulevard with Paris' Champs Elysees or New York's Fifth Avenue or even Philadelphia's Broad Street. This two-mile stretch of gas stations, liquor stores, cheap motels, and sex-oriented attractions is about as devoid of charm as an urban strip can get. But when the publisher of The Gentlemen's Club Magazine, a publication aimed at patrons of go-go bars, called the bars of the boulevard "porn palaces" and "too sleazy" to be included in the mag, James Trout, night manager of the French Quarter club, was outraged.

The jukebox blasted out Guns 'N' Roses. A rotating mirrored ball sent rays of neon light down from a low, black ceiling. Men nursed beers at a circular bar, filling the room with talk and cigarette smoke. And a young dancer named Charlotte in a one-piece purple bathing suit rubbed up against a silver pole in a pulsating maneuver that left her standing on her hands. It would have been like any other late afternoon at the French Quarter on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Camden - except that yesterday was Mom's last day. Meet Margaret O'Donnell "Mom" Minerva, 75, kitchen boss of the French Quarter, maker of Mom's Special, a tryst between a cheesesteak and a club sandwich, single mother long before it was common, counselor to the brave young women who climb the club's stage each night to bump and boogie for a roomful of strangers.

City officials are pouring perfume down the reeking sewers of the aging French Quarter, but they deny it's just to spare the nostrils of fastidious Republicans. Pine-scented oil is used routinely to take care of odors, and no special effort was mounted before the 45,000 to 65,000 convention delegates, press and related visitors descended, said a spokesman for the city Sewage and Water Board. "We do it all the time and all over the city for the general populace," said Arnold Porsch.

Blanche DuBois isn't the only hot gal in the new Broadway production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" that opened Sunday night. Her sister, Stella, is also full-steam ahead in a production that makes sense of the attraction between Stella and her husband, the explosive Stanley, by giving them the bond of passion for one another. And Stanley? Pretty hot, too. Temperatures are rising all around at the Broadhurst Theatre, where Tennessee Williams' 1947 play, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is a great American classic with iconic characters, is being given a superb revival with a mostly African-American cast.

NEW ORLEANS - Sitting near the New Orleans streetcar line aboard a van equipped with video screens and a speaker system, tourists watch actress Vivien Leigh ride the city's vintage electric rail vehicles in a scene from the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire. In the French Quarter, passengers look on as Bruce Willis escapes attackers outside a praline shop in the 2010 film Red. They also watch a young Kirsten Dunst bite into a woman's neck in Jackson Square in one of her early roles, as a bloodthirsty child vampire in 1994's Interview With the Vampire.

NEW ORLEANS - Former Archbishop Philip Matthew Hannan, who gave the eulogy for President John F. Kennedy and later served more than three decades as the head of the New Orleans Roman Catholic Archdiocese, died yesterday. He was 98. Hannan was the 11th archbishop in New Orleans history and one of the most active. When he turned 75 and had to retire as archbishop, he became president of WLAE-TV, the public television station he founded. Assigned to New Orleans in 1965 from Washington, where he had been auxiliary bishop since 1956, he found that the old St. Louis Cathedral, in the middle of an area of the French Quarter swarming with tourists, street performers, tarot card readers and musicians, had a unique pleasure for a churchman.

Stephanie Stokes is an assistant editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune After Hurricane Katrina forced my family to live in Baton Rouge, an hour away from our flooded, uninhabitable home, I comforted myself during the long drive on I-10 with music from my adopted hometown of New Orleans. The wistfully optimistic "We'll Meet Again," performed by local trumpeter Wendell Brunious, held new meaning. And I shook my head at comic songwriter Benny Grunch's post-storm update to "Ain't Dere No More," his bittersweet homage to shuttered New Orleans stores and eateries.

National Cherry Blossom Festival Washington, D.C. March 27-April 11 Blooming cherry trees ringing the Tidal Basin signal the arrival of spring with an explosion of life and color. Perfect for a family vacation or a romantic getaway, with a family day of free activities, fireworks, a parade, a lantern-lighting ceremony, street festivals, and cultural performances. Deals: Partner hotels include the W Washington, D.C. (deluxe guest rooms starting at $289); the Dupont Hotel (deluxe guest rooms starting at $130.

It doesn't take much imagination to step from the Center City sidewalk into a piece of the French Quarter. Just give a little blink as you stroll down 12th Street north of Sansom, pull the door handle, and head into Les Bons Temps. Inside the elegant facade, where the name of a long-gone florist, H.H. Battles, is still scrolled in stained glass above the door, you could be inside a Bourbon Street Creole palace. There's a grand staircase just beyond the bar that sweeps up to a mezzanine where tables perch behind wrought-iron-trimmed galleries.

The French Quarter is famous for its Dixieland jazz, but did you know that it also coined the word Dixie? Or that it put the dollar sign on U.S. currency? Or that its distinctive architecture is Spanish, not French? It's been home to this country's first Princess of Monaco (no, not Grace Kelly), yet one of its most famous French restaurateurs really wasn't a count - just a wine salesman? Since a Royal Street pharmacist is credited with concocting the first American cocktail in the 1830s, what better way to explore the heart of the city than to take a Cocktail Tour.

You can chart the steady return of tourists - the lifeblood of New Orleans - to the city in many ways. The convention bureau tracks the numbers, and so do the city's marketing agency and the airport. Even parking-lot attendants will make educated guesses. But if you want an indication that tourists have returned in strength to a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina three summers back, take a look at the landmark Caf? du Monde, the most famous coffeehouse in America, and arguably the world.

"Pity and patience are exhausted. " You said it, Tennessee. This late Williams play, resurrected from a deserved grave by EgoPo, demonstrates (at least it did at a recent preview) exactly why it ran only five performances on Broadway in 1977. As a New Orleans reviewer wrote then, "Da chicory's on da stove, da cockroaches are on da walls, and all da characters are on da de-cline. " Not only is Vieux Carre overwritten, it's overdirected and overacted. If the production didn't take itself so seriously, it would be tempting to see it as a parody - all moanin' and shriekin' and coughin' and succumbin' and gropin' - with everyone in underwear or silk robes they twitch at incessantly.

For all her wet destruction, Katrina's floodwaters could not extinguish the centuries-old pilot light of inspiration that has reignited New Orleans' restaurant scene. A year after the storm, the dining landscape has reemerged there far less battered than so many other aspects of the city. There have been major losses, to be sure, such as neighborhood favorites like Mandina's and Mandich, not to mention virtually every refrigerator, wine cellar and walk-in in the city. The workforce is still bare-bones.