I had a chance to move to Austin and I didn’t. It would be hyperbole to say the Marigny is turning into Cleveland, but in a sense it feels like it’s turning into Uptown, a suspicion emphasized by a recent trend among realtors to refer to a chunk of the Seventh Ward as the “New Marigny”.Īnd yet. Gossip addresses which developer has purchased what property at least as often as it reports who was seen canoodling with whom.
(I don’t know what an art bar is, and when I emailed to interview them for this article, they never answered but put me on their mailing list). Gene’s Po-Boys has closed (sorry, it ain’t dere no more), and the building next to it has become an art bar. Ostensibly this is because they needed fixing, but the consensus suspicion is that it’s being done to cater to the tourist influx expected from the rebounding AirBnBs and almost-completed hotels and condo blocks dotting the area. The grimy gay bar where I went on my first date with my current partner has been repainted and made into a “pub” more ominously, the city is repairing streets and sidewalks. I moved into the Marigny in late 2017, and I already want the changes to stop. One of the many half-joking truisms about gentrification is that you always want to be the last person to move to a neighborhood.
In a city where nostalgia is a way of life and where what used to be is often more relevant than what is, the inevitability of change can seem like a personal insult.
