Content warning: mention of the NYE terrorist attack and mental health challenges.
The terrible attack on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve was a jarring and awful way to start 2025, and has reverberated throughout New Orleans since. After a 36-hour partial shutdown of the French Quarter, the focus was on resuming “business as usual” and trying to pick back up where things had been interrupted. Bourbon Street is one of the cultural and economic engines that power New Orleans, with densely-packed businesses and many jobs, forming a complex ecosystem. Hotel workers, bartenders, cooks, musicians, barbacks, sound-people, waitstaff, dancers, door-people—all of them depend on crowds being robust. Suddenly, many people were fearful of crowds or scared to go back to work, but those fears needed to be ignored in order for “business as usual” to resume.
The service industry and the cultural economy are distinct but overlapping spheres, but in this case they represent one large pool of people who were traumatized by the attack. Since so many folks who work in the culture and service worlds were deeply impacted, we want to use this month’s column to hold space and reflect, and to share a few resources that might be helpful.
Dancers who work in the first few blocks of Bourbon Street are still trying to process the NYE attack, which took place right outside their places of work, where they often stand to wait for a cab home. They were faced with a wave of ticket cancellations for shows they were putting on, as many performers also play another role as independent producers. As tourists struggled to feel safe, many people decided not to go to shows and requested refunds for tickets they’d pre-purchased. The financial hit on top of the trauma and fear compounded the terrible start to the new year.
Musicians from a Bourbon Street club stayed after their 2 a.m. closing to count tip money and heard what they later realized was the police shoot-out with the attacker as they headed to their cars. When they returned to work on Friday, one of them was surprised at how uneasy he felt being back in the Quarter, and was even more surprised when it was pointed out that he was feeling a trauma response—it hadn’t occurred to him, and he started asking about mental health resources. The unease persisted through a strange weekend of light crowds, with an underlying unsettling feeling.
Waitstaff from Bourbon Street restaurants, reeling from a shattered sense of normalcy, then tried to recover from two nights of lost work as they started the new year. For folks in the service industry, a single unexpected lost shift can be very destabilizing, and the drop in tourism at a time that should be the high season was yet another ripple effect of an awful act of violence.
The same people who create the energy that the City markets itself on are some of the same people who were most impacted by the attack and its aftermath. The forced pause, with the French Quarter shutting down for two nights, was reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the same complex tangle of challenges arose for folks who work in the cultural economy and service industry. A word that kept coming up then was “compounding” and it’s relevant again now. The loss of a sense of relative safety at work, compounded by loss of income, compounded by lack of resources and support, compounded by a drop in tourism, compounded by all the complexities of trauma, all serve as a stark reminder of how fragile the cultural and service ecosystem is.
We will continue to share any resources that can support cultural-service workers that we come across, and please reach out to us if you know of any or if you need help with applications or other information: programs@maccno.com.
RESOURCES
Mental health for musicians
sweetrelief.org/mentalhealthfund.html
United Way of Southeast Louisiana fund for Bourbon Street workers (100-300 blocks)
louisianahospitalityfoundation.submittable.com
Southern Smoke Foundation
mental health help for food and beverage workers
southernsmoke.org/mental-health
(Southern Smoke also had an emergency fund for folks affected by the attack, but it closed 1/22. We will share if another round opens/check back on their main page to see if you could still qualify for general emergency relief money.)
southernsmoke.org/emergency-relief
This space is provided to MaCCNO as a community service and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or editorial policies of ANTIGRAVITY.
