re: For the first time, I recommended that a friend not come visit NOLA

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It makes a lot of sense. You can abandon New Orleans, or you can support it.

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More of my money goes to New Orleans than anywhere else. However, if it ever reaches the point where I don't think me or my family is safe, I have no qualms about saying sayonara. There's no ideal of a city that's worth my family's safety or worth "fighting" people (maybe figuratively, but certainly not literally) who clearly don't give a damn about such an ideal or me or my family's safety. Knock yourself out if you think otherwise.

Those who choose not to patronage New Orleans are not " abandoning New Orleans". I was just mugged by reality . If you step back, and separate your emotional attachment from a place, and see it as it truly is, New Orleans fails. The blight and crime overwhelm all the good points . And the air of malevolence and the knowledge that if you are a victim, redress is highly unlikely. It just "feels" sketchy now in places that used to be solid.

If you are "of" that culture and want to stick it out as a show of solidarity, knock yourself out. But I'm of the age where I can hop on a plane and be most anywhere - Safely- and without being surrounded by thousands of professional predators-in a days time.In the meantime, You Nola loyalists work it out and get back to us when it's worthy of a visit .