1. Folks In New Orleans Have A Passionate Love Affair With All Food
Yes, New Orleans is known for its rich, decadent food and its top-notch restaurants serving three, four, and five courses. But New Orleanians also have a love for the underside of our world-renowned food. The stuff tourists don’t know about. For example, someone from outside of Nola might think it odd that we keep a two-year-old Hubig’s pie in our pantry. But to us, that pie is worth more than the top layer of your wedding cake on your one-year anniversary.
The unopened Dixie beer bottles collecting dust isn’t getting better with age. But it’s a relic more valuable to us than single malt scotch. And the MRE’s that sit in our garages almost a decade later? We keep them around as a reminder of one of the darkest times we ever experienced. Food is deeply intertwined into every part of our lives.
2. All Good Things End In “Dat”
As in “Get Dat,” “Heard Dat,” “Tap Dat,” and of course, “Who Dat!” If Boston is Red Sox Nation then Nola is Who Dat Nation.
While the phrase “who dat” is most often associated with the Saints, the words have come to embody so much more. They sum up the unyielding pride and perseverance of New Orleanians. The very essence of our character resounds “who dat”: who dat gonna keep us down? Answer: no one.
3. Not All New Orleanians Tawk Like Dat
The biggest comment I get outside of New Orleans is: “You don’t have an accent.” Most of us don’t, actually. At least not the one tourists expect to hear. Why? Because not everyone was born in the swamps eating gator meat and speaking Creole, and not everyone is from da’ parish.
Aside from that, the Metry meter most closely resembles the yat dialect we are all associated with, but most of us talk like everyone else.
4. Throw Away Your Watch, Because It’s Always Five O’clock Here
It’s not for nothing that Nola has world renown for being a party town. We don’t have a drinking problem here—we have a working problem.
The bars stay open late or all night here. We have go-cups. Lunch meeting cocktails. Post-work cocktails. Brunch cocktails. We pre-game for Saints games. Heck we pre-game for drinking. We post-game, double fist. Whatever. You serve it we can down it.
5. All New Orleanians Have A Deep Love For A Little Blue Dog
Out-of-towners might not get why we have a giant metal sculpture of a blue dog on Veterans Memorial Hwy., but they didn’t grow up here, with the little blue dog an integral part of their lives.
The blue loup-garou, which started popping up in the 1990s and helped to launch its creator to international fame, symbolizes all things New Orleans. R.I.P. Rodrigue.
6. New Orleanians Just Can’t Tear Themselves Away From Their Home Town For Long
You’ve heard the phrase, “you can’t go home.” For folks in New Orleans the opposite is true, they can’t stop returning home. No other city sees its native residents leave town with almost a 100 percent return rate.
We go away for a few years, excited about moving to a place where the crime rates are low, the infrastructure works, and the jobs are plentiful. But after a few years we are stifled by the homogeneity and we boomerang back to our city.
Even the people who aren’t originally from here who move away end up coming back. It’s just that great here.
7. Punctuality? Yeah, That’s Not Really Our Thing…
…Except for maybe a party. We can’t help it—blame it on our European roots—but time is, for us, a relative thing. Relative to when we wake up, how we feel, what the weather is like, whether the Saints won, etc.
We are a slow-moving people. There’s no rush in our gait, and being 15 minutes late to a meeting is expected. We’ll get there when we get there.
8. There Is Always A Perfectly Good Reason To Play Dress Up
Costuming is a rite of passage here. We costume for anything and everything.
All the major holidays are cause for celebration and costuming. St. Patty’s Day brings a sea of green clothing and men in skirts, Christmas brings a bunch of men dressed as scantily-clad Santa Clauses running amok in the streets, July brings hot roller derby girls chasing down residents and smacking them on their bottoms with wiffle ball bats, and August brings people of all ages in red dresses. And those are just a few of many.
And then some people dress up in costume with no party to go to, just ‘cause, and no one pays them any mind. That’s how we do.
9. If You Think New Orleanians Are Wild During Mardi Gras? You Should See Them Behind The Wheel
Or put more bluntly put, we suck at driving. We drive 10 miles below the speed limit in the left lane, just as often as we speed through residential neighborhoods. We blame it on the crater-sized potholes but let’s face it, we are ever in our own world down here, not beholden to such pesky things as speed limits and yield signs (blinkers and stopping on yellow are so overrated).
We also like to stop in the middle of the road to stop and talk to a friend we see walking down the street. We know there are cars behind us but hey, there’s no rush (see #5).
10. New Orleans Really Is All Dat
New Orleans is a unique city, rich with fascinating and eccentric people. Our culture pours over with the influences of the different ethnicities, religions, and heritages of our people, homegrown or not.
We know without a doubt that we are the best city in the world to live in—and if nothing else, at least we have Baton Rouge beat.
Did we miss anything? Tell us what you think is unique about New Orleans in the comments below! 
