Happy Valentine’s Day.

Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, it’s a corporate-driven holiday designed to boost chocolate and card sales. Yes, if you’re single it brings about the hope that everyone involved in a relationship will be stricken with pinkeye and have an eye gunky Valentine’s Day. But who really cares?

Silly as it is, we all need some love and joy right now. The glow of returning has worn off and it can be hard to live in New Orleans at the moment. There are the small frustrations – the stop signs, the closed restaurants, the cell phone service – and the big ones – the destroyed neighborhoods, the changed population, the overwhelming feeling of ineffectiveness.

But we still love her. We still love the live oaks, we still love the gumbo, we still love Tipitina’s, and you know we still love F&M’s.

So this Valentine’s Day, rather than being wrapped up in our lovers or our bitterness, we should celebrate the fact that we live in the sexiest city in America. Pump some of those student loan dollars into Café Degas or Jacques-Imo’s, take a walk in Audubon Park, go down to the French Quarter and act like a tourist – anything to remind you of why you fell in love in the first place.

Happy Valentine’s Day, New Orleans.