NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans’ most famous street is a nightly swirl of neon and happy tourists strolling with a beverage in hand.
A blend of jazz joints, strip clubs, bars and restaurants, visitors can find everything from live sex to four-star dining on Bourbon Street. They also can count on being snared by barkers determined to lure them into one place or another, or another or another.
An 25-year-old ordinance was designed to outlaw barkers, but has been thinly enforced.
Now, businesses and residents say the barkers are straying from the informally tolerated confines of Bourbon Street to other parts of the Quarter and they want it stopped.
The city’s Alcohol Beverage Outlet Control Board and New Orleans Police Department have stepped in and are threatening the hustlers.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
