Before al Qaeda and ISIS, before the age of attacks at crowded celebrations such as the Boston Marathon or the prelude to a Sugar Bowl, the “dangers” at a New Orleans New Year’s celebration were considerably more, well … entertaining.
As one year passes to the next, the famous French Quarter is usually jammed in the hours just before and after midnight, especially along Bourbon Street and around Jackson Square. If you were one of the thousands upon thousands of revelers there, you knew the pitfalls. You might get jostled. The crush of people might separate you from your companions, and in the era before cellphones, finding them was a major challenge. You might have underestimated the cold and discovered that your hands were freezing, and inebriated people near you might, well, get sick.
