A Street Tour Named Desire/Confederacy of Cruisers Bike Tours

Survival is on a lot of minds in New Orleans. We went from ground zero of the epidemic in it's earliest days, with our company losing some good friends, to the city that shut it down fasted and fullest, even avoiding the most recent national spike until the last few days because, luckily as a city, we care about each other.

Survival of our friends and our own businesses are on our mind also, survival of our mental well being and survival of the people who still have no jobs in a city who's economy depends on visitors like most of all.

Many people who have done a culinary your with us know our love for Loretta, she has always been in an inspiration and we love to tell her story while sharing her unique and tasty family recipes...she is a survivor...she came through a Victor in her recent cancer battle and here is a great newspaper story of survival as a purveyor of local sweets...getting limped in with Commanders place in a story is quite a food feat...Enjoy...

Gumbo on your Christmas wish list? Shipping dishes becomes lifeline for New Orleans restaurants The café tables were empty and the display cases were barren at the Loretta’s Authentic Pralines on North Rampart Street. But in back, Loretta Harrison and her crew had the

Good morning Friends of Confederacy of Cruisers...

Comment on potential names below, please...

While you know who we are and what we stand for, you know who our friends and mentors are, and you root for our survival through these Covid times, you do because you are our friends.

There are strangers that don't want to know that Confederacy of Cruisers is named after the greatest book about New Orleans ever written, Confederacy of Dunces, and want to assume we are a racist pro South group. Considering we are the only bike tour to visit people in the Lower Ninth Ward to share stories, that is silly, but that is the world we live in and we understand and will adjust. Thriving in post Covid times for our employees and families is our priority,

Plus new beginnings are fun.

We have a few new names we like and are tossing them out for your consideration...

Fully Dressed Tours , like our po' boys that are overstuffed and full of flavor, so our our rides

Street Tour Named Desire

Bike Tour Named Named Desire

Spoke' N Word Tours (or Spoke' N # # )

Or anything better you may have.

I am glad you have memories with the name that started us based on the book that shaped my life in this city, and we appreciate any help...

What would grab you if you did not know us and were curious about a company based on the best name?

Thanks,

Jeff

There was a Day of the Dead celebration at the Back Street Cultural museum for those we lost this year, including one of of my New Orleans mentors,Ronald Lewis, who some of you met through his own backyard museum,
the House of Damce and Feathers.

That's the Treme Brass band in the background, the Nortsode Skull and Bones Gang played drums and my toddler dances on my shoulders not understanding that it was all for people she will never get to meet but will know because they helped shape me.

Confederacy of Cruisers is open again...our few customers have enjoyed us immensely because we are lent up with stories that we need to let free.

Everything is done safely during these Covid times and we even have an abbreviated culinary tour available.

Hoping we can share with you just like I am trying to share with my daughter how we all are what we are because the older generation of Nee Orleans helped make us this way.

Thanks as always for your support,

Jeff

3 months has gone by faster than I can imagine.

I am blessed that I have a job that I have completely missed,

New Orleans is slowly opening again and so are we, but there is a huge difference between being open and having customers to serve. Besides the week 12 years ago when I put up our first website, our calendar has never been empty like this. We aren’t expecting a quick return and don’t even know what “normal” will be, but we are excited to see you all again sometime, we will be ready. Each time a customer has had to cancel a tour from a changed flight, sickness, weather or hangover, we say that ‘we will always be here in the future when you come back’, because we know that we always will and everyone does come back.

Returning customers like y'all are a huge part of what keeps us going.

I’ve been making the most of our empty city and exploring areas I haven’t in a while, the natural beauty, the architecture of a deserted French Quarter, biking with little traffic, getting my mind wrapped around the future. Confederacy of Cruisers staff won a biking contest for most miles biked in April with Lara, Danny and Andrew putting major distances, and me biking slow and not very far as I prefer.

It’s been almost as nice as real life.

Please tell your friends we are back. We will be masked and with a fresh perspective of the city as we have seen history happen here the last 3 months that tour guides will be talking about in 100 years on flying bikes, but we have fresh memories of how incredibly and cooperatively the city handled it and what all that cooperation means for our future.

If you never put that review of your awesome tour on TripAdvisor, it would be wonderful if you can take the time and do it now, anything that keeps us going over the hump till more people come and visit, is a great favor.

As lagniappe (for me as much as you) I’ll throw in fresh photos of my daughter enjoying what we had here. Everyone who has done a tour with me the last 2 years has had photos of her forced upon you mid tour. I’ve missed that too.

We started out as a 1 person company, with a borrowed Bronco II to bring the bikes down to Washington Square Park, a quiet and empty spot in the era following the storm.

Within a few years, on busy weekends we were taking 4 round trips to bring 24 bikes to the park. Then we'd just lock 10 up each night on the poles in front of the park. Ironically, you could never do that now, back then there was little thievery.

There was an old barber who once had a long running shop around the corner, I always loved it, there was no name, he'd been there for decades, he never needed one, just a hand made sign scrawled in marker "No New Customers/ No Children".

He didn't want business, he wanted to hag out with the last of his friends and be in the shop that was his living room most of his life.

He didn't reopen after Katrina and the building, along with the old lawyers office next door started rotting away.

A fellow bought it, and fixed it and said "I like what you've been doing for the neighborhood, would you like to rent the old barbershop?"

The No New Customers barbershop? My dream!

But I told him we can't really afford rent in the neighborhood, we are a bit of a street company.

He asked what we could afford, and he only thought a bit and said "I can do that". His dream was to make the street come alive and we could help him.

I really wanted to rename our company "No New Customers Bike Tours" but even I could see that was a poor business idea.

We have been in that spot since then and today came word that same landlord is waiving our rent for April, which works out well since we have no new customers, finally...or old ones for that matter.

But thank you to the people who are helping us through this tough time.

We can't wait to be back.

Every city and town has a story right now, as does every single person...

New Orleans story is not good.

Customers often look around our neighborhoods and our downtown with little but hotels and say "What is your industry here?" I always answer our industry is you (although we do produce hangovers, full stomachs and good memories, If that;s a thing). 400,000 residents and 12 million visitors, we are an emptier place without you in so many ways.

Obviously, I love tourism and people coming to New Orleans because they want a little something they can't get at home, and out city delivers, not just what our group of friends at Confederacy of Cruisers does, but the waves and smiles y'all get from the whole city as we bike around the areas we have lived for long, long periods of our lives. As we ride we don't just talk about the city, but what it means to us, and in my case how it saved me.

For the first time since I started this company, one person alone with no idea what was to to organically grow from it, we have an empty calendar during what is our busy season. We have no immediate prospects and all of our guides and bookers have been told to expect little to nothing for several months, and I have no problems with the decisions the city and our customers make, keeping the at risk and our neighbors safe is worth it.

We are not shut down, we are not on hiatus, but every bar, restaurant, and music venue in the city is, so we know what that means for the entire city. Me and my toddler I always tell y'all about will be hitting refresh on the emails every day waiting for everyone to come back, but we are expecting a long wait.

I hope we come through this alright, I hope wherever you are, you come out alright...maybe we all come out better. Struggle from the Katrina is what birthed this idea to share our city, and made me the better person I am today.

Send good thoughts to the guides you have loved, they will read it and that can help us through these tough months ahead.

Thank you all so much for taking us this far. New Orleans loves you as much as you love us, know that.

Jeff, Lycia, Keith, Lara, Danny, Robert, Robert, Ashley, Derek, Cassady, Andrew, and Micah.

(Since last week, when I knew this was inevitable, I wondered when the tears would come...they just did when I reread this...y'all can never know how grateful I am that you made us what we are and we got to share our stories with you for the last 12 or so years...here's to a million more...)

This is from my personal page,but I thought y'all might like it:

We are blessed, chapter 16:

Locals sometimes bag on Frenchmen Street for not being like it once was and being touristy and the new Bourbon Street and whatever, but I have to admit, I like tourists and touristy things, they are what they are and they are fun. When my customers ask "Should the go to X (say Preservation Hall) or is it touristy?" I always like Absolutely the f**k yes to both! (sometimes I don't say 'f**k"), things are and get touristy because we tell people to do awesome things. And tourists are people who are drawn to what makes this place special.

I've gone to Frenchmen Street more in the last few weeks than in the last few years, usually between the hours of 7 and 9...tell you what, people love the heck out of it, everyones in a great mood, band members seem happy, door guys are all chill,and Edie, my toddler, has a blast.

She dances by the door, right at the edge, the musicians will play specifically to her, she gets invited on stage...and you know what, when the tourists walk past her shaking her rump on the street and say"That's so New Orleans" at first I'd giggle a little thinking how cliche that sounds...but f**k yeah! It really is, and we are living the life!

We live in a place where I can still bring a 20 month old baby to a string of clubs where she gets to dance to some of the best swing jazz players and brass bands anywhere...

They are right. That is so New Orleans, things I take for granted are special, babies in other places don't get to dance on stage and at second lines and then bike home though 150 year old neighborhood where everyone single person stops what they are doing to say Hi.

I love seeing things through outsiders unjaded eyes.

Anyway, I'm in love with our city.

(I never take photos on Frenchmen because I watch Edie close, so photo credit Marisa Morton

Everybody in New Orleans has watched this today, I lprobably did a dozen times and laughed every single time.

These ladies did the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest int terms of coming to New Orleans to eat...

True inspirations!

Homer, Katrin and Janine Eat Their Way Through New Orleans Two Swiss girls love the Simpsons as much as they love New Orleans. So of course they needed to recreate this sequence! __ Thanks to all the awesome people o...

The 10th year after the storm, NPR used me, amd Confederacy of Cruisers, as the main story in a 1 hour hour Marketplace show about the post Katrina economic changes in the city (I was a food delivery boy before the storm, so my story and company were a part of the change). They used me between all the different pieces of famous New Orleanians, Big Freeda, Trombone :Shorty and Leah Chase with my personal stories punctuating theirs.

I only mention this because afterwards I was not proud of being in the NPR piece itself, I was proud because I was in a piece with Leah Chase. That I was seen as someone who's story deserved to be told aside hers was the biggest honor I could imagine.

That's all I bragged of, being worthy of sharing time with Leah Chase. And to me it's all that was bragwprthy.

She was one of a kind,a spirirt that couldn't be topped and a credit to the city, amd human kind.

She'll be remembered for who she was and what she cooked but when that is gone, her recipes will always keep her alive.

RIP Leah Chase.
https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/entertainment_life/food_restaurants/article_addcc488-7df7-11e8-a1c2-8b4aad319fdd.html?03244&utm_content=buffer5dbe7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebookneworleans&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR3BqskNCtNDnr1WAHZds0NkNM4Dd649xJ5HKhjSotDzMAlsvmIOqXbxYxQ

11 years ago, without an office, without a shop we rolled the 2 bikes off the back of Ford Bronco II and onto the Royal Street side of Washington Square Park.

The city was still quiet a few years after the storm, but I wanted to take people on bikes into the areas of the city I loved, something that was never done before.

I was thinking of one of our early customers, he was in his 70's and his name was Lowell, his wife wrote the sweetest email that said that her husband was so looking forward to this tour because he loves neighborhoods...honestly I laughed...while I loved my neighborhoods, the idea of liking neighborhoods in general was something I never thought of, but Wednesday I went on a bike ride through the streets of the entire city and I thought about Lowell...and I was like him, I just freaking like neighborhoods. I like all of them.

Thanks to all our customers the last 11 years, so many repeat customers have seen the same guides get married, or have a kid, or have lots of kids and there are so many I think of from little things I've learned along the way...biggest lesson was by year 3, I learned that I like everyone...I didn't know that for sure until I had spent so much time with strangers and enjoyed every day of it.

We are blessed that we get to do what we love, which luckily are my only skills, biking, talking, eating and drinking, and are grateful that we make y'all as happy as you make us.

11 years from a business started for under $3000, quite a run so far...again, thanks.

Every once in a while I end up having to read a review of somebody who just doesn't like or get our company, or in tonights case, me.

It doesn't hurt my feelings, especially if the criticisms are of the things that I think make our tours great (we don't plan the route in advance) or things that make no sense (we don't talk enough about history on a tour that is not advertised as a history tour), no company can please everyone...but sadly, it can hurt the business and the employees as we roll into our slow post Christmas season.

If you have taken a tour (especially the culinary one) with us and like who we are and what we do, I'd ask (as I think I do every 3 years or so) if you never have, please click the link and write a nice word about the time you spent with us.

It's what keeps us rolling all these years, as much as we wish the one person who doesn't enjoy us doesn't get an larger voice, they do.

In exchange I can guarantee your KingCakes will be fresh, your brass bands will be loud, your crawfish will be spicy and the Saints will win the Superbowl.

(OK, I can only guarantee the last one, sorry fans of teams that are not the Saints)

Thanks

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60864-d1059866-Reviews-Confederacy_of_Cruisers_Bike_Tours-New_Orleans_Louisiana.html

Confederacy of Cruisers Bike Tours (New Orleans) - 2018 All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (with Photos) - TripAdvisor Great tour, Danny was a very knowledgeable and fun tour guide. Would highly recommend to friends, loved learning New Orlean history.

The most wasteful part of my day is fielding calls from West Coast salesman who can not believe our company does not want to use their online booking service.

They email and call all the time and explain how much easier our life would be if we had less contact with our customers, sent more of our money to huge out of state corporations instead of having Andrew, Carin, (and Lycia and Myself, us owners love this too) talk to each and every customer before booking and spend the time to to email and call them.

Citibank and Silicon Valley are doing fine without us.

Inefficient? Yup.

The only way we will have it? Yup.

Able to explain to a person who's job it is to sell me a system that makes for less human contact and less local workers? Impossible,

Here we are, our newest project! We ar celebrating New Orleans long colorful history of art on walls throughout our city with a ride around our neighborhoods tailored to show the best murals and public art we have.

The tours will be starting next month,and if you know us,you know they won’t disappoint.

Stay tuned...

https://www.neworleansstreetartbiketours.com/

NOLAStreetArtBike HOME

In the middle of packing, our fearless leader Lycia,who last year skipped some work to get her EMT license loading up her truck to roll out to North Carolina to scout low lying areas, and set up base camp and logistics for the relief efforts with a local rescue group.

We are wishing her and everyone in that area well. We hope she isn’t needed but if she is,they’ll be glad to have her.

(and I’m in charge here,whooo...there’s gonna be some changes)

On this 13th anniversary of the storm, I try to celebrate the positive that comes out of the negative...One of my favorite things was down at the House of Dance and Feathers, Ronald Lewis, lifelong lower Ninth Ward resident's homemade cultural museum, where we bring all of the Ninth Ward Rebirth Bike Tours...well one day I asked him, "Way back in the year 2004, when you were still working on the streetcar lines, did you ever imagine folks from all over the country and world, thousands and thousands of people over the course of a decade would jump on bicycles and bike to the lower ninth ward to hang out in your backyard and talk about life?"

We agreed the world is an amazing place.

Neither his museum or Confederacy of Cruisers (I decided after the storm I could never work for anyone else) or the friendship between him and I would exist.

Good things grow from the worst soil.

Thanks Ronald, you've made me a better person through our working together.

Garndma and Pop Pop are here visiting to see our baby Edie Pearl, and just like everybody else, I used google to think of new things to do on this rainy day...

So I google "Museums in New Orleans locals would like" and scroll down and I double taked...it was weird, 3rd thing was Confederacy of Cruisers.

I'd look them up, but I here the guide/owner is off because his parents are visiting.

The Best Things to Do in New Orleans Besides Eating and Drinking Don't miss the ostrich races...

I know this isn't the most amazing photo to y'all , cubby holes am were a bug thing in nursery school, but most people usually move on... But if you saw the before photo (which no one would ever take) you'd be more impressed.

New years resolution: don't touch the cubby holes so it stays this neat.

Thanks Amdrew and Micah

Riding to With New Orleans Public Defenders tonight to help support their woefully underfunded office in our city.

We have bikes to use if you don't have.

All money is going to their giant Second Line to raise money and publicize the problems the indigent in our city face in getting legal help.

A little biking and drinking for a good cause, how can this not be good.

Thanks.

This is pretty fun...Working with Bon Appetit and some of the coolest food and drink spots in the city for a one weekend eating, drinking and biking extravaganza.

October 19-22.

Very proud of how cool this will be

Home New Orleans is where we want to eat everything right now. And there’s no better way to explore this city than by bicycle, which is why Bon Appétit partnered with Confederacy of Cruisers Bike Tours to help you peddle, eat, and drink to celebrate NOLA’s 300 years of cuisine.

Top Ten Best Guided Bike Tours in America Top Ten Best Guided Bike Tours in America Get your kicks on Route 66 By the widest of margins riding a bicycle is the most efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transportation in America. It also happens to be the most enjoyable way to tour and explore a

We don't toot our own horn often, but we will toot one of our guides, Keith's, horn for him.

The excerpt from todays NY Times (for those that don't want to use one of your 10 valuable free articles a month in this newsworthy era on us):

"While I was searching for rentals, Meghan compiled a list of friend-recommended restaurants and made reservations for a three-hour Confederacy of Cruisers “Creole New Orleans” bicycle tour ($49 per adult). It was a two-family outing that wouldn’t have occurred to me. But the two- and three-year-olds rode in toddler seats mounted on each dad’s bike. It ended up being a high point of the trip.

Our guide, Keith, a native New Orleanean in a white linen shirt, a straw hat and a silver beard, performed his hometown’s history with theatrical flourish. In his telling, the complex interwoven narrative of African slaves and freed blacks, of French Canadian “Cajuns” and Colonial Protestants, of German, Italian and Irish immigrants was an artfully constructed dark comedy. The ride itself had us navigating mellow side streets a few blocks at a time, then stopping at a cathedral or a monument or an old recording studio-turned-laundromat, where Keith would fire off anecdotes and trivia, periodically lamenting that he was “again giving unjustifiably short shrift to the Native Americans” — a lighthearted yet self-aware acknowledgment of how much history he was glossing over."

I read that and even I need to take his tour again. He just left today for his 3 week vacation in Nicaragua, millions of people will be disappointed as they are clamoring for his awesomeness...luckily we are all here to be 95% as cool as him.

We Wanted a Carefree Family Trip. So We Invited a Second Family. A trip to New Orleans with friends fails to recapture the footloose feeling of life before toddlers. But it did make memories and save money.

CoC Friends, if anyone is in town for Mardi Gras, look for a bunch of us in Box of Wine which precedes Bacchus along the Lower Garden District stretch of St Charles.

Victor, our culinary guide is the honored King on a float you wont believe with secret throws that will make your mouth water.

The rest of us will be forcing mediocre wine down your gullet.

This is fun, so scream our names. We are stumblewalking for this one (except for victor being pulled in his throne) and are easy to catch up with.

Good times coming.

In stock at the shop

The ultimate stocking stuffer! Only $28

Now in at the shop....

Hoodies are in! And everything in the shop is 20% off Black Friday and Small Business Saturday

through most of the year, customers ask us why we have so many bikes, and I just kind of shrug and wonder myself... thinking maybe I'm just a bike hoarder amd I should have an intervention..

Then comes the perfect fall Saturday afternoon like today... this is the before and after.

3 PM, the before, when I let with my afternoon tour of 9 amazingly cool Bowdoin graduates gathered for their 35th annual reunion and all the tours were out..

And 5:30, after, when I finally saved the last bike back in when everyone returned at once.

We made a lot of happy today, and now I have an excuse for having so many bikes.

I've been giving tours for 10 years and have never had a group love me as much as Ashley's group loved her yesterday.

now she has reunite with the Bachelorettes at a wedding in Key West and visit the other 2 folks in England.

Drinking tour customers need to love her less, maybe... too much vacation time she'll need at this rate.