How Not to Look Like a Tourist

Locals don’t give directions using ho-hum terms like east, west, north, and south. Instead, it’s uptown, downtown, lakebound (as in Lake Pontchartrain on the city’s northern border), and riverbound, as in the Mississippi. This skewed sense of place is because the river’s crescent curve turns everything upside down, creating a maze of loopy streets in a city surrounded by so much water it may as well be an island.