@ SkyMike - not sure if you were being ironic - if so forgive me...

but you say: "those uneducated, baby factory, welfare gettin, illiterate, crap-music-listening-to, low class, useless loser Raider fans."

I hate to be the bearer of bad news: 1) you say "uneducated and illiterate." Even though the state of California has fallen in recent year - but the school system is generally ranked higher and in deed literacy rate is much higher than in Louisiana, Sorry, it's just true.

2) You say "low class" Sorry, the standard of living higher by most any measure is higher. Don't get me wrong I do so Love New Orleans - culture, music, generosity of spirit - but when you go off of measures like: access to certain goods (such as number of refrigerators per 1000 people), or measures of health such as life expectancy, or the ease by which people living in a time or place are able to satisfy their needs and/or wants, Louisiana ranks fairly low.

3) Baby Factory? Sorry man research it for yourself. You have nothing to brag of here. In fact, none of these are accusations I would hurl about willy nilly else you be in danger of destroying the very glass house you are protecting.

4). "Crap music listening to." It is true: Oakland's music scene does not hold a candle to New Orleans. However her Jazz scene is pretty good. Yoshi's is considered one of the best Jazz clubs in the world. It is largely becaus a large bulk of the population is from Louisiana. They (myself included) carried our musical tastes with us. SO i short - if we in Oakland, CA listen to crap music it may very well be because we brought it with us.

I think this may be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. in this case lets hope it is black and gold and not black and silver.

Now, back to football. Sorry, as someone who has lived in both places I just couldn't let that go.

Yours, a fellow Saints fan.

1. You can give me stats all day, and never convince me I'd rather be in California, than Louisiana. Lets see people go to Oakland for Mardi Gras, and we'll talk.

1. You might be taking my comedy post a little seriously. I have family in the Bay Area. Not to mention my good friend, saintfan.

love and peace brother.

The East Bay is actually not bad all in all, but to be sure Oakland and San Francisco are not places for children.

I enjoyed being close to NO growing up, but even though I had business in NO in the past, I could never allow myself to actually live in NO or Metairie. The closest I could get was Slidell. It was just a personal preference, but I'm thinking NO is not such a great place for kids to be, either. Here's yet another story...

I grew up on the coast in Gulfport, and lived there with my parents until college. In all that time, I personally never got into the whole Mardi Gras thing. We had a little parade every year on the coast, and I'm sure that I went to a few of those, but Mardi Gras in NO really isn't for anybody younger than 18, IMO. We always heard horror stories about people with razor blades in their shoes and kids getting run-over by floats and stuff...and I can't speak for everyone, but I didn't have to go to NO to get a nude frontal view of a woman.

Anyway, after all those years and I was married with 4 children living in Slidell...and I finally decided to go to a parade in NO. I made the mistake of taking the children along.

We parked our car somewhere, and then after walking for a while, (and we did get a glimpse of that Margaret/Martha ?? Dubisson (sp?) news reporter lady that use to be big there, not sure about now...but she sure was littler in person), and then we came across this guy with an old man mask on and a trench coat. When he got right up to us, he flashed us. He had a fake unit that was about 12" long...and the kids got a good look.

Then, one of those private clubs that march before the real parade came marching down the street. They had caps on and there were things protruding from their caps. Well...the name of the club was the "D#ck Heads" so you can imagine what those things protruding were.

So...it was right about that time that I said, "OK, let's go home."

I still haven't seen a real parade in NO.

I have a bunch of friends here in the Hou-Dats, who grew up in NOLA, and they all say Mardi Gras was like extra Christmas to them, and they went when they were small children to catch the goodies and watch the parades.

I think you just went to the wrong place.