Tourists were often derided as part of original Quarter Rat humor, even though the magazine could not have existed without them. One of its core principles, however, was to bite the hand the fed it. The two ideas were not mutually exclusive. Staff often had fun mixing the two, similar to the way in which a local bartender makes a cocktail, then tops it off with an offensive joke — and still gets tipped.
But let’s be a little honest: anyone who makes a living working in the French Quarter and/or lives here every day bears witness to the absurd spectacle that is the balance of attempting to preserve a crumbling historic neighborhood while attracting an ever-inclusive sector of tourists by appealing to the basest of desires. Combine this with the fact that the city was built on mud and is literally sinking. People love it, though.
And one person who was able to capture this madness was Eric T. Styles, who moved from the Jersey Shore and to the Vieux Carre. He found work as a film extra, but only after getting rejected from numerous low-wage barker jobs.
He eventually started contributing art to the Quarter Rat and designed his first cover for the Halloween 2010 issue. We preserved a copy, one of the few in existence.
