So I want you to picture this for a second. You
are standing in the like this heavy twilight
humidity of New Orleans. Oh, that thick air.
Exactly. You know the vibe. You are right across
from Jackson Square and the sun is just starting
to like dip below the roof lines. Right. The
shadows are stretching super long and distorted
across these centuries old cobblestones. And
you are getting ready to uncover the city's absolute.
darkest, most closely guarded secrets. It really
is just the perfect moody setting for what we're
about to unpack today. Honestly, to get us in
the right headspace, I've actually changed my
visual backdrop here to this dimly lit, historic
New Orleans streetscape. Oh, I see it. That looks
amazing. Yeah, if you look closely, it's like,
well, you can almost see the history clinging
to those wrought iron balconies. That sets the
vibe perfectly. And welcome everyone to the Travel
Podcast by Excursion Pass. Today we are setting
out on a brand new deep dive into an experience
that honestly left both of us completely floored.
Totally floored. Now look, I know exactly what
you're probably thinking right now. We always
try to anticipate your objections on this show
and I can hear you rolling your eyes right now.
Oh yeah, they're definitely skeptical. Right.
You're saying, oh great, another cheesy French
Quarter ghost tour. I'm gonna pay 50 bucks to
get jump scared by... by a guy rattling a tin
sheet for thunder, right? Well, some guide in
a fake velvet vampire cape tells you about a,
you know... haunted chandelier exactly the classic
neon lit tourist trap we have all been dragged
on one of those too many of them to be honest
we absolutely have but let me stop that objection
right in its tracks because this deep dive is
about something completely different we are looking
at the blood and brick macabre histories of the
French quarter tour and that's designed and operated
by a local company called the real New Orleans
right yes exactly and our mission today is to
take you through the gritty completely completely
uncompromising reality of this experience. Having
actually lived this ourselves and gone through
all the source material, the historical records,
we're going to show you exactly why this is the
ultimate true crime, adults only, evening out.
It's so intense in the best way. It really is.
We want to share every single detail so vividly
that you can practically feel those uneven cobblestones
under your own feet as you listen. It's so crucial
to draw that line in the sand right away, though.
I mean, we are not talking about manufactured
folklore designed to make you spill your drink
in surprise. No, not at all. We are talking about
the historical record. Real people, real architecture,
and real... documented tragedies. Yeah, so let's
get straight into what it actually feels like
on the ground. we're looking at a 105 -minute
guided evening walk. Which is an hour and 45
minutes on your feet. Right. But the pacing and
the atmosphere are entirely unique because it
handles this extremely dark material as actual
history, not, you know, Halloween theater. And
the tour operators have this specific philosophy
for this that I found just completely captive.
Oh, well, quote. Yeah. They state explicitly
that their tour isn't the scream. It is, quote,
the breathless hush after the scream. Man, that
phrase alone, it just tells you everything you
need to know about the psychological approach
they are taking here. It really does. It sets
the tone immediately. Because taking a standard
ghost tour is, well, it's essentially a passive
experience. It's like going on a haunted house
ride at a carnival. Right, you just sit in the
car. Exactly. You know the track, you wait for
the animatronic skeleton to pop out, you have
a laugh, and then you go eat cotton candy. Yeah,
it's harmless fun. But Blood and Brick is an
a - confrontation with reality. It's like stepping
directly into a premium, gritty, true crime documentary.
Oh, that's a great way to put it. The silence
of the streets, the heavy air, the actual physical
locations, that is what does the terrifying.
And what's fascinating here is how the natural
atmosphere of the French Quarter at Twilight,
it just does all the heavy lifting for you. It
really does. You don't need a theatrical jump
scare. when you are standing in the actual shadows
where a notorious underworld syndicate used to
operate. Like, the reality carries its own weight.
But wait, I do have to challenge this a little
bit, just based on what we read in the sources.
The word macabre... is literally in the title
of the tour. That's true, yeah. With something
like this, how do they avoid it just becoming
a parade of gore for the sake of shock value?
Like, is there a larger point to walking around
and talking about centuries of violence? See,
that is the pivotal question. And honestly, it's
where this tour separates itself from the rest
of the pack. OK, how so? Well, the violence discussed
on this walk is never isolated from the wider
context of New Orleans as a city. The guy doesn't
just point to a doorway and say, hey, someone
was murdered here in 1860. Let's move on to the
next bloody spot. Right, which is what the cheap
tours do. Exactly. Instead, they explore the
structural mechanics of why it happened there.
They look at how these incidents were born from
a very specific, volatile intersection of elements.
You mean, like, the economics and the social
structure of the time? Precisely. Because New
Orleans was and is, you know, a massive port
city. Right. extreme poverty, living wall -to
-wall with just unimaginable wealth. You had
an early, booming entertainment industry, a constant
influx of transient tourism. Sailors coming into
port with pockets full of cash, I imagine. Oh,
tons of cash. And organized crime structures
designed specifically to empty those pockets.
Right, of course. All of these forces collided
in the French Quarter. The crime wasn't random.
You know, it was a byproduct of the city's unique
ecosystem. So it's a systemic look at crime,
not just an anecdotal one. That actually changes
the entire perspective. It completely flips it.
Because to most visitors today, you know, you
go to the French Quarter and it's just, well,
it's pretty, it's postcard perfect. It's beautiful.
You walk down the street, there's jazz music
spilling out of open tavern doors. People are
holding those colorful sugary drinks. Hurricanes,
yeah. Yeah, looking up at these gorgeous architectural
marvels. But the picture painted by this tour
reveals a place where elegance and brutal violence
literally shared a pillow. It forces you to reconcile
two opposing truths. at the exact same time,
like the physical environment becomes an active
character in the story. Oh, absolutely. You might
be staring up at this beautifully preserved 19th
century facade with intricate ironwork. Which
is gorgeous. Right, but you are simultaneously
hearing about how that exact spot was the epicenter
of a notorious red light district. or like an
intense violent bar culture where the police
wouldn't even dare to patrol. Let's actually
talk about some of those specific historical
narratives because the source material mentions
the violent rise of the Gallatin Street underworld.
Oh, Gallatin Street. For someone who doesn't
know New Orleans history, Gallatin Street wasn't
just like a rough neighborhood. It was essentially
a contained zone of absolute lawlessness. It
was the dark heart of the city's vice economy
in the 19th century. And the tour delves into
how it operated. Because it wasn't just chaotic
violence. It was organized extraction. What do
you mean by extraction? Well, the bars, the boarding
houses, the criminal syndicates, they all work
together in this highly efficient machine designed
to prey on the vulnerable, the transient, and
honestly the foolish. So it was systematic. Exactly.
When the guide takes you through the remnants
of these vice districts, They are explaining
the mechanics of how an entire society can normalize
and even profit from that level of danger. That
makes you look at the narrow alleyways and hidden
courtyards totally differently. Doesn't it? Yeah.
Like they weren't just built that way for shade
or aesthetics. They were architectural features
that naturally facilitated secrecy. That's a
huge part of what they cover, yeah. The tour
also dives heavily into the notorious trunk murder
narratives, which I find incredibly interesting
from a media perspective. The truck murders are
such a wild part of the history. Because today,
you know, we have a million true crime podcasts,
streaming documentaries. and Reddit threads dissecting
every single modern crime. Right, we're saturated
with it. Exactly. But how did the public imagination
process and immortalize these gruesome crimes
back in the 1800s or early 1900s? Well, if we
connect this to the bigger picture... That is
exactly what makes the trunk murders so vital
to the tour's narrative. How so? The guide connects
these visceral, highly localized incidents to
the broader social history of the era. So the
newspapers of the time, the penny press, the
local whisper networks. They were basically the
true crime media of their day. Exactly. They
were the Reddit threads of the 19th century.
And they knew exactly how to sensationalize a
story to sell papers. Completely. I mean, the
trunk murders grip the public because of the
psychological juxtaposition, you know? Like the
mundane mixed with the horrific? Yes. You have
a trunk, which is an object associated with travel,
domesticity, just normal life, being used to
conceal brutal dismemberment. Yeah, that is chilling.
The early tabloid journalism just seized on that
horror. They amplified it, serialized it, and
effectively branded these specific addresses
with permanent infamy. They turned a physical
building into a landmark of macabre history.
It's almost like the city's bricks are acting
as massive hard drives. Oh, I love that comparison.
Right. They just absorb and store all this dark
data, all these horrific events. And the tour
guide is essentially plugging in and reading
the data back to you. That is a brilliant analogy.
It perfectly captures what I like to call the
beautiful horror of New Orleans. Beautiful horror.
Yeah. It is a city that remembers absolutely
everything. The architecture has survived fires,
hurricanes, centuries of change, and because
the physical structures remain, the stories remain
tethered to them. That gives me goosebumps just
thinking about it. So when you are standing on
those cobblestones, you aren't just passively
listening to a scary story. You are learning
how public memory is formed. Right. You are learning
why certain addresses still carry a heavy, unsettling
energy decades or even centuries after the blood
was washed away. But the tour doesn't just leave
you in the safety of the 19th century, which
I think is a crucial detail. No, they bring it
right up to the present. Yeah. It's one thing
to hear about a crime from 150 years ago. The
distance of time sort of acts as a buffer. It
almost feels like fiction. It feels safe, yeah.
But the blood and brick tour brings the darkness
right up to the modern day. The source material
highlights that they explicitly cover modern
true crimes. Specifically the sensational tragedy
of Zack and Addie. Yes, the Zack Bowen and Addie
Hall case. And the inclusion of that specific
post -Katrina tragedy marks a massive, very deliberate
shift in the tone of the narrative. It absolutely
does. Because it strips away that historical
buffer completely. This isn't sepia -toned folklore
anymore. This is a modern domestic tragedy. A
very real, very raw situation. It involved immense
trauma, instability, and a very modern context
of a city recovering from a devastating hurricane.
You are suddenly dealing with real people whose
friends and family are likely still walking around
the city today. And that transition -like moving
from historical underworld lore to a raw modern
tragedy. requires a completely different level
of respect, nuance, and maturity. Oh, 100%. You
cannot treat a modern murder -suicide with the
same campy tone someone might use for a 300 -year
-old pirate ghost story. Which perfectly explains
a major logistical boundary that the tour operators
have set and something we absolutely need to
emphasize for anyone planning a trip. The age
limit. Yes. The source material is incredibly
strict about the age and maturity requirements
for this walk. The minimum age is 18. No exceptions.
Nope. They say it's strictly ages 18 to 120,
so I guess if you're 121 you're out of luck and
just have to stay at the hotel. Uh -huh. Yeah,
it's a strict cutoff. You'll just have to listen
to us talk about it instead. But in all seriousness,
you might be listening right now and thinking,
well, my 16 -year -old teenager's super mature.
Oh, people always think that. Right. Like, oh,
we watch all the dark true crime documentaries
on Netflix together. I'm sure I can just quietly
bring them along. And the answer is a hard, resounding
no. Exactly. First of all, they simply won't
let you. Second, sneaking a kid onto this tour
would be a terrible parenting move. Honestly,
it really would be. The operators are incredibly
upfront that there is explicit material, strong
themes, adult language, and highly graphic real
crime discussion. It is heavy stuff. This is
not a family -friendly Disney ride with a spooky
overlay. And I genuinely applaud the tour operators
for being so uncompromising about this. Like,
flagging the mature material up front and enforcing
the age limit is just a brilliant necessary move.
It saves everyone a lot of trouble. It really
does. It accomplishes two vital things. First,
it sets the correct psychological expectation
for the ticket buyer. You know exactly what kind
of heavy reality you're walking into. And second?
It protects the dynamic of the group itself.
I mean, this is an Izmit experience. The tour
is capped at a strict maximum of 20 travelers.
It is small. Yeah, very small. So when a local
guide is standing in the dim light of the quarter,
unpacking the grim realities of the Gallatin
Street underworld or the deep complex tragedy
of Zack and Addie, the absolute last thing they
want to do is self -censor. Right, they need
to be able to tell the real story. Exactly. And
the last thing the rest of the paying adults
want is to feel uncomfortable because someone
brought a minor. That makes total sense. If there's
a teenager in the group, the adults naturally
tense up. Yeah, the vibe shifts entirely. They
start wondering, is this too graphic for them?
Should the guide tone it down? It just shatters
the immersion? Precisely. The strict 18 plus
rule ensures that the group is composed entirely
of adults who actively consented to history with
a sharp edge. It creates a shared baseline of
maturity. Yes. And it allows the guide to maintain
that breathless hush. without interruption, without
apologies, and honestly, without watering down
the brutal truth of the history. Okay, so if
you are listening to this, you are probably thoroughly
sold on the gritty reality of this experience.
If you're a true crime fan, you definitely are.
Right. You want the deep history, you appreciate
the edge, and you want to engage with the true
crime of the quarter the way it was meant to
be experienced. Now, let's pivot to the practical
reality of actually going on this walk. We always
want to leave you with the insider tips on this
podcast, just as if we just finished walking
the route and grabbed a drink to debrief. And
the on -the -ground logistics are just as important
as the history. For sure. Because if you aren't
prepared for the physical reality of the tour,
you won't be able to absorb the narrative at
all. And looking at the baseline value proposition
here, it is exceptionally strong. I knew you
were going to bring up the value. You always
check the price first. Hey, it's important. The
cost is $48 per adult. That's really reasonable.
It is. When you consider you're getting a 1 hour
and 45 minute deep dive with a live highly knowledgeable
local guide who is expertly weaving together
architecture, media history, criminology, and
sociology. Yeah, that is a spiel. You aren't
just paying someone to point at buildings. You
are paying for an extra curation of the city's
darkest data. And it's incredibly accessible
right from the jump, too. The meeting point is
right at 702 Decatur Street. Oh, great location.
It is. You meet directly on the steps of Washington
Artillery Park. which is right across the street
from Jackson Square. So you are dead center in
the action. Exactly. You can finish dinner in
the quarter and walk right to the meeting spot.
You don't have to navigate to some obscure, unlit
alleyway on the edge of town just to find your
guide. which is nice, especially at night. And
speaking of accessibility, the operators explicitly
note that the tour is wheelchair accessible and
stroller accessible. Though, obviously, keeping
the 18 plus rule in mind, that would be for adult
mobility devices, not babies. Good clarification.
No babies. But service animals are allowed as
well. That level of accessibility is actually
quite fantastic considering they are navigating
historic 300 year old street grids. It is fantastic,
but... And this is a massive neon flashing. But
there is one crucial non -negotiable rule regarding
your wardrobe that we have to talk about. Oh,
the shoes. The shoes. You must wear soft -soled
shoes. Absolutely no high heels, no stilettos.
And I would strongly argue against flimsy, cheap
flip -flops. Because the cobblestones do not
care about your outfit. They really don't. The
streets of the French Quarter are centuries old.
They are uneven. They are shifting. There are
gaps in the bricks. And you're walking them at
twilight. Exactly. In the dark. If you try to
walk this 105 -minute route in heels, you are
going to break an ankle. It's basically guaranteed.
And I promise you, a twisted ankle in the dark
on a historic side street is not the authentic,
macabre experience you are looking for. You will
literally become the next tragic story the guide
tells on tomorrow night's tour. Just put on some
comfortable sneakers, everyone. Please do. It's
a very practical warning. And looking at the
booking side of things, there's another logistical
point that travelers need to factor in, which
is the flexibility. Right. Booking through Excursion
Pass offers free cancellation up to 24 hours
before the local start time for a full refund.
Which is huge when you are dealing with the Gulf
Coast. Exactly. I mean, this is an entirely outdoor
walking experience. It requires decent weather.
And frankly, New Orleans weather can be highly
unpredictable. Oh, for sure. A gorgeous afternoon
can turn into a torrential gulf storm by 7 .0
p .m. Having that 24 hour cancellation window
is a major tactical advantage for travelers.
It really takes the pressure off. It gives you
the peace of mind to secure your spot on a tour
that frequently sells out. while still maintaining
the flexibility to pivot if the weather turns
dangerous. Because nothing ruins a trip faster
than getting locked into an expensive outdoor
activity in a downpour and realizing you can't
get your money back. Totally. It's great they
offer that safety net. Now, there is one more
logistical option I want to throw out there for
anyone planning a group trip. Oh, the private
groups. Yeah. Like where you have a larger group
of adults, maybe a bachelor or a bachelorette
party or a corporate retreat, and you want something
much darker and more intellectually stimulating
than a standard pub crawl. There is a private
option available. You can book the Blood and
Brick Tour exclusively for your group with your
own dedicated guide. That raises a great question
for anyone planning their itinerary. Like, what
kind of rhythm do you want for your evening?
Right, because a private tour changes the dynamic.
Exactly. The 20 -person public group is great.
But if you book the private version, you gain
complete control over the rhythm of the storytelling.
Because you aren't worrying about strangers.
Right. You can interact much more directly with
the guide. If your group is particularly fascinated
by the... media sensationalism of the trunk murders
we talked about. Or the architectural layout
of the Gallatin Vice District. Yeah, you can
stop and ask highly specific nuanced questions.
You set the pace. It essentially tailors the
deep dive to your group's specific intellectual
curiosity. Which is the ultimate luxury when
you are trying to actually learn about a city.
It really is. So what does this all mean for
you, the listener, as you look at your travel
plans? Let's bring all these threads together.
Let's go. If you are a true crime enthusiast
or even just a seasoned traveler who has already
done the standard generic French quarter historical
walk. Go on with the vampires. Right, exactly.
And you are craving something with real bite
before you head off to your late dinner. The
Blood and Brick Tour on Excursion Pass is an
absolute non -negotiable must book. Completely
agree. It strips away the theatrical fake blood.
It throws out the velvet vampire capes and it
replaces them with the cold, hard, fascinating
reality of human nature and history. It challenges
you to look at a beautiful, vibrant tourist destination
and just like acknowledge the very real, very
dark shadows that built it. Yes. And as we wrap
up our analysis of this experience today, I actually
want to leave you with a final lingering thought
to mull over. Oh, lay it on us. Well, we've spent
this entire time discussing how the bricks to
the French Quarter still hold so tightly to the
echoes of violence, the whispers of the vice
districts, and the tragedies from centuries ago,
right? Like the hard drive analogy. Exactly.
They are a physical hard drive of the past. But
it makes you wonder, what modern secrets are
those very same streets absorbing from us right
now? as we walk over them tonight. Wow. That
really recontextualizes the whole city, doesn't
it? It makes you think. It does. The history
isn't just trapped behind glass in a museum.
We are walking on top of it, breathing it in,
and adding our own data to those bricks every
single day. We're part of the story now. We really
are. And that... honestly, is exactly why we
do these deep dives, to look past the cheap jump
scares and the tourist traps and find the real
breathtaking stories hiding right in plain sight.
It's what makes travel so rewarding. Absolutely.
Thank you so much for joining us on this journey
today on the Travel Podcast. Keep questioning
the history around you. Watch your step on those
unforgiving cobblestones and be sure to check
out Excursion Pass for your next real adventure.
We will catch you on the next deep dive.