As I climbed into my office chair overlooking Frenchmen Street, right before we closed the office for the Mardi Gras holiday, I was taken aback by the view of two guys—obviously not from around here—dancing/tweaking in the middle of the street to music blaring from a boombox at the intersection of Frenchmen and Decatur.

I expected that these guys are trying to get tips from passers-by. That was fairly obvious from the big white tip bucket they put beside the boombox. But little do they know that Frenchmen, despite its reputation as “Baby Bourbon,” doesn’t get the daytime tourist foot traffic tourists that Bourbon does. They left, and showed up later that evening at the intersection of Frenhmen and Chartres (more tourists down there by the brass band, apparently).

The OffBeat office has been on Frenchmen Street for almost 24 years. We moved here before Frenchmen was a “thing.” Back then it still had a bakery, galleries, a print shop, a doctor’s office, a small grocery store, and a few bars and restaurants. It was still like a lot of small commercial streets in the city. Everything but the bars and restaurants are now gone, and there are a lot more than there used to be. Not long ago, the beloved Praline Connection on the corner of Frenchmen and Chartres was bought by real-estate mogul Aaron Motwani, with lip service that the Praline Connection wasn’t closing, just “relocating” to another location on Decatur Street (yeah, for about 15 minutes). In its place, instead of great soul food and homemade pralines, we have the Frenchmen Street Willie’s Chicken Shack and Daiquiris, one of the many others owned by Mr. Motwani on Bourbon and in the Quarter.

I’m using Motwani as an example, but this is what happens when a street that has wonderful vibe and was a destination for locals to hear great music becomes a victim to rampant capitalism that runs out local patrons (other than maybe college kids—same thing happened on Bourbon) and concentrates on tourists, many of whom don’t give a damn about local music and musicians. Music is “music” to them, whether it’s a trad jazz band playing at Bamboula’s or a cover band blaring as loud as possible from Vaso. Zoning on the street prohibits restaurants from collecting a cover for live entertainment, which means musicians will never be able to make a decent wage at establishments like these, unless there’s an owner who is sensitive to the needs of the musicians. Yes, most of the venues on Frenchmen are restaurants (another zoning issue).

I suppose you could contend that this is the nature of businesses wanting to make money. Yes, I get it, and I understand. If these places didn’t exist, musicians wouldn’t have places to perform at all. But there’s a time when the city should step in and change things to guarantee that the very culture that created a cultural destination for both locals and visitors could become a place where musicians could at least expect a door cover charge for their efforts, and some kind of guarantee. Musicians still make the same amount of money they made 24 years ago. That’s a crime in a city that’s known for its music.

What happens when you don’t charge a cover—even a nominal cover, or something to signify that the entertainment and music is valuable—local music and musicians are taken even more for granted. And what’s even worse is that Frenchmen Street becomes less about the music and its quality, and more and more a party street, where music is just the background for drinking and debauchery. The same exact thing happened on Bourbon Street.

It’s going to get potentially worse. The people who owned the original venues on Frenchmen were, for the most part, interested in the music and culture when OffBeat moved its office to Frenchmen Street. That’s changing drastically as owners age out, get annoyed at the “scene” (which is becoming louder, less interested in music and more raucous), and sell their properties to others who don’t care enough about music and culture.