New Orleans Live Cam, Cat’s Meow, Bourbon Street

Around 10 p.m. on a Saturday, the karaoke inside the Cat’s Meow carries out onto its balconies, and the corner of Bourbon Street and St. Peter Street below fills with people walking between bars with drinks in hand. This New Orleans live cam looks down from the Cat’s Meow balcony at 701 Bourbon Street, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, so you can watch Bourbon Street live from the first crowds of the evening until the early hours. It is the main camera among the New Orleans webcams on the site.

What the Bourbon Street webcam shows from the balcony

The frame takes in the street below the balcony, the buildings across Bourbon and the people moving along it. In daylight the block is quieter and mostly sightseers pass through; after dark the bar signs light up, the crowd thickens and the balconies along the street fill up.

Bourbon Street has been a pedestrian mall since 1970, when Mayor Moon Landrieu closed it to cars to draw tourists, and today traffic is kept out at the busiest times. That is why the Bourbon Street live cam often shows the whole width of the street covered with people rather than cars.

The bar itself opened in December 1989, early enough to be one of the first places in the United States to try karaoke. The building at the corner of St. Peter dates from the 1820s and has two balconies over Bourbon, and on weeknights the doors open at 4 p.m. and stay open until 3 a.m. Pioneer, the company that brought karaoke machines to the United States, once named it the best karaoke bar in the world.

Key West has its own version of this scene. On the Duval Street live cam, the crowd outside Sloppy Joe’s builds after sunset in much the same way, with live bands instead of karaoke.

Bourbon Street, block by block

New Orleans was founded in 1718, and three years later the engineer Adrien de Pauger laid out the streets of what is now the French Quarter, naming this one after the House of Bourbon, the French royal family. Bourbon runs 12 blocks, from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue, and the Cat’s Meow sits roughly in the middle.

Most of what the camera shows is younger than the street plan. Fires in 1788 and 1794 destroyed about 80 percent of the city’s buildings while New Orleans was under Spanish rule, and the new fire codes called for brick and painted stucco instead of wood. The galleries and iron balconies that line Bourbon today grew out of that rebuilding, and the whole French Quarter, the Vieux Carré, was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 21, 1965. Since a 1936 referendum amended the Louisiana constitution, the Vieux Carré Commission has had legal power over changes to buildings in the Quarter, which covers about 78 square blocks between Canal Street, Esplanade Avenue, North Rampart Street and the river.

Half a block from the camera, at 726 St. Peter Street, Preservation Hall has presented acoustic New Orleans jazz since 1961, about 360 nights a year. Keep walking the same way and, two blocks on, St. Peter Street reaches Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral and the Mississippi riverfront.

Toward Canal, Galatoire’s has been serving diners at 209 Bourbon since 1905, and on Fridays the line for a table can last hours. Toward Esplanade, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop at the corner of St. Philip is one of the oldest buildings in the country still working as a bar, and is said to have been a base for Jean Lafitte’s smugglers. Just one block from the camera, the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann is the center of Southern Decadence, which brings more than 100,000 people to the Quarter over Labor Day weekend; in 2027, Labor Day falls on September 6. For other streets to watch after midnight here, browse our live webcams from around the world.

Mardi Gras 2027 on the New Orleans live cam

The busiest day of the year on any Bourbon Street webcam is Fat Tuesday. In 2027, New Orleans & Company’s Mardi Gras guide puts Mardi Gras Day on February 9, with Lundi Gras on February 8 and the Carnival season opening on January 6.

The big parades roll on St. Charles Avenue and finish near Canal Street, at the edge of the Quarter, so many parade-goers walk into the Quarter once the floats have passed, and the Cat’s Meow live cam catches them arriving on Bourbon. The Bourbon Street Awards, a costume and drag contest, also take place every Mardi Gras Day, which makes February 9 the date to keep the New Orleans live cam open.