Since the New Year’s violence, service workers across the French Quarter have navigated a strange dissonance, grappling with the emotional and financial fallout of an assault that hit so close to home while putting on a smile to do what they do so well: Show tourists a good time in a romanticized city that could live or die by their spending.

Corporate events abound in New Orleans as parts of the city is transformed for the Super Bowl. But in the French Quarter, the heart of the action, the smallest players in the city's hospitality scene are still keeping it real,