Bounce music and colored lights blasting from converted school buses and tricked-out limousine buses are common sights and sounds in the landscape of New Orleans nightlife. A new ordinance from New Orleans District E Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen aims to rein them in by prohibiting them from entering all residentially zoned areas, limiting them to larger thoroughfares and keeping them out of neighborhoods.

The ordinance puts party buses under the “charter party carriers” designation as defined by the Department of Safety and Permits.

The ordinance also reiterates that party buses comply with that department’s rules, which defines “charter party carriers” as a “motor vehicle specifically configured to accommodate a party on the motor vehicle itself,” with amenities including TVs, karaoke equipment, smoke machines, “disco lights, strobe lights or dance poles.”

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Nguyen mentioned working on legislation dealing with buses at a recent meeting at the New Orleans East Library. She told Gambit that her office has received numerous calls about buses rolling through neighborhoods late at night with loud music. “I’ve been dealing with the issue for over a month now,” she told Gambit after the Sept. 6 City Council meeting. “We’re a team where we do our due diligence. It’s not been one incident. It’s been many occasions.”

Nguyen introduced the ordinance at the City Council’s Sept. 6 meeting. It now heads to the City Council’s Transportation and Airport Committee; its next meeting is Sept. 26.

Over the last decade, New Orleans party buses have built business through word of mouth or on numbers posted on the sides of the rides, from higher-end limos to colorful, decommissioned and re-outfitted school buses. A 2017 essay from music and culture magazine The Fader explored the party bus scene in New Orleans and its relationship with bounce music, serving as a sort of mobile incubator while lighting up interstate traffic, major thoroughfares, parts of the French Quarter, gas station parking lots and in the streets.

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