Discovered by my dear friend and colleague, Steinhart (holla) whilst looking for a prom date. (I kid, I kid!!)Here's the story of the Duck Girl of Nawlins:
For almost 50 years, she has been a living, loopy, ambulatory French Quarter landmark: Miss Ruthie the Duck Girl, a sidewalk sideshow followed by waddling water fowl and wide-eyed tourists. For a while, she was Ruthie on wheels, roller-skating to the beat of a different drummer. And she’s also been Ruthie the wild bride of the streets, trailing veils as she makes her rounds, cadging beers and smokes "for later," smilingly sweet one moment, cursing a blue streak the next. …Outlandish and capricious, she’s the last of the great Quarter characters, an eccentric on a scale both lowly and grand…"
~ David Cuthbert, The Times Picayune
"But she’s more than just an offbeat character; she’s a symbol of the past, from long before what some see as the Disneyfication of the Quarter, when New Orleans was a haven for eccentrics. In fact, if the changes in the French Quarter in recent decades could be expressed mathematically, Ruthie might just be the only constant in the equation."
~ The Oxford American
"Ruthie came to epitomize the unregimented, unconventional and permissive side of Vieux Carre culture, the kind of insouciant charm that has seduced thousands over the years and burned, in those who paid attention, a memory of street life unlike anywhere else in America, maybe the world."
~ Chris Rose, The Times Picayune
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