If you’re unemployed or visiting, there are no mornings in New Orleans. This place of open doors and upstairs verandas teems with t-shirts, beads and street performers when the sun is sinking. That’s when the city turns voluptuous and the streets fill with music.

On the other hand, daylight becomes the fabulous new sculpture museum at the Modern Museum of Art, which gives off its own radiance. Imagine pieces by Noguchi, Botero and Moore in bronze or aluminum. Picture five acres of grass without a “keep off” sign in sight, with reflecting pools, stone bridges and waddling ducks and geese that mingle with the likes of Lynn Chadwick’s bronze “Two Sitting Figures” or Scott Burton’s granite “Right Angle Chairs”. Some of these pieces are whimsical, as is Othoniel’s “Tree of Necklaces”, some meaningful, as Alison Saar’s upside down hanging man, “Travelin’ Light”. One in particular is a stainless steel dazzler. Put on sunglasses to check out Rona Pondick’s “Monkeys,” and note that all the pieces are placed in a placid setting of shade trees: magnolias, cypress, oak. Above your head, hanging moss and native birds. And best of all, admission’s free.

Across the street, lunch. Ralph’s on the Park is also new, and Ralph is part of the Brennan family, which seems to have the corner on New Orleans restaurants. In the downstairs dining room, a Victorian mural depicting a confrontation between ladies of the night and the wives of their customers. Upstairs, a veranda. Wherever you sit, the view is of the park and the cuisine is Louisiana-French. A typical lunch entrée costs $9.50. Try the striped bass salad, or the Louisiana “Blue Crab” cake. A popular drink here is the Bienvenue Bloody Mary.

Now, maybe a nap. You’ll need the energy to walk down Royal Street and pick out something that once belonged to someone else. If you’ve got a spare $750,000 and are into gilt, you might go for King Farouk’s bedroom set. It’s at M.S. Rau Antiques, which is part store, part museum and has about as many square feet as a convention center. If you don’t find your heart’s desire there, you’ll find it next door or the door after that. The selection on this street runs from the sublime to that cut glass nappy dish you’ve always wanted. Keil’s is the place for chandeliers and Hoover’s has vintage wristwatches. Need a gentleman’s walking stick with a silver handle or a tiny “objet de vertu” Limoge outhouse? It’s at the Brass Monkey. Or you can buy a silk screen of the Blue Dog. That’s brand new and it’s at the Rodrigue Studio.

All that is fabulous continues at Fleur de Paris Millinery. Here hats better described as bonnets or chapeaus are buried in ostrich feathers, velvet flowers, ribbons and net. Think Princess Di, think drag, or think spending between $250 and $1000 to cover a head. The hats are made directly across the street and each is unique. Or buy a ball gown fit for weddings or Palm Beach garden parties. “We have all sorts of clientele,” explained the sales clerk. The gowns here all look as if they came from a movie studio wardrobe department and the most expensive is $5000.

You’re not likely to see any of them at the Good Friends bar on Dauphine Street. The motto of the place is “always snappy casual” with more casual than snappy in evidence. This is wall-to-wall gay men with a pool table in the back, video poker and neon palm trees; Tuesdays are for Karaoke. Bring ear plugs if you plan to stay a while. Or take them to Oz, the gay disco club for the younger set, or head for the oldest gay bar in America, “the Daddy of ‘em all,” Cafe Lafitte. It features two floors of music and video and the pool table here is upstairs. Before video there was Tennessee Williams, said to have frequented the place when it was on Bourbon Street. It’s so popular it burst its seams at the original location and you’ll find it now on St. Anne and Burgundy.

Another Williams favorite is the Monteleone Hotel, smack in the middle of the French Quarter. He stayed here and was said to have written “The Rose Tattoo” on the premises, if not exactly at the revolving bar. He must have spread himself thin in town as he also was said to have eaten regularly at the Quarter Scene Restaurant where the Po’ Boy sandwiches are named “The Stanley,” “The Stella,” “The Blanche,” in his honor. Sit at Table One, the one at the window. It was his.

Another gay-friendly cafe is the Clover Grill, at which a counter- man was spotted with a Chanel logo tattooed on his upper arm. Its overhead fluorescents remind one of a Hopper painting but don’t expect foie gras here. This is a burger-fries sort of place. A more New Orleansy place for lunch is the Gumbo Shop on St. Peter’s Street. For the authentic thing, try the Seafood Okra or the Chicken Andouille. And apropos authentic, you can watch them make pralines at the Southern Candymakers Best Pralines shop on Decatur Street and pick up some “original creamy” or “cheesecake fudge” to take home.

Upgrading for dinner? The Galatoire is where locals insist the food is the best in town. With its tile floors and Victorian light fixtures, overhead fans and coat racks, it looks like an old-time steak house but its claim to fame is fish, especially crabmeat, which is recommended in any of its incarnations. For dessert the must-have is the banana bread pudding. That is unforgettable. Dinner might run in the forty dollar range without drink or tip.

Now, go for the funk. Bill Clinton’s ex-squeeze, Gennifer Flowers, hits the high notes nightly in her own small place on Bourbon Street, looking younger, blonder, renovated and too elegant for this place, with its stuffed deer heads, smoke machine and tip jar on the piano. Her voice is strong and wonderful and she lights up what some might call a dive. For a price of a Grey Goose Citron Sea Breeze or a martini, (ten dollars) spend half an hour listening to her sing “Fever” or “St. Louis Woman,” and trying not to listen to “He’s Got the Cutest Dinghy in the Navy” and wondering what a nice girl like her is doing in a place like this.

She probably fell in love again here, this time with this funky, fabulous and unforgettable town. As you might.