“Big Greasy” is a nickname of New Orleans, Louisiana, that was developed after the more popular nickname of “Big Easy.” There are two different reasons for the “Big Greasy” name: (1) cooking oil, and (2) a 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
“Big Greasy” has been infrequently used as a reference to the foods (especially the fried foods) of the “Big Easy.” “Feathers flying in the Big Greasy” was a headline in the Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution on June 25, 1990, in a story about the fried chicken war in New Orleans between KFC and Popeye’s. A story titled “Fat City” in the Los Angeles (CA) Times on March 24, 1997, stated that “37.5% of adults here (New Orleans—ed.) qualify as obese, putting the Big Easy—or should that be the Big Greasy?—at the top of the nation’s gut-busting cities.”
 
The Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig had an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. “Big Easy = Big Greasy? Poor folks in LA with more troubles #oilspill” was posted on Twitter on April 29, 2010. A story in The Daily Mirror (London, UK) on April 30, 2010, was “THE BIG GREASY: 100-mile New Orleans oil slick to be ‘worse than Exxon Valdez’” by Mike Swain.
 
Other New Orleans nicknames include “America’s Most Interesting City,” “Baghdad-on-the-Bayou,” “Big Crescent,” “Big Easy,” “Big Sleazy,” “Birthplace of Jazz,” “Chocolate City,” “Chopper City,” “City of a Million Dreams,” “City of Yes,” “City That Care Forgot,” “City That Forgot to Care,” “Convention City,” “Crawfish Town,” “Creole City,” “Crescent City,” “Erb City,” “Gateway of the Mississippi Valley,” “Gumbo City,” “Hollywood South,” “Jump City,” “Mardi Gras City,” “Metropolis of the South,” “N’Awlins,” “Necropolis of the South,” “Nerlins,” “No Orleans” (after Hurricane Katrina), “NOLA,” “Northernmost Banana Republic,” “Northernmost Caribbean City,” “Old Swampy,” “Paris of America,” “Queen City,” “Saint City,” “Silicon Bayou,” “Silicon Swamp” and “Sweet Lady Gumbo.”
       
     
Wikipedia: New Orleans
New Orleans (/njuː ˈɔːrli.ənz, -ˈɔːrˈliːnz, -ˈɔːrlənz/, or /ˈnɔːrlənz/; French: La Nouvelle-Orléans [la nuvɛlɔʁleɑ̃]) is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana.
 
Wikipedia: Deepwater Horizon
Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean. Built in 2001 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries, the rig was commissioned by R&B Falcon (a later asset of Transocean), registered in Majuro, and leased to BP from 2001 until September 2013. In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 ft (10,683 m) and measured depth of 35,055 ft (10,685 m) in the Tiber Oil Field at Keathley Canyon block 102, approximately 250 miles (400 km) southeast of Houston, in 4,132 feet (1,259 m) of water.
   
On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, an uncontrollable blowout caused an explosion on the rig that killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from 40 miles (64 km) away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, on 22 April, the Horizon sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest oil spill in U.S. waters.
   
25 June 1990, Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution, Dixie Living sec., pg. M1, col. 5:
Feathers flying in the Big Greasy
The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS—Let the squawking begin.
 
Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), tired of getting licked in New Orleans, has declared war on Popeye’s, a hometown company that dominates this market of prolific poultry eaters.
   
Los Angeles (CA) Times
Fat City
Nowhere else in the U.S. do people worship eats so much as in New Orleans. Great food is practically a religion. But it weighs heavy: They are the heftiest Americans.
March 24, 1997 | JESSE KATZ | TIMES STAFF WRITER
(...)
What other American city could possibly be fatter? As if it were any great news to the people of New Orleans, a recent study by a coalition of calorie-counting health experts in Washington, D.C., concluded that 37.5% of adults here qualify as obese, putting the Big Easy—or should that be the Big Greasy?—at the top of the nation’s gut-busting cities.
       
8 October 2005, Vancouver (BC) Sun, “MP3 sites bend your ear to new music” by Kevin Chong, pg. D2:
Home of the Groove (homeofthegroove.blogspot.com) is an audioblog “based on the premise that the true Home of the Groove… is New Orleans, Louisiana (aka NOLA, The City That Care Forgot, Da Big Greasy, Jump City, Sugar Town….).”
 
Google Groups: rec.travel.cruises
Carnival rearanges iteneries due to situation in New Orleans.
George Leppla
9/30/05
(...)
Huh.  Speaking of BBQ, maybe we’ll change the name from “Sleazy in the Big Easy” to…. wait for it…....
 
“Sleazy in the Big Greasy”!
 
Twitter   
JK Schwehm, artist
@figstreetstudio
Big Greasy Motorcycle Club, New Orleans, Shirt, http://ow.ly/itIO #nola #motorcycles
9:37 AM - 29 Jul 2009
     
Google Books
Insiders’ Guide® to New Orleans
By Becky Retz and James Gaffney
Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press
2010
Pg. 128:
Among the most accomplished of these truly brilliant artists whose work touches millions of waistlines each year would be such luminaries as Paul Prudhomme, Susan Spicer, and just about everybody’s mama. As a result, the Big Greasy may not have quite as developed a fine arts scene as, say, cities where people think that eating is something you do just to survive.
     
Twitter
Terry Brown
@UncImo
Them white folks buying up everything. I had on a saints shirt & some bioth tried 2 buy my ass. They going f ing crazy in da big greasy.
9:07 AM - 8 Feb 2010
     
Twitter
Barbara Oliver
@barbarajen
Big Easy = Big Greasy? Poor folks in LA with more troubles #oilspill
9:39 AM - 29 Apr 2010
   
Twitter
hello world
@kevinofoto
- the big easy is about to be the big greasy.
8:46 PM - 29 Apr 2010
 
30 April 2010, The Daily Mirror (London, UK), “THE BIG GREASY: 100-mile New Orleans oil slick to be ‘worse than Exxon Valdez’” by Mike Swain, pg. 27:
OIL spilling from America’s Deepwater Horizon rig disaster is threatening a massive wildlife catastrophe.
 
Twitter
Anders Giæver
@VGanders
På vei til New Orleans - The Big Greasy.
12:32 PM - 30 Apr 2010
   
Twitter
Greg Bowdish
@GBowdish
From here on out, instead of “The Big Easy”, New Orleans will now be referred to as “The Big Greasy”.
9:35 AM - 4 May 2010
   
Twitter
Tommy E. Payne
@tntpayne
Fixin’ to head to the Big Easy… or will it be the Big Greasy Easy?  New Orleans, here we come!
8:29 AM - 6 May 2010 from Madison
   
Twitter
Barry Grant Marsh
@BGMCREATIVE
Came up with the new slogan for New Orleans after the spill…Come to the Big grEASY!
9:55 PM - 7 May 2010
   
Twitter
Erica Spindler
@EricaSpindler
Post #oilspill name for New Orleans: The Big Greasy
3:13 PM - 12 May 2010
   
Twitter
aaron belcher
@aaronbelcher
Report: New Orleans to change moniker to “The Big Greasy” ahead of menacing oil slick.
3:59 PM - 24 May 2010
   
Twitter
Laurie Bailey Vaughn
@LaurieBailey
I think we’re gonna have to rename New Orleans from the Big Easy to the Big Greasy! #tcot
3:37 PM - 3 Jun 2010
 
6 June 2010, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), “You can’t make a decent gumbo with Norwegian sardines” by Susan Blalock, pg. 2E, col. 6:
There is a dirge in the background we aren’t willing to hear yet, a story we don’t want to know. I’ve heard only one person make even a dark joke. He said, “‘The Big Easy’ will become ‘The Big Greasy’” No one laughed. We turned and pretended we didn’t hear.
 
Twitter
Maitiù ODochartaigh
@fulhammatty
#bpdisastermovies - slick reaches New Orleans in *The Big Greasy*
5:01 AM - 16 Jun 2010
 
Twitter
Robert Dean
@Robert_Dean
Replying to @ASamanthaRae
In my experience: I’m from Chicago. OHHHH CHI TOWN! CHI-CITY! CHI-RAQ! Nope. Please don’t. When I tell them I lived in New Orleans; OHHH, N’AWLINS! The BIG EASY, THE BIG GREASY! No. please stop. Now, it’s YOU LIVE IN THE ATX? Fuck my life.
1:06 AM - 8 Mar 2018