My wife and I booked Randy last minute for a Saturday morning tour of St. Louis Cemetery #1.  Although we gave him little lead time, he adjusted promptly.  I have family in New Orleans and had visited many times--and also briefly worked as a tour guide myself--so I always resisted spending money on tours because I thought "I could learn this myself and its too touristy and not worth the money."  I was completely wrong.  Randy was not only extremely well educated and pleasant to be with, he also clearly cares about his city.  His tour made spending an hour and a half in a cemetery engaging and exciting.  He does not present a canned tour full of lazy, false narratives aimed at cheap entertainment for tourists.  Somehow Randy provides a detailed tour that does not feel like it is in the weeds and is way more engaging than mere entertainment.  Randy has studied not only the history but the historiography of New Orleans' oral and written history and obviously cares about getting the stories right.  His tour brought alive people, circumstances and culture in perfectly woven narratives.  You can tell that he is still learning and searching for accuracy and that this is not just a job, but a profession for him that he is actively engaged in.  We had such a good time that we also booked him the next day for the Lafayette Cemetery and Garden District Tour, which was also wonderful.  This second tour gave us the opportunity to go into the community a little more where it was clear that Randy is as part of the New Orleans fabric as the beautiful houses and gardens we saw.  Residents know him, other tour guides know him, and he is obviously a protector of both the physical spaces he showed and the stories themselves.  The extra information and secret tidbits he offers are learned through the relationships he himself has with the community--not just a derivative outline.  Do yourself a favor, no matter how many times you have visited the city--even if you are a resident of New Orleans--find time to go on one of his tours.  I hope we see Randy again the next time we visit.