A Familiar Face in a Familiar Place

While in New Orleans, Direct chatted with Direct Media founder and chairman Dave Florence at the Café du Monde. “I'm a type A sort,” he says. “This city slows me down.” In many ways, it's inevitable that it would. Even before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans hadn't been a significant source of list business, and Florence was more or less forced to get away from it all when he was here. “I always wished there was more,” he says with a smile. “I could have written off my trips.” Florence has loved the city as a resident, although a part-time one. He's owned two apartments in the French Quarter, but he sold the last one before Hurricane Katrina hit. Even so, he still has close ties to the city. His son Robert — who has published two books on New Orleans' Cities of the Dead, its above-ground cemeteries — lives there and runs the Historic New Orleans Tours company.