At lunchtime today when I was walking over to the burger place, I saw these goose families on a play date in the neutral ground between the hotel parking lot and the ice-cream place.
Soon after I got there, the gardener came though with his noisy aeration machine and sort of broke things up. Time to cut across the parking lot to more congenial surroundings.
"Neutral ground" is what they call the center grass strip on a boulevard in New Orleans. As in: "We caught a starling on the neutral ground outside Wagner's Meats." 🙂
I've never heard anyone else use the phrase. But then you've been around the block down here, right Reid?
You're right, NOLA is where I learned it.