Standing up to The Man in New Orleans

It seems that some otherwise peaceable citizens don't appreciate the attempts of their Servants and Protectors to evict them from their homes. Here's what one New Orleans resident had to say about to CNN.

ASHTON O'DWYER, NEW ORLEANS HOLDOUT: Have you has your neighborhood ever been invaded by state troopers from another state? Sent here by God knows whom?

SIMON: Many of the people continuing to stay in New Orleans were told time was running out. Ashton O'Dwyer is an attorney but says he'll defy any order requiring him to evacuate.

O'DWYER: I will leave when I am dead. OK. Let them be warned. They come to my house, they try to evict me, they try to take my guns, there will be gunfire.

SIMON: With his house intact and with plenty of food and water, O'Dwyer cannot understand why folks like him are being forced to leave.

O'DWYER: Treat me with benign neglect. Get out of my neighborhood, get out of my life, get out of my [ bleep ] city.

You tell 'em, O'Dwyer.

And now an update-- The Drudge Report reports:

An upbeat New Orleans mayor announced Tuesday eve that he hoped to reopen 4 neighborhoods, including the city's central business district and the French Quarter, to residents and business owners by the end of the week... Developing...

Could the Mayor be surrendering and declaring victory?

Forgive me, New Orleans

Through it all, the words from the Simpson's episode "A Streetcar Named Marge" have been running through my head:

Long before the SuperDome,
Where the Saints of football play,
Lived a city that the damned called home,
Hear their hellish roundelay...

New Orleeeans...
Home of pirates, drunks, and whores!
New Orleeeans...
Tacky, overpriced, souvenir stores!
If you want to go to Hell, you should make that trip
to the Sodom and Gomorrah on the Mississipp'!

New Orleeeans...
Stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile!
New Orleaaans...
Putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul!
New Orleeeans...
Crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank!

New Orleeeans!

I understand that The Simpsons caught a lot of flack for that.

I can't really argue with any of this, and, although I've shared the sentiment while walking through the Quarter during Mardi Gras, I love it just the same.

I really do. I can't think of any place I'd rather live than the Quarter.

Decadence Day

If it's the Labor Day weekend, that means it's time for everyone's favorite annual gayfest, the Decadence Day Parade in New Orleans. Not quite the hundred thousand plus turnout that they normally get, but despite everything, a few stalwarts turned out:



I'm not a fan of gay parades (or any of that gay stuff, for that matter), but in this case I'll make an exception. To all those folks in the Quarter who refuse to pack it in when things get a little hard, who refuse to be beaten down by adversity, who persevere against all odds to maintian a state of normalcy, my hat's off to you.

Or it would be if I had a hat.

Not another Katrina post....

This is not another Katrina post. It's just an update of My One and Only Katrina Post.

While those areas of New Orleans under government control like the Superdome quickly deteriorated into hellholes and civilization ceased to exist in large parts of the city, the folks in the Quarter seem to have kept their heads in a way that the rest of the city hasn't. (Coming through the storm and it's aftermath relatively unscathed no doubt goes a long way towards head-keeping, even in the absence of police 'protection,' running water, electricity, transportation, and other niceties of modern life.)

But this is only an update of my One and Only Katrina Post, and that post dealt primarily with Johnny White's Sports Bar, which stayed open throughout the hurricane and provided Quarter residents a place to go after the storm had passed and much of the city degenerated into chaos.

It seems that some found my admiration of the never-say-die spirit of Johnny White's somehow misplaced. "What sort of people would be 'living it up' at a bar at a time like that?" "Why weren't they out helping their fellow man?" And so forth.

I never did figure out what folks stranded in the French Quarter were supposed to do to help folks in other parts of the city. I thought their unflappabble, business-as-usual attitude was exactly what the situation called for. It's the sort of thing that maintains civilization in the face of adversity.

Anyway, here's the latest news from Johnny White's:

Johnny White's is famous for never closing, even during a hurricane. The doors don't even have locks.

Since the storm, it has become more than a bar. Along with the warm beer and shots, the bartenders passed out scrounged military Meals Ready to Eat and bottled water to the people who drive the mule carts, bus the tables and hawk the T-shirts that keep the Quarter's economy humming.

"It's our community center," said Marcie Ramsey, 33, whom Katrina promoted from graveyard shift bartender to acting manager.

For some, the bar has also become a hospital.

Tryphonas, who restores buildings in the Quarter, left the neighborhood briefly Saturday. Someone hit him in the head with a 2-by-4 and stole his last $5.

When Tryphonas showed up at Johnny White's with his left ear split in two, Joseph Bellomy - a customer pressed into service as a bartender - put a wooden spoon between Tryphonas' teeth and used a needle and thread to sew it up. Military medics who later looked at Bellomy's handiwork decided to simply bandage the ear.

"That's my savior," Tryphonas said, raising his beer in salute to the former Air Force medical assistant.

My one and only Katrina post.

A snippet from a report in yesterday's (UK) Guardian perfectly encapsulated what I love about New Orleans:

After the storm passed, police circled the quarter with bullhorns shouting: "The French Quarter is closed. This is state of emergency. Please, please get off the streets or you will be detained."

But that couldn't dampen the indomitable spirit of one of the nation's most famous - and infamous - neighborhoods.

Tamara Stevens, 45, and her boyfriend Rick Leiby, 65, found their way to Johnny White's Sports Bar before the winds even stopped blowing. After spending a harrowing night in their swaying apartment, they needed to be out among people.

"This place will still be here," Leiby, a tour guide, said as he sipped a screwdriver from a plastic cup. "And it ain't gonna quit."


Today the Times Picayune confirms that, despite evacuation orders, curfews, power outages, rising water, and rampaging looters, Johnny White's is keeping the faith:

Johnny White’s Sport Bar on Bourbon Street at Orleans Avenue didn’t close Tuesday night, and had six patrons at 8 a.m. drinking at the bar.

"Monday night, they came by after curfew and wanted us to close," bartender Perry Bailey, 60, said of officers then patrolling the French Quarter. But all we did was shut the doors and stayed open.