Resolve and Recreation Still Strong on Bourbon Street

Somebody forgot to tell the French Quarter that this town is dead. Because the regulars at Johnny White’s Sports Bar & Grill on Bourbon Street were having none of the talk about their city being the new Chernobyl, a ghost metropolis never to rise again. Even if the bureaucrats in Washington and Baton Rouge want to shut the place down and move everybody out.

“It’s my property. I have a right to die in my property,” bartender Larry Hirst said as he served up a pair of Heinekens to two female patrons Thursday night. The politicians and disaster planners, Hirst added, were “too damn distant to realize that people in the French Quarter, since we’re high and dry, we have a right to be here.”

The French Quarter always has been a world apart, even in a city famous for its contrarian ways. Spared the worst effects when the hurricane roared across the coast nearly two weeks ago, the Quarter has become something of a holdout for free spirits who refuse to abandon the flood-ravaged city.

Johnny White’s, a 24-hour bar that serves a loyal constituency of late-shift workers and locals, boasts of having never closed throughout the crisis. Hirst said the bar had become a kind of “community center,” distributing free water, Army-issued Meals Ready to Eat, clothes and other emergency provisions. “We provide a place for people to go and relax and forget about their ruined homes, their dead neighbors, whatever,” he said.

By the end of the week, most of the residents had fled the picturesque wrought-iron-balconied and wood-shuttered houses. Patrolling Army and police units had replaced the usual mobs of inebriated tourists, and a pregnant calm hung over the streets. But in isolated spots, the Quarter seemed to be its usual independent-minded self, and the stragglers made it clear they had no intention of being anywhere else on Earth.

“You can’t kick all the queers out of the Quarter,” said Denny Huppert, who was drinking with his friend Shawn Queen at Johnny White’s. For Huppert, Queen and other gay men, the Quarter is a separate village within the city, a bastion of tolerance in the belly of the Deep South. “The French Quarter has always been unique people,” Huppert said. “You can walk down the street holding another guy’s hand in the middle of the night.” The men said that although they had resolved to stay put, some of their friends had left the city only because they were running out of HIV-related drugs and needed to refill their prescriptions.

At the intersection of Bourbon and St. Louis streets, just around the corner from Antoine’s, an exasperated Army officer tried the other day to persuade a quartet of residents to quit their apartment building. “There’s all sorts of bacteria and stuff,” he shouted at the group, who were lounging in chairs and cots on the second-floor balcony. One woman ignored the officer and continued using Tarot cards to tell a reporter’s fortune (a favor that had not been solicited). Eventually, the Army patrol gave up and moved on. “All right, lady, if you need anything, just tell us,” one soldier called out.

Some Quarter residents, before they fled Katrina, left defiant last words on the plywood boards they used to seal up windows. “We will not die sober,” declared one. And, inevitably, “The end is very

In front of Jackson Square, someone had placed a hand-lettered “greeting” to the vice president of the United States, who toured the region Thursday: “Mr. Cheney, go home no Halliburton contracts here.” In front of a church, next to a pile of sawed-up and neatly gathered remains of fallen trees, another sign testified to the Quarter’s do-it-yourselfer brand of faith: “Jesus swept.”

Several residents insisted that if officials would only provide some basic help in the form of trash containers, the Quarter could finish cleaning up and get back to normal. Some even seemed to resent that out-of-staters were being brought into New Orleans to decontaminate and repair the city.

“We’re not asking for help from FEMA; we’re not asking for help from the National Guard,” said Marcie Ramsey, the manager at Johnny White’s. “If they’re willing to bring a few people in to do the jobs that we’re willing to do, and they’re at the same health risk, why don’t they let us do them?”

Since the hurricane hit, Ramsey said, people had been sleeping on the floor of the bar every night. But no drunks, hustlers or wiseguys were tolerated. “There was a guy in here that was hustling, trying to sell MREs for a dollar apiece,” Ramsey said. “If I’d have caught him, he’d have been hog-tied in the corner.”

Joe Bellomy, 24, and his friend Mouse, 33 (“Like ‘Mighty,’ ” Mouse said), agreed that the Quarter could look after itself. Neighbors already have been organizing cleanup crews, they said, and tetanus and hepatitis shots were available for those who wanted them. “I got friends out there getting sunburned cutting down brush,” said Mouse, who makes animal sculptures out of Mardi Gras beads.

Earlier, two hard-core Quarter residents, Wesley Woodward, 42, and Ravven Browne, 31, were thinking about whether to leave town, if only rescue authorities would allow them to bring along their two pet pythons, Ra and Herman. Woodward, who works as a doorman at Big Daddy’s strip club, said that rather than fearing snakes, officials should consider how the animals could help solve the city’s rampant problem of abandoned and diseased dogs and cats roaming the streets. Browne gave Herman an affectionate kiss. Like many pet owners, she was worried about finding food for her beloved animals. “If I had a baseball bat,” Browne said, “I’d club a pigeon.”

Nearby, a building alarm that had been going off for days continued its metallic shriek. The smell of maggot-infested garbage drifted in the breeze. And as a second week of horrors drew to an end, the few stalwart souls remaining were calmly bracing themselves for whatever comes next. “I never go out of the Quarter,” Hirst the bartender was saying. “I need oxygen when I go out of the Quarter.”