Low Life
By all accounts, nightlife in New Orleans is dead. Large swaths of the city remain uninhabitable, only a handful of locals have returned, the tourists are elsewhere and to top it off, there's a 2 a.m. curfew on the City of Sin. But for the few strip clubs that have reopened in the French Quarter, business is booming.
Business is so good that the Hustler has upped its cover charge to $15 from $10. "People are making good money," Pasacacio said, "and they have nothing to spend it on."
With the exception of a couple of local watering holes, the open bars have few customers. The music, once cranked up to be heard over the shouts of a roomful of customers, now seems far too loud and very sad. There are also barely any women in town. And for the army of contractors, builders, engineers and real estate speculators far from home, where else to go but a topless bar on Bourbon Street?
This time last year the streets of the French Quarter were teeming with tourists, many of them college-age, vomiting about town. Now it's beefy contractors in Carhardts and work boots, along with army, navy, local and visiting police. Few of them, of course, are women.
Although this seems like good news for the topless business, it means there aren't enough topless women to go around. "The strip clubs are sending out recruiters to places like Atlanta to get more girls," said Matthew Underwood, a bartender at Loa who isn't enamored with his new clientele, but wasn't so enamored with the old drunks either. "It's the same way I felt about the tourists. The great majority is just a paycheck."
The new arrivals are rowdier and harder-drinking, which for New Orleans is saying a lot. "We have to ask people to leave more often and break up fights," Pasacacio said. And what was once a 70 percent black crowd is now mostly white and Hispanic.
"You've got a lot of expense accounts," Underwood said. And construction workers making more in a week than they used to get paid in a month. "They're young and blue-collar and they're definitely making a shitload of money."
David Ripos, an Ohio firefighter on his third tour in New Orleans, lounged in one of the velvet chairs in the Hustler Club. A bear of a man in his 40s, he looks like most of the other men in the club. "There's no women around," he said. "There's maybe a 13-to-1 ratio." He wouldn't describe himself as a regular, but who would? "We're scattered from all over but we're a very tight-knit group? When FEMA's paying so much, people are driving down from the Midwest."
At first I was nervous to interrupt the men in the midst of their private time with the ladies of New Orleans, but all were more than happy to talk to me, one of the only two women in the club not working(the other was my friend whom I dragged along), even if I was wearing my oldest sweater and rattiest jeans, and had clearly been cooped up in a car for three days. In fact, Underwood and his actor/bartender friend were the first people I interviewed in a sleepy New Orleans bar. Right away they offered to show us what was left of the city's nightlife. "You two were the most exciting thing to happen to us in months," he told me later.
"It's a weird war zone mentality," said the woman serving Ripos drinks at the Hustler. A pretty 30-year-old blonde with distinctly unstripper-like small breasts and round stomach, she was eager to talk to me when she noticed my notepad and immediately began referencing novelists I hadn't read. Before Katrina hit, she was teaching English at a New Orleans university But after the hurricane, her class was canceled and she had to pay rent on an apartment that still didn't have electricity. "It feels like I went down the rabbit hole."
The Hustler Club, a national chain, put out ads all over the country to attract hardier souls willing scrounge up a place to sleep-all the cheap motels within 30 miles are booked solid-and come to New Orleans to make a bundle. At first, most of the dancers were new or from out of town, staying with friends, relatives or at the Hustler's corporate apartments, but as the city rebuilds and news of the quick cash spreads, the old staff is making their way back into the city.
"You sit down and you're making a grand," said 21-year-old Brittney Morris, a.k.a. Skyy. "This time last year, I'd be working really really hard and maybe make $500 or $600." Now it's $2,000 working two nights a week.
But most of the smaller clubs haven't reopened yet-Rick's Cabaret, the Gold Club and Club Ritz are all still closed-and the ones that have are finding it harder than Hustler to find staff. "We've got about a third or less back," said Saint Jones, the manager of Big Daddy's. "It's a big problem."
"The club is doing fairly well, but for the amount of hours you have to stay open, it's pretty tough." The demand is there, though, "especially on Fridays when the workers get paid."
"The only girls in town are here," said Brian, one of the few local patrons in the Hustler. A 48-year-old resident of Lakeview, he said he was "helping with the clean-up" and left it at that. His wife and kids had moved out of town since the schools aren't open yet. "You come here and there's always a crowd," he said, motioning to the roomful of silent men staring straight ahead. "It's the only place with any activity. It's like a safe harbor. Everybody's busting their ass, far away from everybody they know."
"The FEMA guys are all up there," he said pointing to the VIP balcony, which was full of the same burly, grim-faced men as the main room.
The clubs in the quarter empty out just before the strictly-enforced 2 a.m. curfew. Instead of a drink after their shift, the girls from the club go directly home and the workers are shooed back to their motels or trailers. Matthew Underwood walks by the same barricade every night and is admonished for being out past curfew. Every night he tells them he won't do it again. And every night he does, counting his money from the new set of disaster tourists.