Well Written from the St. Pete. Times.



NEW ORLEANS - Inside, it smells like mold. Outside, the entire French Quarter smells like a dead cat. But the lights came on this week and so, here and there along the street, men prowled again, booze swirled in plastic cups again, and the strippers, the few who found their way back, climbed up the poles.

In Big Daddy's strip club, where a mannequin swings from the ceiling, manager Saint Jones smokes a Marlboro and tries to hold back what is nearly impossible to hold back: the appetites at the door.

"Guys, come back at 5."

Jones has heard the talk about how God sent Hurricane Katrina to purge sin from this deeply religious and deeply deviant city. He does not believe it. "If God wanted us gone, we'd be gone," he says. He turns toward the door. "Five o'clock, guys. Five."

Across town, rescue workers still haul bodies from the rubble. They will tell you about it later, with tired eyes, beer in hand. A curfew allegedly shuts down the city at dark, but enforcement is especially lax, it seems, here on Bourbon Street.

This is among the most sinful stretches in America, the strip that some hope and others fear will be sanitized in the rebuilding to come.

In the French Quarter, it's still not easy to find a restaurant meal. You can't get a beignet at Cafe Du Monde or hear jazz at Maison Bourbon or ride in a carriage behind a slow mule. You can't buy a voodoo doll at Marie Laveau's, take graveyard dirt from the priestess' tomb or put a hex on your ex, no matter how bad he did you wrong. There are no hustlers or artists or tap-dancing boys. Even a cup of coffee seems like an impossibility.

But if you are so inclined, you can drink yourself stumbling drunk and look at naked women until you go blind.

Sin came back to this city before just about anything else.

"Because there's 10 women in this town and 70,000 men," Jones said. "Police, National Guard, firefighters. I never seen church open yet, have you?"



* * * At the Bourbon-Strip Tease lingerie and adult gift store Saturday, Kameron and Coco don't have time to chat. They're exotic dancers - not "ho's" - on their first day back to work since the storm. They need new outfits to shimmy out of, and they need them now.

"There's one girl back at work and she's like, "Y'all hurry up,' " says Kameron, who won't give her last name because "my parents put the fear of God in me."

She ducks into the dressing room but won't model her garment because of "weight issues." From behind the door she says Larry Flynt's Hustler Club has about seven girls working out of its prior roster of 150. She says working makes her feel more at home in this city that still isn't itself.

She dashes out and hands the cashier a black thong, tiny skirt and see-through heels. She pays with a crisp $100 and says, "Thanks, FEMA!"

"Ain't nothing going to stop Bourbon Street, okay?" she says. "People be out here in the rain, am I right?"

The guy ringing her up just laughs. "Right."