It's early in the morning and my eyes are blurry, so I'm hoping that's the problem. Because no one would be so utterly lacking in self-awareness that they would say this to a reporter, and no journalist would think this is newsworthy. Uh, right?
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The hookers are back on Bourbon Street. So are the drug dealers, the strippers with names like Rose and Desire, the out-of-town businessmen, the college students getting blitzed on candy-colored cocktails and beer in plastic cups.Of all the tragedies of Katrina—the thousands of destroyed homes, the uprooted families, the thousands of deaths, the hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, the looting, the disease, the government apathy—I think the strippers no longer making $1200/night and, no longer chaste, having to resort to prostitution is easily the most troubling. I weep. Truly.But a closer look reveals things are not back to the way they were in the French Quarter. Sixteen months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans' liveliest, most exuberant neighborhood is in a funk.
"The money's not the same. I remember when I made $1,200 a night," said Elizabeth Johnson, a manager and dancer at a Bourbon Street strip club, frowning at another slow night. "I know girls who used to never let people touch them, and now they're resorting to prostitution."
