by Rex Wockner
[story filed December 18, 2005]
NEW ORLEANS --
A few Christian political activists blamed Hurricane
Katrina on gays,
noting that it hit immediately prior to gay-friendly
New Orleans'
famed "Southern Decadence" gay festival.
But, in fact,
about the only parts of the city that weren't severely
damaged by the
massive flooding from burst levees were the gayest areas.
And the New
Orleans gay scene appears to be bouncing back faster than
the city in
general.
"The 20 percent
of the city that was spared, 80 percent of those parts
of the city
are gay [neighborhoods]," said Larry Bagneris, executive
director of
the New Orleans Human Relations Commission. "The benefits of
living in that
environment -- the French Quarter, the Marigny, the
Bywater, Uptown
-- where most gay people live, they were spared the
water. We've
come back not only to dry land, but to our jobs.
"All those preachers
who blamed the gay community for Katrina -- our
neighborhoods
were the ones that had the rainbow over us and were
blessed," Bagneris
said.
But many gay
people didn't live in those gayest neighborhoods --
especially lesbians,
blacks and men who don't frequent gay bars.
"The flooding
hit a lot of the community that is less visible than the
bar crowd,"
said Randal Beach, co-chair of the Lesbian and Gay Community
Center of New
Orleans. "A lot of the people whose social activities
revolve around
the bar scene live in and around the French Quarter, and
they were fortunately
spared the flooding. But many others in the
community --
particularly the women's and trans[gender] communities --
lived in areas
that were badly flooded. New Orleans also has a large
black community,
and the overwhelming majority of those people lived in
neighborhoods
that were severely damaged."
Former city Health
Department director and well-known French Quarter
figure Dr. Brobson
Lutz agreed that "gay people of color were more prone
to live in areas
that were more susceptible to the flooding."
Lesbians took
a harder hit, Bagneris said, because "more lesbians lived
in [the flooded]
Mid-City and Lakeview [areas], and many have kids that
have to go to
school."
Most schools
have not reopened, which prevents people with school-aged
children from
coming home, even if they have a home to come home to,
which most evacuees
do not.
The city's lesbian
population is likely to remain depleted for some
time, said Belinda
Hernandez, an openly gay executive producer at
WDSU-TV.
"A lot of the
lesbian population relocated -- and we don't even know
where they are,"
she said. "Lakeview is gone. Much of Mid-City was under
water as well."
GAY
COMMUNITY CENTER THREATENED
WITH
COLLAPSE
The fact that
most evacuees still haven't been able to come home also
has thrown the
Lesbian and Gay Community Center into dire financial
straits. It
may, in fact, have to close if help doesn't arrive soon.
"It's devastating,"
Beach said. "We have met several times trying to
figure out how
to keep the doors open. The base of our support has
always been
in the community itself, we've never had a lot of corporate
support, [and]
many of our heavy donors are scattered around the
country. Many
we haven't been able to talk to. We don't even know where
they went.
"Also, it's hard
to ask people for money when they don't even have a
house," he said.
The center has
100 to 150 core donors but has been able to contact "no
more than half
a dozen of them," Beach said.
The all-volunteer
facility, located in the unflooded Faubourg Marigny
neighborhood,
operates on $30,000 to $50,000 a year. If 2,500 people
from the gay
community around the country donated $20 each, the center's
crisis could
be averted for a full year, Beach said.
"At a time when
there are a lot of people in our community desperately
needing help
and desperately needing community, the center needs to be
up and running
and operating," he said. "But we can't keep the doors
open without
insurance and rent and utilities."
The center hosts
the Metropolitan Community Church; Parents, Families
and Friends
of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); political organizations; a
youth group;
the gay film festival and other community institutions. It
also operates
a resource library.
Another way that
gays around the country can help out is to start
visiting New
Orleans again, said Bagneris.
"The crowds in
the bars are about the same, if not fuller, because we
have FEMA (Federal
Emergency Management Agency) people, computer people,
people from
out of town," he said.
"I'm encouraging
gay people to visit now -- if you can get a hotel and a
flight. Only
about 35 percent of our flights are coming in and out.
Hotels are tight
because of FEMA and insurance people. But this would be
a great time
to visit. ... The areas that were preserved are the areas
that we enjoy
the most. The bars are popping, the restaurants are open,
you can view
the sights, and you can go through the areas that have been
under water
and realize how blessed you are."
While FEMA partiers
may be helping keep the gay bars afloat, that's
pretty much
the only positive thing Bagneris and others had to say about
the feds.
"The federal
government has shown a lack of leadership from the top
down," Bagneris
said. "We're dealing with an inept president and an
inept FEMA.
... But I feel extremely optimistic. We've always done what
is best for
the city, which has kept this unique culture and
individuality.
We tend to build and restructure in spite of the federal
government's
lack of support."
CRAWLING THE QUARTER
FEMA also came
in for criticism during conversations with French Quarter
gay bartenders.
"We're ready
for the FEMA people to go away. In fact, we'll help them
pack," said
Eric Evans, manager of the Rawhide 2010 bar.
"They've sucked
up all the rooms in the hotels," he said. "We don't know
what they're
doing. We need our tourists to come and visit and stay in
the hotels that
they can't get into because the FEMA people are
occupying them.
Basically, we're occupied by the federal government
right now. We
need them to go away.
"Tell all of
our people it's time to come home," Evans added. "We're
ready for you."
Evans said business
at Rawhide has been "steady ... pretty much normal
for December,
but it's all locals."
A Saturday-night
pub crawl found 40 to 75 people in each of several gay
bars between
11 p.m. and midnight -- numbers that some locals said were
low. A Sunday
afternoon visit to a popular Bourbon Street gay bar found
more than 100
patrons.
"It's very unpredictable,"
said Jerry Frederick, assistant manager of
Good Friends
Bar. "Some nights we're crazy busy when we don't think
we're going
to be, and then when we think we're going to be [busy], it's
slow. The majority
of the time, though, we are generally rather busy, so
we're getting
back to where we should be.
"It's a lot of
locals," Frederick said. "We don't have any tourists in
town yet. There's
not a lot of lodging available because all the hotels
are taken by
FEMA and construction workers. When the tourists come back,
then it's gonna
pick up a lot more.
"We also have
a 2 o'clock curfew," he noted. "When they lift the curfew,
that's going
to change things a lot, too."
Over on Bourbon
Street, the main tourist strip, Bourbon Pub barback Marc
Anthoni said
that "the last month or so, business has been good."
"I think the
gay population in New Orleans has bounced back considerably
faster than
the general population," he said. "I feel we're very
fortunate that
the business really is here. It's kind of a 50/50 mix
here -- we get
some relief workers, a lot of construction people who are
coming in from
out of state to rebuild the community and, yeah, a lot of
the local faces
have been gracing our humble establishment. We've been
blessed."
Cafe Lafitte
In Exile, which also is on Bourbon Street, "has been pretty
busy," said
bartender Manuel Carillo.
"We're getting
a lot of out-of-towners," he said. "What we're really
worried about
is when the relief workers leave, are we going to have
enough actual
residents to keep the city going. That's the big scare. We
just don't have
enough people returning, so that's not a good sign.
"Tourism is real,
real low because of all the relief work going on,"
Carillo agreed.
"There's no space at the hotels."
Former city health
director Lutz predicted it will be many years before
New Orleans'
population returns to pre-hurricane levels.
"New Orleans
was said to have a population of 480,000 to 500,000
pre-Katrina,"
he said. "There's no way we'll get 200,000 residents in a
year. We'll
be lucky to have 150,000 residents in a year. I think the
next three to
four years are really going to be rough. I think it's
going to take
us 10 years to really start booming again."
Lutz suggested
that the present population mix gives the city an Old
West feel.
"The city is
running 60 to 70 percent male right now, which is very
unusual for
a U.S. city, and probably more characteristic of an old
frontier operation
like in the Wild West or in Alaska," he said.
Donations
for the gay community center can be mailed to: LGCCNO, 2114
Decatur Street,
New Orleans, LA 70116.