The East Jefferson bureau of The Times-Picayune reported that while many New Orleans-area businesses bemoan the absence of splurging tourists and conventioneers, a slice of New Orleans nightlife has found fiscal deliverance in the thousands of construction workers and National Guardsmen in town to rebuild the city, a new customer base far from home with a pocket full of dollars and an itch for a good time.
The story reported that owners of strip clubs and bars in New Orleans and Metairie say that thanks to the temporary influx of men in New Orleans, they're doing about the same business, if not better, than before Hurricane Katrina.
Although a few have found the new blue-collar customer base a bit stingy, most dancers and bartenders said they're definitely cleaning up.
"The money is awesome," Dawn Beasley, 27, aka Baylee, a dancer at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club on Bourbon Street told The Times-Picayune. "There's so much money to be made, you don't know what to do with yourself."
Michelle Hunter, a Times-Pacayune staff writer, wrote that a few blocks down the street at Rick's Cabaret, owner Robert Watters said his clientele has always been 80 percent tourists. "I'm ecstatic," Watters said. "You come through a traumatic event, you spend a lot of money and you're anxious about what's going to happen when you do reopen. We're doing OK. We're happy and profitable."
Money is consistent
Lisa Lambert, 36, has been waiting tables at Rick's for eight years. Instead of drunken frat boys or tightfisted vacationers, she said, now her customers are roofers, drywallers, debris-cleanup crews and plumbers. Blue-collar guys, she said, know how to have fun. They're in town making lots of cash and they seem willing to spend it. Tips equal to the cost of drinks are no longer unusual for Lambert, who said she has cleared more than $1,000 on several nights.
The report went on to say that not every dancer said she's doing better than before the storm, but most said the money is now more consistent. Rick's Cabaret dancer Angela Henderson, 33, said bars and strip clubs in the French Quarter used to depend on conventions and events such as the Sugar Bowl to bring in the big dollars.
"It was like feast or famine before," she said. "Now you know you're going to make a certain amount of money every day."
The story claimed that not all of the new customers are blue-collar. Rick's night manager Patrick Mulhearn recalled a recent $12,000 tab for a contractor who brought his crew in and stayed four hours, ordering drinks, table dances and a couple of trips to the Super VIP section, an hour-long dance in a private room that runs $500 a pop.
Lambert said not all the men are motivated by skin. Some are bored, and some are just plain homesick.
"I had a guy from Mississippi tell me to please stop emptying his ashtray so he could feel more at home," she said.
The story continued to say things have slacked off a bit since the Christmas holidays, said Hustler Club partner Jason Mohney. It's still good, but the real boom time, he said, was just after the storm.
The boom reached its peak, Mohney said, in the month between Halloween and Thanksgiving, when the military and police reinforcements from across the country were still in town, and construction crews were pouring into New Orleans after flooded areas were reopened.
Can't resist the cash
The story reported that the city's curfew and a lack of late-night food sent some to neighborhood hangouts beyond the New Orleans city limits, to areas like Fat City, Metairie's answer to the French Quarter, which is enjoying its own boom.
Inside of The Ship's Wheel, a Fat City granddaddy on Edenborn Avenue, space was tight as men crowded around pool tables recently, and the bar was bathed in black light while the smell of cigarettes and sweet, stale air freshener wafted through the room. In five minutes, the doorman had checked identifications from Texas, Mississippi, New York, Illinois, North Carolina and Alabama.
Even in Fat City, the money's good. And that's why Cierra Greenlawn, 28, came back to town after two years in Texas.
She said she made about $100 to $300 a night when she was last in Metairie and now can make $400 in two hours.
The reported that Richard Simmons said the blue-collar boom in Fat City has benefited mostly bars and restaurants in the area serving food into the wee hours of the morning. Walk into his establishment, Shooters bar, on 18th Street, and more than half his customers are Katrina workers.
The same is true down the street at Sports Center, where bar owner Anthony Locano said that in 12 hours he does better than he did before the storm when the place was open 24 hours a day.
With 80 percent of Jefferson Parish repopulated, Metairie bars have been welcoming back their regulars.
Money is flowing
Tourism officials are glad for economic boost from the construction workers and others now in town.
"If it keeps businesses afloat until the tourism and convention business returns on a grand scale, then it's a good thing," said Kim Priez, vice president of tourism for the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Through interviews, Priez has learned that many of the men bring in their relatives and friends for short stays, visitors who spend money in other businesses. And she thinks they'll give Harrah's New Orleans Casino an early boost when it reopens in mid-February.
The story concluded by saying that like most business owners Priez is ready for the return of tourists to the Crescent City. But until then, she's grateful for the blue-collar boom.
"Everybody's money is green," she said.
