NEW ORLEANS – Bright lights and a mixture of music surround revelers enjoying the night life on Bourbon Street. It’s Wednesday night in the New Orleans French Quarter, and the city is full of life once again.
Four and a half months have passed since Hurricane Katrina wounded the city and in the French Quarter, the vibrant businesses and the partygoers have erased some of the city’s scars.
The city’s gay and lesbian community has played a key role in reviving the city. The gay men and lesbians were some of the first city residents to return, reopen their businesses and call New Orleans – a city that has offered open doors to them – their home again.
“The reopening of the bars brings people back home,” said Jennifer Vitter, current president of the University organization Gays, Bisexuals, Lesbians and Supporters United.
Vitter, mechanical engineering senior, said the bars are a crucial element to the gay and lesbian community in New Orleans.
“I find [gay and lesbian] culture in New Orleans centers around the bar scene,” Vitter said.
Vitter said although there is no central gay district in New Orleans like there is in other large cities, the gay community is based around downtown and the French Quarter.
Gay and lesbian bars bounced back quickly.
About two dozen members of the gay community refused to let the destruction of Hurricane Katrina keep them from having the city’s annual Southern Decadence parade Sept. 4 – days after the storm.
“We [the gay community] were the first to come back and start reopening,” said C. W. Stambaugh, the owner of Starlight by the Park, a New Orleans gay and lesbian bar on Rampart Street.
Stambaugh said the post-Katrina gay community in New Orleans makes up about 38 percent of the population.
Good Friends reopened in mid-September when there was an 11 p.m. curfew, and the bartenders had to use bagged ice and canned soft drinks at the St. Anne Street bar.
Jerry Frederick, assistant manager of Good Friends on Dauphine Street, said business has been good lately.
“When we compare daily sales from now to one year prior, they are not that much lower considering the hurricane,” Frederick said.
But the bar could still have more business and more employees, said Frederick. He said before the hurricane the bar had between 11 and 12 employees. Now the bar has only four.
Starlight by the Park reopened during the last week of October.
“I’m happy to be back and rebuilding,” Stambaugh said.
Stambaugh said the bar did not get flooded, but the building did have heavy storm damage. During the storm, Stambaugh kept his doors open, but eventually he had to leave the city temporarily.
Stambaugh said the storm scattered many members of the New Orleans gay community to all corners of Louisiana and the rest of the country.
Frederick moved to Alexandria with his roommate and stayed there for seven weeks.
Andrew Balock, a bartender at Oz on Bourbon Street, and many other people in a similar situation went to Baton Rouge, where Balock enrolled at LSU for the fall semester.
“Baton Rouge will have a larger gay and lesbian population for a couple of months until people come home because some students may finish up the school year there,” the finance student said.
Jennifer Fleming, GBLSU treasurer, said the Baton Rouge gay community is sizably smaller than New Orleans’ and is often not as accepting.
“It [the gay lifestyle] is frowned upon but tolerated in Baton Rouge,” said Fleming, marine biology senior.
Many gay men and lesbians of New Orleans said they are excited to be home.
Frederick moved to New Orleans six years ago from Wisconsin after completing a journalism degree. Before moving from Wisconsin, Frederick vacationed several times in the Big Easy and decided he loved the culture and the climate.
He has plans to stay in his adopted home of New Orleans, it is where his house and two dogs are.
Frederick said he thinks New Orleans is a welcoming place.
“This city is not the kind of city that will shut their doors on anyone,” Vitter said.
Stambaugh also said in spite of the storm and the slow recovery of New Orleans, he has no plans to move elsewhere.
“This is home,” Stambaugh said. “And it’s going to be home.”
Contact Justin Fritscher at [email protected]
New Orleans gay bars help revive French Quarter economy
January 25, 2006