Dodging Bullets

Three years ago, in preparation for Hurricane Katrina, Bob Rue, owner of The Sarouk Shop, an Oriental rug emporium on New Orleans's grand St. Charles Avenue, boarded up his windows with plywood and painted on a warning: "Don't Even Try. I am Sleeping Inside with a Big Dog, an Ugly Woman, Two Shotguns and a Claw Hammer." It worked. Almost every business lining the Avenue, from Smoothie King to the Please-U Restaurant, was trashed and looted-except for those within viewing distance of Rue's sign.

The sign and its addenda ("Still Here. Woman Left Friday, Cooking a Pot of Dog Gumbo, Still Got Claw Hammer") was so emblematic of the city's post-Katrina troubles as well as the resilience and highly necessary sense of humor of its residents that it is now part of the Louisiana State Museum's permanent collection. So when Gustav reared his ugly head, Rue was forced to paint another: "Don't Try. Sleeping Inside with a .357, a Pit Bull, and Six Big Snakes." Except that this time his graffiti served largely to entertain. To date only two episodes of looting have been reported, and all seven perpetrators were apprehended on the scene by cops out in full force.

Part of the reason for the far more orderly aftermath may well have been Mayor Ray Nagin's admonition that "Looters will have a special trip." In remarks widely broadcast, he added, "You will not get a pass. Anyone caught looting in New Orleans will go directly to the Big House in the general population. You will go to Angola prison and God bless you if you go there." (The quote was apparently broadcast far outside of Louisiana as well-there were so many searches for "Angola" that it reached the top of Google Trends.)

As colorful as the mayor's language continues to be, the more likely reason for the fact that order held is that the response of the government at every level has been so superior to the tragically bungled reaction to Katrina that it feels as though we're living on a different planet. In Katrina's immediate aftermath, even some cops joined the post-Katrina looters (at a Cadillac dealership and a WalMart) and the rest were largely without leadership or even gas. This time the police force acted like one. Another huge difference was the fact that Governor Bobby Jindal came home from Minneapolis, skipping his prime-time convention slot to get the National Guard in place in New Orleans a full three days before Gustav made landfall. After Katrina, former Governor Kathleen Blanco did not manage to call out the bulk of the troops until almost a week into the nightmare-unbelievably, she'd been overheard by a CNN producer admitting to an aide that she had not known it was her job to do so. By the time the Guard arrived, looters were so well organized they were using two-way radios to notify each other of the locations of particularly lucrative stashes. Rue reported that he was kept awake most nights by the sounds of gunfire; at one point he himself pulled a .38 on a would-be looter who was about to haul away his neighbor's vintage Porsche on a flatbed. This go-round the Porsche again came under siege, but only by a Sycamore limb that dented its roof.

Then there was the fact that folks without cars (80,000 households pre-Katrina) or a place to go were offered transportation out to shelters via buses and Amtrak. Just prior to Katrina, Amtrak had called the mayor's office to volunteer a train, but Nagin never returned the call. Unutilized school buses were left in their lots and later flooded. This time, Jindal himself turned up at the combined bus/train station as 18,000 people started boarding buses as early as Saturday. The plan had been to avoid the hellish scenario that unfolded in Katrina's "shelters of last resort," the Superdome and the Convention Center, and it worked. The restored Superdome never lost power and will host Sunday night's game between the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

While much that needed fixing got fixed, the good news is that the qualities that endear New Orleans to many-our more colorful characters, neighborly spirit, intrepid chefs and bars that never close-have not changed in the least. Johnny White's, the Bourbon Street dive that became famous for being the bar that never closed during Katrina, became the bar that never closed during Gustav. Though many participants heeded the warning to leave town, Southern Decadence, an annual gay festival that last year drew 120,000 to the city, went on as planned, with the parade led by Grand Marshals Paloma and Tittie Toulouse snaking down Bourbon Street less than 24 hours before landfall. More than 10,000 people stayed in town, and despite the lack of electricity, held makeshift porch parties, grilling the contents of their refrigerators and freezers, making runs to Johnny's or to Molly's at the Market, another French Quarter bar that was a popular Katrina hangout, for cold beer and cocktails. By Tuesday, Iron-chef contender and James Beard award-winner John Besh had opened his bistro Luke. Dan Stein had opened his Magazine Street deli (motto: "If you want a Po-Boy, go somewhere else"). And both were slammed with crowds that spilled onto the sidewalk.