Media & Press Info - Southern Decadence

UPDATE: September 5, 2008-11:30am

The resilience of the GLBT community is amazing here in New Orleans! With only 4 days since Hurricane Gustav, some 95% of this community has reopened including bars, bookstores, delis, hair salons, laundries, lodging/accommodations, printers, restaurants, services, shops, spas and more. Visit the Classifieds at Ambush Mag.to find exactly what you are looking for in the Bywater, CBD, Faubourg-Marigny, French Quarter, Uptown, Metairie and Slidell. Entergy is working to restore power in the areas still without it.

The New Orleans community realizes how lucky it was with this storm. It's best wishes goes out to the communities hardest hit including Baton Rouge and much of South Louisiana. Keep those areas in mind when making donations to various hurricane relief organizations including the Red Cross.

UPDATE: Labor Day, September 1, 2008~10pm
By: Rip & Marsha Naquin-Delain

If Hurricane Gustav had not come our way, yesterday, Sunday, August 31st, would have been a giant 35th Southern Decadence Parade. Instead the City of New Orleans was under mandatory evacuation. Several of us locals who never leave for hurricanes stayed once again to ride out the storm. Our dear Billy came over to help us prepare for the storm at 9:30am. After boarding up the windows and dormers on the third floor of Ambush Headquarters from inside the building, it was time to tackle the second floor. First we removed the plants, pots and shelving from the balcony over the courtyard. Then it was off to the balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. Before tackling that balcony, we had to roll up the oriental rug under the dining room table and get it off to the side. Then we moved the dining room table up against the rug. From the balcony we removed five tables, two stands, eight chairs, two shelving units, forty-six potted plants, plant hangers, wind chimes, the mirrored centerpiece fleur de lis, and two lamp post. There was only enough room for a narrow walk through space in the dining room. Then we closed all of the shutters wiring them together to protect the walk through windows from flying debris. On the first floor we wired shut the shutters on the two windows on the front of the building. From there it was on to the courtyard. Here we opened up our slave quarter unit and placed eight chairs, a table and grill inside and closed the wooden shutters. In the breeze way, we moved all of the Ambush shipping boxes and furniture into the office on the first floor. We finally finished around 1pm.

Sunday was a beautiful afternoon. Only two gay clubs remained opened that we're aware of in the entire city, JohnPaul's, 940 Elysian Fields, and the Phoenix, 941 Elysian Fields. All of the other clubs were boarded up and closed. The Quartermaster was also open and a great stop for a warm bite to eat, booze and cigarettes.

After completing our hurricane preparations it was definitely time for a cocktail so we headed over to JohnPaul's around 1:30pm. We met up with club owners John and Paul, Eva Las Vegas, Nicklaus and Wendy. All of a sudden we realized it was 2pm, which should have been the start of the Southern Decadence Parade, so we all did a SD toast and celebrated the event with a bar crawl to the Phoenix. At the Phoenix we found club owner Bobby Connell, bartender Marty, Marcos and a couple of other customers. We all celebrated SD here as well. No grand marshals were in town, but all of us Susan Lucci's would have done them proud.

We headed home around 5pm to get inside before the outer bands of Gustav arrived. Around 8pm the winds picked up and in came some of the rain bands. The howling winds came more frequently around 10pm, and after watching the latest weather forecast, we felt the French Quarter and the East Bank of New Orleans would be spared the brunt of the storm. We decided it was time to turn in and get some sleep. We woke up around 6am when the electricity went out. It was time to turn on our battery operated TV and catch up on the weather updates. Gustav was making landfall almost exactly where it was expected to and was being downgraded to a Category 2 storm. After getting some essentials done, we headed down to our slave quarter unit which has a gas stove so we could make a pot of coffee. The main building is all electric except for the hot water heaters on the second and third floors.

We had coffee in the breeze way and then had more on the stoop in front of the building on Bourbon Street. Then we saw them. The winds were slinging our neighbor Mary's giant avocados off her courtyard tree through the air over her home into the street. We scrambled and picked us up some. Can't wait till they're ripe. The winds calmed so we decided to take a walk down Bourbon past Johnny White's bar which was packed since it was the only drinking establishment open in the French Quarter. We turned on Toulouse and then on Royal for the walk back home. After some lunch, we decided to get the car out and head over to JohnPaul's. When we got to our off street parking lot, we thought we'd just be able to turn the key and push the electric gate open since there was no electricity. But no, that did not work. We went through the side pedestrian gate. Finally, Marsha figured we'd have to use the hand crank to open the gate. Once we got that done, we drove on out, and closed the gate once again.

There was quite a crowd at JohnPaul's even though there was no electricity here either. The boys had prepared quite a cookout with hamburgers and hot sausage sandwiches courtesy of Gene's Poboys, pasta salad and an array of baked goods from Billy's Bites. Cocktails were flowing, and then the first responders began to arrive. John and Paul supplied all the eats they had and bottled water to members of the National Guard, New Orleans Fire Department and New Orleans Police Department. With all the first responders and all the bar patrons, the guys served up over 250 sandwiches. After all of this went on, it was almost 2pm when several of us realized it would have been the time for the Southern Decadence Survivors Outer Loop Bar Crawl. After all, we were indeed survivors so why not continue the tradition, but this year it was without Ted and it was between JohnPaul's and the Phoenix since none of the Quarter bars were open. It really was a whole bunch of fun and we did not let Gustav get us down and out this Labor Day Weekend!

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