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New Orleans strip joint wants to get back to work
(gg)
By Jason Webb
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - There's no water for the "wash
the girl of your choice" service and there aren't any
girls either, but Big Daddy's strip club on New
Orleans' Bourbon Street is getting ready to bring back
erotic spectacle to the devastated city.
Friday night on Bourbon Street, usually a throbbing
artery of the party-going French Quarter, was pretty
grim this time around in what has become a
foul-smelling ghost town partly covered with a swamp
of filthy water.
Police patrol cars and military Humvees made up most
of the traffic on the street.
But Big Daddy's general manager, Saint Jones, and a
band of helpers defied an evacuation order by arriving
to clean up their premises in the historic French
Quarter, which escaped largely unscathed from the
floods.
Jones told Reuters he would open for business as soon
as he could get electricity, water and dancers.
He was already had electricity from a generator, which
was moving a pair of robotic woman's legs, in
stockings and pink high heels, waving invitingly on
the street by the sign for Big Daddy's.
He also had plenty of bottled water.
But his former employees had been evacuated, so his
main problem was convincing girls to come to a town
without services and supposedly off limits to most
civilians.
But Jones, a corpulent man with a strawberry blond
beard wearing a black t-shirt reading "I'm smiling
because they haven't found the bodies yet," foresaw
few problems getting strippers.
"It shouldn't be too hard. Everyone's going to come
back in town and want to work. You know, if you've got
50 dancers in Houston and they're not making money,
they're going to spread out," he said.
Judging from the number of military and police
vehicles which stopped or slowed passing Big Daddy's,
they'll have plenty of customers. It didn't seem to
occur to the men in uniform to enforce the evacuation
order in effect on the city -- they preferred to ask
when the strippers would be back.
One army Humvee, carrying a team of Puerto Rican
troops, stopped so that a soldier could pose with his
M16 rifle by a life-size picture of a naked blonde
while his buddy took a photo.
Jones gave them vodka on the rocks in plastic cups,
which they enjoyed before hopping back in the Humvee.
Big Daddy's sign advertises several attractions,
including "Bottomless. Topless. Table top dancing,"
and "Wash the girl of your choice."
This last item seemed to provide a business challenge
in a city where the scant running water available in
some districts is infected with feces and toxic loads
of bacteria.
But Jones was undaunted.
"We'll make sure they get showers," he said.
Of course, Jones will fail in his ambition if he is
compelled to evacuate.
One of his helpers, Vietnam veteran Terry Fredricks,
who has temporarily moved into the strip joint because
his home is flooded, said they would only leave if
they were forced to go but they would go peacefully if
it came to that.
Jones maintained his optimism. Asked about the
identity of his potential customers, he replied,
inaccurately as it happens, "probably you."
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