Strippers help tease back New Orleans nightlife
First strip club reopens in city’s famous French Quarter
A stripper dances Tuesday at DejaVu on Bourbon Street, the first
strip club to reopen in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Updated: 5:35 p.m. ET Sept. 21, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - In a sign that things may be returning to normal in New
Orleans, strip shows are back in the city’s famous French Quarter.
Erotic dancers and strippers are entertaining crowds of police,
firefighters and military personnel instead of the usual audiences of drunken
conventioneers and tourists in Bourbon Street’s DejaVu club, which
reopened
this week.
It’s the first strip joint to resume business, three weeks after
Hurricane Katrina struck.
“It’s nice to get back to work, and all these men need some entertainment,”
Dawn Beasley, 27, a dancer at the club, said Tuesday night. “They haven’t
seen anybody but their buddies for two weeks.”
The crowd hooted and hollered as women peeled off their tops and gyrated
as customers tucked tips into their G-strings.
“This is our first time off the ship, and it’s great,” said one young sailor
as he left the club. He declined to give his name or say where he was
stationed.
“It’s good to see the businesses getting back up and bringing the city
back,” another sailor said.
Strip clubs have long been a fixture of Bourbon Street, where marquees
promise everything from “barely legal” dancers to transvestite divas.
Photos of the seedy shows inside the clubs line the windows, next to scores of
bars in the district, which draws tourists from around the globe.
The unstoppable strip club
The city’s dusk-to-dawn curfew failed to prevent the DejaVu from staying open to the wee hours, with blaring music and neon lights spilling out into the Quarter, most of which rem