A Shot of Bourbon Amid a Sea of Tears

NEW ORLEANS—“Booty, booty, booty,” the DJ played at a club here in the famous French Quarter, a neighborhood still rollicking in a city now reeling.

Five Harvard undergraduates moved bashfully from the dance floor toward Fat Catz’s stage. Their backs to the crowd, the students followed the instructions of the DJ and grooved to the hip-hop beat.

If the service trip had been a shocking exposure to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, last Thursday night gave volunteers a glimpse of New Orleans as it had existed before Aug. 29. It provided insight into a city many of them hadn’t known before the storm.

Undergraduate volunteers, like other tourists, come to the French Quarter to experience the city’s culture. Organizers say the service trips are meant to be as much an education as a labor donation. When the students weren’t gutting homes or working with elementary school children, they were listening to the stories of survivors or watching local artists perform. They wanted to understand the city. Coming to clubs like Fat Catz is a part of that process.

“It just helped to put your service into a little more context,” said Amara A. Omeokwe ’08, who led one of the service groups dancing last Thursday.

Though extraordinary damage had swept over much of the city, Bourbon Street, which remained relatively unscathed by the flooding, offered the volunteers a taste of happier times.

“When you go to a jazz club or get beignets, you see why bringing back New Orleans is needed,” Omeokwe said. “It makes you want to work harder, because you want the culture to come back, and you know why it should be rebuilt.”

SIREN’S CALL

Bourbon Street symbolizes much of what tourists knew to be New Orleans prior to Katrina. Outsiders thought of the city in terms of Mardi Gras beads and jazz, and this tourist hub was quick to provide the goods even after the storm. Though slightly less crowded now, the neon stretch still glows, populated by conventioneers and college students.

Bourbon Street bounced back within months of the catastrophe, and a strip club on the street was among the first businesses to reopen, serving relief workers and policemen.

Bourbon Street’s siren’s call was hard to ignore. If the students needed to witness the widely-reported destruction in the Ninth Ward, they also needed to see the legendary lane.

Bar-hopping by night, the students said, gave them a way to empathize with storm victims by day.

“Some of them asked, ‘Have you seen our city? Have you taken the tour? Have you been to the French Quarter?’” Omeokwe said. “It was another level of connection to have with the residents and New Orleans.”

‘THEY’RE BOUNCING BACK ALREADY’

Bourbon Street didn’t demand the kind of manual labor performed in devastated neighborhoods. Still, supporting Bourbon Street was another way for the students to sustain New Orleans. Tourism drew $5 billion of spending to New Orleans in 2004, and the Big Easy will need many of those visitors if it is to rise again.

In a city battling for its own survival, the commercial success of Bourbon Street is a small sign of life.

“They don’t want to be pitied,” Gayatri S. Datar ’07 said of New Orleanians.

An organizer of several service trips, Datar joined fellow students at Fat Catz Thursday night.

“The city wants us to know they can still have a good time, they’re bouncing back already,” she said. “The fact that Bourbon Street is still vibrant is a testament to the resilience of the city, even though it was affected less.”

After the students went on a tour of the city, one New Orleanian told them to not grieve, but rather take positive steps toward the city’s hoped-for rebirth.

“She even told us, ‘Buy souvenirs. Buy alcohol. By little steps you are helping,’” Datar said. “I’m not going to say that’s the reason we went out, but that’s definitely a side part.”

With every $7 drink, they invested in New Orleans’ survival.

ROCKING ON

The Harvard contingent wasn’t alone. College students from all parts of the country, organized through service organizations and church groups, have poured into New Orleans. At work, the student volunteers were scattered at sites across the city. At play, they came together at bars.

On one night, Bunagan’s Mather House group went to Rock ‘n’ Bowl, a club with cult popularity. Alongside fellow volunteers from other schools, they bowled right next to the bar. The following morning, as usual, they worked on homes in the Ninth Ward, helping to bring hope to a place that needed it too much.

—Staff writer April H.N. Yee can be reached at aprilyee@fas.harvard.edu.