Stripped-Down Survivors

Life goes on. The sun will rise, birds will spread their wings, babies will be born ... and fake-breasted babes with tattoos and surprising piercings will grind their asses into the laps of repressed Midwestern conventioneers.

Amid New Orleans' sluggish return to normalcy, the strippers are coming back.

Reuters reports:

"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 Déjà Vu club, which reopened this week.

[...]

“'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.'"

And thanks to the spirit of Bourbon Street, even strip clubs outside of Bayou Country are thriving. You can take the horny out of Nawlins, but apparently you can't take the Nawlins out of the horny.

Don't forget that wonderful revelation a few weeks ago, in which some Hurricane Katrina victims in Houston used their newly minted FEMA and Red Cross debit cards for a G-string recovery.

KPRC in Houston reported that a number of Houston strip club patrons had used the cards shortly after they had been distributed to evacuated New Orleanians:

"A manager at Caligula XXI Gentlemen's Club on Westheimer Road told KPRC Local 2 that he has seen at least one debit card used at his club.

"A woman known only as 'Abby' is a bartender at Baby Dolls, another adult entertainment club across the street.

"'A lot of customers have been coming in from Louisiana and they've been real happy about the $1.75 beers and they're really nice,' she said.

"Abby could not say for sure which type of card her patrons have been using, but said she doesn't blame them for using federal dollars.

"'You lost your whole house, then, why not? You might want some beer in a strip club. There are a lot of guys out there that like to do that,' she said.