Church’s bartenders evacuated to other cities. “It would help them get their rent caught up and get those extra credit cards paid off.”īut after Ida howled into Louisiana on Sunday, lashing coastal communities and knocking out power in New Orleans - before moving on to the Northeast, where its remnants wreaked still more havoc - Mr. “It would have been the weekend that helped them catch up from everything they lost during Covid,” Mr. Even with that staffing, he was certain they’d go home flush with tips. Not only was his hotel fully booked, but he had more large party restaurant reservations than he’d had since late July, when Delta took hold.Ĭome Friday night the French Quarter would be brimming with tens of thousands of visitors who’d come for Southern Decadence, or “gay Mardi Gras,” as many refer to it.īeaux Church, the manager of three gay bars in the French Quarter, put twice as many bartenders on the schedule as he normally would. “Everyone loves Labor Day in New Orleans,” said Robert LeBlanc, the owner of the Chloe, another boutique hotel in the Garden District. But hotels still had Labor Day to look forward to. When the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival canceled the October event a few weeks ago, citing concerns about an increase in coronavirus cases, it wiped many reservations off the books. Many other hotels were fully booked at the higher room rates only holiday weekends allow. But for the first time in weeks, guests were slated to fill nearly every room. “This Delta variant kind of erased our August,” said Suzanne Becker, the general manager of the Henry Howard Hotel, a boutique hotel in the Lower Garden District. 29, Labor Day weekend seemed poised to offer New Orleans the tourist bonanza that many businesses had been craving.
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18) in the series sponsored by the Newcomb College Institute.Before Hurricane Ida struck on Aug.
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Therefore, she added, “there were always things happening that are hard to see.”Īfter Prohibition, many gay bars were forced to go underground as the state passed ordinances on cross-dressing, prostitution and “crimes against nature,” all as part of a new state code that “was trying to deal with the increasingly visible "problem" of homosexuality in an effective legal manner.” One quote from a local resident summarized New Orleans" history as a haven of sorts for homosexuals: “Youngsters who develop homosexual tendencies are put on a train and sent to New Orleans.” Long noted that despite this environment in the city, homosexuality in general was considered wrong by mainstream society. During the lecture, she presented pieces of oral and visual history, including a map of gay bars during Prohibition, advertisements from a sporting paper and biographical accounts of those considered prominent members of the gay community. To investigate these accusations, Long had to cultivate an understanding of life as a gay man in 1920s-1940s New Orleans. Her interest in these topics came from historical accusations that Lee Harvey Oswald, an allegedly gay New Orleanian, conspired with other gay men in the assassination of President John F. Long, an associate professor at Louisiana State University, discussed material from her current research project, an upcoming book called Crimes Against Nature: New Orleans, Sexuality and the Search for Conspirators in the Assassination of JFK. Author and historian Alecia Long delved into a fascinating and tumultuous time period in the city"s history in her lecture for the Fridays at Newcomb Series, speaking on the topic, “Submerged: Salvaging the Hidden History of Gay New Orleans 1920-1940.”