Out at Johnnie White’s Last Night

Post by Sigmund Solares
Chief Executive Officer
Intercosmos Media Group, Inc.

Johnny White's bar in the French Quarter never closed in the past 16 years. To be clear it has been open 24/7 the entire time rain or shine. A few days after Katrina hit I drove by and took a couple pictures of the bar. Last night four of us from directNIC (Sigmund, Brandy, Jonathan and Daniel) were at the bar, only in the interest of performing research on the relief effort and to stimulate the local economy. Pictures, including, Johnny White's .

Johnny White's remained open (running on a small generator) despite the fact that it is located in a section of the French Quarter that lost power due to Katrina and still does not have power, despite the fact that it had to hire new employees to man the bar and despite the fact that the city is under mandatory evacuation. Although there are other bars now open in the French Quarter it was the only one to remain open the entire time.

WARNINGS! If you plan to venture out in the darkness of the French Quarter in the wee hours of the morning to visit Johnny White's bar in the coming days keep in mind that the selection of beer is limited to Corona and Heineken and they don’t take Master Card or American Express (or even Visa for that matter) – so bring cash. One final warning, the bathroom is on the second floor accessible only by stairs and has no lights so you have to use a flashlight and reportedly the bathroom has not been cleaned in 26 days.

At Johnny White's :
- Beer $3
- Shots $5
- Taking a leak on the street instead of a bathroom that has not been cleaned in 26 days: priceless!

You might be asking yourself. Who would go to a bar in an evacuated city after massive destruction caused by Katrina with impending doom from Hurricane Rita as a realistic possibility? So I will describe the crowd to you.

The crowd ranged from 16 people at one point to only four people remaining by 1:45 am. At no point did the crowd consist of more than 3 women. From my perspective, the crowd did not look any different than any other time in the French Quarter except for the absence of tourists and over abundance of men.

Of course the regulars there referred to Brandy and I as tourists so from their perspective the crowd seemed just like the crowd from any other night.

The bar tender last night took his first job as a bar tender one week ago when he found out that Johnny White's bar needed help to cover shifts.

Sitting at the bar was an out of work cabbie who plans to relocate to Montana in a week as long as his date does not fall through. His biggest problem at the moment is figuring out how he can get to the airport. No one in the city wants to drive him to the airport because they don’t know if they will be able to get through the checkpoints to get back in the city.

Another patron of the bar was resident originally from Greece who came to New Orleans at age 6. He stayed in New Orleans for the past 26 days. He survived Katrina while drinking beer at Johnny White's. Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit he was nearly beaten to death with a 2 by 4 by thugs on Canal Street and he has the fresh scars to prove it. After having his head stitched up at the hospital he refused to evacuate. He even insisted on walking us to our car to make sure that we were safe at 1:45 am when we were leaving.

Also at the bar were four Dominos pizza guys. These guys were the most popular guys in the bar because they have been giving out free pizzas for the relief effort. Two of the Domino’s volunteers were from Canada, one was from California and one was from Washington State. One of the Canadians saw all the pictures of destruction and decided that he had to volunteer to help.

There was a New Orleans resident who is from D.C. He said that now that New Orleans is evacuated D.C. probably has the highest crime rate. This was contested by another bar patron from LA who said that he has friends who are involved in shootings all the time. So it was an interesting group there last night.

Johnny White's charges for the alcohol, however, they have piles of supplies for the taking. They had cases and cases of water which they said would all be gone by morning and that they would have more brought in. They also had boxes of food for the taking. They even have cots set up outside of Johnny White's. I am not sure who they are for, however, people were sleeping on them right off Bourbon Street.