While New Orleans residents worked to get the Big Easy back up and running, Reuters went to the coonass [1] man on the street:

“If they don’t get these businesses going again, the city ain’t going to have any money,” said Art Depodesta, part owner of the restaurant and bar Cooter Brown’s. “I want to be the first to open in Uptown.”

Workers busily scrubbed everything with bleach and Depodesta said he tossed away about $10,000 worth of rotten food.

“It was nasty. The oyster cooler, well, the dead bodies I saw got nothing on that oyster cooler,” he said. “The time for all the ‘woe, woe, woe is me’ business is over. It’s time to get going.”

New Orleans is going to be just fine.