French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes'

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20050904%2F2328645464.htm&sc=1110

By ALLEN G. BREED
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming ``tribes'' and dividing up the labor.

As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.

While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity.

``Some people became animals,'' Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. ``We became more civilized.''


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