What Lives After The Apocalypse: Cockroaches, Keith Richards, and the Saturn Bar

I've been to The Saturn Bar many times. It is the best/worst dive in New Orleans and likely the world. The last time, Halloween 2004, it was really going down hill. Some guy had his little dog there which was pissing and crapping, and no one was cleaning it up. We went upstairs and the seating area up there was full of spider webs -- huge amounts -- which caused me to think that deadly arachnids were just waiting to jump on my face. And there was the cat infestation. And the cockroaches.

It's in the 9th Ward, near Quintron and Miss Pussycat's place. Then we thought that it was doomed to be closed as a health hazard. After Katrina we knew the Saturn had drowned in toxic water, made more filthy by the bar itself.

But at the end of this story... A Miracle!

In New Orleans' 9th Ward, O'Neil Broyard, 67, said Monday that he was not concerned about the threat of disease, although several feet of increasingly fetid water stands just behind his business, the Saturn Bar.

Broyard has been mucking around in the water for days. During the height of the flooding, 2 feet of water was in the bar and he spent three days cleaning it out. He said he took precautions every time he slogged through the water.

"I washed up good," Broyard said. "I got that antibacterial soap and I just put it on my feet."

Like thousands of others left in town, Broyard rejected the mayor's call to evacuate. Instead, he said he was intent on guarding his bar, a small, strange gem in the east of the city that has acquired a cult following over the years for its collection of surreal, comic paintings by a local artist and its earthy, no-nonsense management.