Business Owners Trickle Back in

As clipboard-toting insurance adjusters stepped over debris, Salvation Army volunteers distributed sandwiches, bottles of water, and franks and beans. New mattresses arrived at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Canal Street, and Robby Crain hauled crates of spoiled food out of his Subway sandwich shop on Royal Street.

With horrifying images of the hurricane aftermath beamed around the world, Nagin acknowledged Thursday that he was getting pressure to move more quickly. He ebulliently announced a plan to let as many as 180,000 people in within a week, saying, "We're bringing New Orleans back. It's a good day in New Orleans. The sun is shining."

Stepping up the timetable played well in the French Quarter, where jeweler Franco Valobora said, "As I've been telling the mayor, New Orleans is a dying patient, and we need to give it a boost to the heart and the heart is here in the French Quarter."

Tiring of outsiders, some New Orleanians spoke confidently about celebrating Mardi Gras here next February and said it was time for out-of-town rescue workers and politicians to leave and let residents take over.

"The day the president came, I couldn't get contractors in," said Wayne Cox, assistant superintendent of engineering services for Pan American Real Estate. "We've got gaping holes in the roof, but nobody can get through because Mr. Bush wanted to come."

Old-time New Orleans meshed Saturday with the modern, wrecked New Orleans on the quiet boulevards and spooky streets that people encountered on their return. Philip Collier -- brave or, perhaps, foolish -- climbed into an elevator and ascended three floors in the Factor's Row Building, where Edgar Degas painted his American masterpiece "The Cotton Exchange." Collier, a graphic designer whose big, bold images grace posters for the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, was in search of something irreplaceable: the family photo albums he had stashed in office storage space. "I love this city," Collier said. "It's totally heartbreaking."

Like many entrepreneurs here, Collier is employing a good bit of creativity to survive. He plans to operate his business through cell phone and Internet connections with designers living in Covington and Avery Island.

Collier will also take care of unfinished business. A book he compiled before the storm was supposed to have been published Aug. 29, the day Katrina hit, and his editors are more eager than ever to see it print. The title: "Missing New Orleans."

Staff writers Keith L. Alexander in New Orleans and Peter Whoriskey in St. Bernard Parish contributed to this report.