New Orleanians typically deal with disasters with passion, parodies and creativity. The oil spill is no exception.

Dotty Carson joins the ranks of the restaurant world with her frustration over the oil spill. "These things hit everyone whether you're involved in it or not, it hits you when you live in Louisiana."

How does she cope? With humor. "Kind of how we're coping because you can't tell people what you want to say," she says. She has a sign outside her restaurant that says " Andrew Jackson. Save us from the British one more time.


Signs aren't the only way people are expressing themselves. "These are probably our three most popular designs related to the oil spill," says Jessica Abadie showing a number of T-shirts in Jean Therapy on Magazine Street. She's selling a slue of t-shirts with new oil spill-related slogans. "These shirts do give locals a voice when they can't necessarily go down there, they can at least let it be known that they're very frustrated with what's going on," she says.

Patrick Horrigan created the Save Our Seafood t-shirt. "I wanted to relate to the gravity of the situation, so S.O.S. is the emergency. So I took those letters and applied save our seafood to the letters. And that's how we came up with this. There's just so much in danger now," he says.

Since people can't clean up the oil or oiled animals, words are how they're trying to do their part.

Stores like Jean Therapy are donating part of t-shirt sales to organizations to save the coast or help seafood industry workers.