NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- As in past
years, labor attorney Eve Marie Stocker plans to fly from Virginia to
New Orleans for Mardi Gras, ride costumed on a float with her mother in
the all-female Krewe of Iris parade and catch up with family and
friends.
This year, however, she says the mission takes on a serious note:
New Orleans, venturing into an uncertain Mardi Gras season after
Hurricane Katrina, needs a successful celebration to get its sputtering
economy started -- and give its storm-shocked residents a break.
"Mardi
Gras is a compass," said Stocker, a former New Orleans resident. "This
is what's normal for the city, and everyone needs a little bit of
normalcy."
Mardi Gras, which always holds a bit of mystery for outsiders with its
fun, frolic and debauchery, is a mystery itself this year for New
Orleans, where an estimated two-thirds of its half-million, pre-Katrina
populace remains elsewhere.
Any infusion of cash will be welcome in a city that saw most of its
tax base washed away by Katrina on August 29 and the ensuing flooding
after levees broke. Basic services, such as police protection and
firefighting, are being held together with a $120 million federal loan
that will provide funding only until spring.
The city is not only ready, says Mary Herczog, author of Frommer's New Orleans and a part-time resident, this will be an amazing year to be there.
"This is a city that has gone through cataclysm,
and its citizens are desperately ready to let off some steam," says
Herczog, who expects a cathartic, once-in-a-lifetime experience for
locals and visitors alike on this 150th anniversary of the event. "This
is going to be a Mardi Gras for the ages."
The celebration, Feb. 18-28, just six months
after Hurricane Katrina devastated a wide area of the city, will
include just eight days of parades instead of the usual two weeks to
keep costs down for the cash-strapped city. And parade routes have been
shortened. But most of the parading krewes that have rolled in past
years are returning. And tourism leaders, who see the event as a sort
of coming-out party for the city, say the tourist districts are ready.
"When you get downtown, it's almost like Katrina
didn't touch it," says Marriott's Mark Sanders, who oversees the
company's 14 hotels in the city. "There's still a lot of
misunderstanding, and (Mardi Gras) is a chance to really let people
know that we're open."
Though the storm dealt areas such as the Lower
Ninth Ward an apocalyptic blow, it largely spared the French Quarter
and the Garden District, the city's key tourism areas. And major
attractions, such as the National D-Day Museum and Café du Monde, long
ago reopened. Harrah's casino just announced it'll reopen Feb. 17, in
time for Mardi Gras.
Foodies will find almost all the big-name
eateries, such as K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, Galatoire's and Emeril's,
back in action (exceptions include Commander's Palace). And most
tourist-area hotels are open. (Of Marriott's 14, only the Ritz-Carlton
remains closed.)
The problem for revelers will be getting a room
on peak days of the festival. Though the first wave of relief workers
has begun leaving the city, it's being replaced by a crowd from local
companies such as Harrah's that are restarting operations, Sanders
says.
As of Wednesday, three Marriotts in the city
still had openings for Feb. 24, starting at $229 a room. The chain was
sold out on Feb. 25 and had only one hotel opening on Feb. 26 (the New
Orleans Marriott, for $249).
Getting to the city is less of a problem, even a
bargain, as airlines ramp up flights. Last week, Southwest said it
would add 36 round-trip flights over Mardi Gras. This week, American
Airlines sold non-stops to New Orleans from New York and other East
Coast cities over Mardi Gras for $163 round trip.
More significant are the thousands of
men and women who have decided that no place in the world is quite like
New Orleans. They are rebuilding, a brick, a board, a shingle at a
time, remaking their own small piece of the city that knows better than
any other what life truly is.
Throughout
its history, New Orleans has battled poverty, sweltering heat,
epidemics and disease, fits of racism, rule by invading armies,
slavery, floods from the river, and hurricanes from the sea. In every
case, New Orleans has chosen its own unique way to put joy above
melancholy and has birthed much of what is now most prized in American
culture.
We love New
Orleans. When we read the scolding of pinched-faced editorialists
chiding us for planning to celebrate Mardi Gras six months after
Katrina, we shake our heads: they don’t get it. Mardi Gras is our
affirmation, the entire city saying, “We’re alive, we’re back, and we
ain’t leaving.” To all those people, who have sacrificed a piece of
their own lives to help us in our time of need: thank you. Laissez les
bons temps rouler.
