Nothing Cancels Mardi Gras—Nothing

I would like to thank the Southern Comfort Company's downtown billboard for providing both the slogan for Mardi Gras 2006 as well as the title of this post. It accurately reflects the fierce defiance in the hearts of those who stayed, those who returned and those who are returning to this lovely, broken city.

Indeed, it's hard to believe, watching so many native New Orleanians participate in the festivities, that up until a couple of months ago, the decision of whether or not to hold Carnival this year was very controversial here. Many were simply embarrassed at the condition of the city six months after Katrina, while others thought it unseemly that a celebration be hosted when so many were still suffering deprivation. But others realized that canceling Mardi Gras would merely add to the damage wrought by the storm, not lessen it in any meaningful way. Still more recognized that after six months of profound sadness and loss followed by profound frustration, everyone just needed stop for a little while and have a damn beer. Or what the hell, maybe two.

As it turned out, the pro-carnival camp was right. The City of New Orleans estimates that about 350 thousand people came in from out of town for Mardi Gras this year, compared to around a million visitors in a normal year. It's very hard to tell however how many visitors were really displaced New Orleanians visiting for Carnival and how many were were true visitors, but from the looks of it, 350 thousand seems like just about the number of people the city could reasonably deal with at this point, so by most accounts this Mardi Gras was a resounding success for the City.

Which isn't to say that everything was normal, or problem free. We went to see Proteus and Morpheus parade Sunday night on Canal Street downtown. The west side of the street was lined at the curb with NOPD barricades as parade routes normally are downtown, and quite a few folks were waiting for the parade. At last we saw Proteus' lead float hit Canal a few blocks down, but instead of turning south onto Canal toward us, they crossed the neutral ground and headed south down the northbound side of the boulevard.

Now, to someone who's never been to a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, this might not sound like a very big deal—and I guess it isn't. But you have to understand how unusual it is. Say what you want about the NOPD, they know how to run parades and run them well. I've watched hundreds of them in my life and I've never seen one get off track. And not only did this parade get off track, but the police also mysteriously disbanded the parade just as it passed our block, probably half a dozen or so blocks before it was scheduled to, leaving a lot of confused folks lined up along the abandoned remainder of the route. Again, weird...

And it seems we saw Nagin everywhere. The first time was the Zulu Lundi Gras party in front of the Aquarium, where we went to see Rebirth Brass Band play. He got off of a Coast Guard cutter with the King of Zulu and the previous king of Zulu. He toasted the city, and the ten Zulu members who perished during Katrina. We also saw him on Fat Tuesday at the Zulu parade itself, riding on horseback with his wife and costumed as Lt. General Russell Honore, the “John Wayne dude” Bush sent in to save his ass days after Katrina hit.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for self-depracating humor, but I’m beginning to kind of like Nagin. I thought the “chocolate city” quote was funny, but apparently many didn’t, especially the white New Orleanians who stayed or returned to the city and have been working their hearts out rebuilding their homes and businesses. One such man standing next to us at the Zulu barricades on St. Charles yelled “throw me something you chocolate idiot!” as Nagin rode past. I imagine the Mayor heard many such comments and worse along the route.

Rebirth Brass Band is very special. Varshna and I have been fans of Rebirth ever since we used to walk down Oak Street and catch them at the Maple Leaf Bar. Since then (the early 1990s) Rebirth has grown into a unifying force within the city with their highly accessible, utterly authentic music, drawing New Orleanians together of every race, age, and station in life. The odd power of second-line jazz lies in it’s blurring of the line which traditionally separates performer and audience, so when you witness it performed live you simply become a part of what the band is doing. When Rebirth plays, everyone dances, from the babies to the grannies.

Compared to when we last visited in November ‘05, there were many more businesses open. virtually every business along Canal was open. Virtually every business in the Quarter was open. The Audubon Zoo was open! It suffered no flooding during the storm, but it did endure some extensive tree damage. They have a small display near the entrance describing their experience including pictures of the elephants helping to move downed trees. We went to the zoo on the Sunday before Mardi Gras, and it appeared to be well attended. Ron Foreman, the head of the Audubon Society, is actually running for Mayor against Nagin this spring, and the excellent condition of the zoo may turn out to be the most effective commercial for his campaign.

Traveling through the city it is impossible to avoid being smacked around by seeming paradoxes and odd juxtapositions. Former residents visiting for Carnival make the city seem more “normal” than it is even though surely many will actually stay. So much of New Orleans housing stock was in horrid condition prior to the storm, yet now investors are streaming into town and paying above top-dollar for Katrina-ravaged properties completely untouched since the flooding. Many Lakeview neighborhoods appear no different than they did last November, yet the standard greeting among neighbors has transformed from “you got wahtah?” to “Howzya Howse?” And along the Gentilly Ridge that runs east to west through the heart of Mid-City/Lakeview, there are entire blocks of houses that were untouched by floodwaters, right in the middle of some of the city’s worst devastation. In the lower Ninth Ward one encounters 1982 Beirut, whereas in the upper Ninth Ward/Bywater one encounters thousands upon thousands of black New Orleanians whom one would swear never left by the looks of the place. And amidst rubble, shiny new cars are everywhere, a testimony to FEMA cash and car insurance pay-outs, which apparently must be easier to settle than homeowners’ pay-outs.

Perhaps the biggest difference I witnessed at Mardi Gras aught-six was the family friendliness of the downtown parades. It used to be if you wanted to take your kids to a parade, you would catch it as far uptown as possible, or perhaps say the hell with it and head out to Metairie to catch the truck parades. Pre-Katrina, downtown parades were simply too packed, and the crowds were always shot through with hard core drunks, n’er-do-wells, and drunken n'er-do-wells. Kids would most often be lucky to catch anything, and if they did the loot was always meager. And although this year's parades were well-attended, the crowds were not the crushing, shoulder-to-shoulder scary crowds where if a little one let go of your hand, you had every reason to wonder if you would ever find them again, or if they would be trampled. But this Mardi Gras was quite different. There were children everywhere, and they could even run around a bit without their parents having a full-fledged freak-out.

And you know, maybe it was just me, but there seemed to be a different vibe emanating from the crowd than at Mardi Gras past. At the Lundi Gras Zulu festival for example, we settled on a circular park bench alongside another extended family, an African American family. Our small children took to each other immediately, so all of us adults tacitly formed a collective kid perimeter, and we all took turns watching them and helping the littlest ones with their jackets and juice boxes, etc., while the other adults enjoyed the bands. The next day at the parades a similar phenomena occurred, even adults without children kept an eye out for the children of others—total strangers—and let the smaller ones up front on their coveted spot at the front of the barricade where they would have the best chance of catching beads. On numerous occasions I saw black parents struggling with multiple small children allow strange white men from a group standing near them to hoist their babies onto their shoulders so they could be in prime bead-catching position.

Now, New Orleans has always been a relatively friendly city, but still, it’s a city. City people don’t generally trust strangers to direct their children, and in public situations often view folks they don’t know with a certain amount of healthy suspicion, but this was all but missing from this year’s Mardi Gras. Perhaps everyone was simply too weary, too frustrated, too numb, or too uncertain about the future to be suspicious of each other anymore, a fellow-feeling born in the crucible of Katrina.