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New Orleans Marks Post-Katrina Mardi Gras

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By MARY FOSTER

NEW ORLEANS - Some may question the appropriateness of having a raucous party in a city still devastated and in mourning six months after Hurricane Katrina. But for Monk Boudreaux and Pete Fountain, tradition is thicker than flood water.

Fountain, 75, is the celebrated New Orleans jazz clarinetist who on Tuesday morning was to lead his Half Fast Marching Club through the streets of New Orleans for the 46th time.

"There was no question about doing it," Fountain said. "We had a meeting and everybody wanted to march."

Boudreaux, 64, is part of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition that historians say dates back more than a century: Dressed in elaborately feathered and beaded costumes, he and other black New Orleanians parade, dance and sing through their neighborhoods.

"This is more than tossing beads and having a party. This is something that runs deep inside us," said Boudreaux, the Big Chief of the Golden Eagles tribe. "It's in our blood."

The Half Fast marchers and Mardi Gras Indian processions are two small parts of the city's annual Mardi Gras bash that climaxes on Fat Tuesday with family-friendly parades uptown and raucous misbehavior in the French Quarter.

The pre-Lenten tradition, ingrained in city culture, is also a major tourist event that locals are hoping will help renew an economy that came to a halt after the storm and has been struggling back to life.

Restaurants reported brisk business, but there are fewer restaurants: 506 of the pre-Katrina number of 1,882 restaurants were operating, according to the New Orleans Restaurant Association.

Hotel rooms were filled, but again, there are fewer - about 15,000 instead of the usual 25,000 - according to the Greater New Orleans Hotel & Lodging Association. And some of those are filled with construction workers and evacuees.

"Right now, you can walk right down the middle of Bourbon Street. Before, it was so crowded, it was almost an adventure trying to get across," said Scott Escarra, the manager of Cafe Du Monde.

Although the number of celebrants was smaller than in past years, many local residents appeared to be joining out-of-towners in the French Quarter, said Mark Wilson, president of the French Quarter Business Association.

"There a lot of locals who have come out to support it. This year, I've seen families. In talking to some our members, the art galleries and some of those folks are doing pretty well," Wilson said.

After a rainy Saturday forced postponement of some parades, fair weather brought signs of economic success on Sunday and Monday, but on a smaller scale.

Monday's events included the arrival at the Mississippi River front of Rex, King of Carnival, followed by fireworks that capped a day of riverside concerts; and the annual Orpheus parade, a spectacle of fiber-optic lit floats led by native son Harry Connick Jr. and featuring actors Steven Seagal and Josh Hartnett as this year's celebrity monarch.

To some of Katrina's hardest-hit victims, the party seems in poor taste. From Houston, refugee Samuel Spears said footage from his hometown of bead-tossing and carousing tourists just made him more angry.

"With them putting on Mardi Gras, without still having not addressed the basic human needs in this city, why that's just a slap in the face," said Spears. "I can't go home, but they can have a parade? That's ridiculous."

Wet and unusually cold weather in Galveston, Texas, which traditionally holds one of the biggest celebrations outside New Orleans, kept crowds smaller than expected, and many refugees were not interested in attending another city's Mardi Gras.

"It's kind of hard to go somewhere else after experiencing Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the greatest free show in the world," said Frank Livaudais, a native of New Orleans who sold his house after Katrina and moved to suburban Houston.

In Jackson, Miss., a Mardi Gras event at Hal & Mal's Restaurant will feature a casket on which evacuees can write down their fears and painful memories of the Aug. 29 hurricane and "symbolically bury the past."

"Burying Katrina is the theme, getting some closure, just putting it to rest for a minute," said Michael Stanton, who is helping organize the event through Lutheran Episcopal Services. "It'll be a semblance of home, but it's not going to be New Orleans by any stretch of the imagination."

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Associated Press writers Paul J. Weber in Houston and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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