Muddy Mardi Gras

April 5, 2006

Mardi Gras. Those two little French words conjure up visions of bare flesh and beads. But the city of New Orleans is much more than that.
Our first trip there for Mardi Gras in 1996 sparked a deep appreciation for its history, architecture and food. Wandering around the famed Garden District, we strolled through the Lafayette Cemetery with its mausoleums, rode for blocks on the St. Charles Ave. streetcar and admired the stained glass doors of many Uptown houses.
Watching parades in the thick of the college-aged crowds at Lee Circle, I got fantastic beads sitting on my husband’s shoulders (no flesh-showing required). Our slight panic at getting temporarily crushed against a storefront on Canal St. as the after-parade crowd dispersed was fleeting. A delicious late night snack of café au lait and beignets (coffee with milk and powdered fried doughnuts) at Café du Monde, and we were hooked.
For 10 years we had planned this year’s vacation; Fat Tuesday was my birthday. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita we weren’t sure what to expect and almost didn’t make the trip. The vibrant and friendly atmosphere we experienced in 1996 was nonexistent as we stepped off the plane into the nearly deserted Louis Armstrong International Airport. Most stores were closed and the crew at Popeye’s Chicken was already sweeping and cleaning up tables for the night. It was five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon.
We rode in virtual silence to our hotel in the French Quarter, pointing out sights to each other along the way. Our driver was of Indian descent, and I imagined him cursing under his breath at another round of tourists coming to town for the show. Through the steady drizzle and the evening light, we saw a smattering of blue tarps covering rooftops, buildings with large sections of siding missing and an occasional boarded-up window. Power poles leaned at awkward angles and the only constant was the trash along the edge of the road. As we neared the Louisiana Superdome – whose parking lot was home to a Protestant cemetery until the 1950s – a sign proclaimed its reopening date of Sept. 24, 2006. Just streets away, water lines appeared almost two feet up from the sidewalk and abandoned floats stood ready for parading.
                          
Bourbon Street was just as I remembered it. Loud music blared and people crowded the streets. The daiquiri machines, filled with rum so strong it burned my tongue, beckoned, as well as bars offering giant-sized containers of beer.
I stepped carefully around people, crushed cups and beads lining the gutters of the muddy street. Relieved, I saw no mounted police in sight as I remembered my near trampling four years ago when an N.O.P.D officer decided to turn his horse around without warning. Only my quick feet and sober demeanor had saved me.
My companions joined the crowd begging for beads as I took refuge underneath the balconies. The sidewalk offered a good view while decreasing my chances of getting jostled by the drunken crowd. My hesitance even earned me a strand of beads from a middle-aged man appalled at my bead-less condition. Thanking him, I quickly snuck away from his leering smile and got lost in the crowd.
 
Parade day! With five parades ahead of us (superkrewe Endymion with co-grand marshals Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi had postponed their parade until the next day because of rain), food was on our mind. Refusing our hotel’s breakfast buffet and its $16 price we headed down Canal St. in search of something better. Heavily televised during Hurricane Katrina coverage, Canal St. hadn’t recovered well. For each store open there were still five in disarray.
Passing no good breakfast spots along the way (even McDonald’s was still closed), our trek ended at Harrah’s Casino; once inside we headed for the buffet. Las Vegas casinos had inexpensive buffets, we had hoped for the same in New Orleans.
A cheerful black lady beckoned us toward the breakfast line. “Come enjoy our champagne brunch!” she cried. Champagne brunch? I thought as we asked the price. “$27.99,” was her reply. Shaking my head, we headed toward the door and entered the Starbucks we had seen on the way in. Coffee and a muffin it was.
 
We had the perfect spot on Canal St. to watch the parades – front row against the police barrier with our hotel entrance (bathrooms!) just five feet away. Fighting for beads is a sport and women at Mardi Gras have a distinct advantage (OK, so we actually have a few…), since most of the riders on the floats are men. But winning usually depends on the people around you.
In between the colorful floats walked street musicians and horses, flambeaux (usually black men carrying naphtha-fueled torches once used to light nighttime parades – this year they were nearly all white) and marching bands. Integration was rare. It was easy to tell which schools were private and which weren’t. I don’t have to tell you which ones had the best music and dance moves. Some things never change.
We watched nine parades in three days. We saw people get hit on the head by bags of beads, escaped casualties of our own and witnessed inebriated crowds throw back at the floats. Fighting off flailing arms we caught beads, stuffed fish, footballs, plastic cups, doubloons and a black leather whip (I didn’t ask for it; it just ended up in my hands), getting more than enough throws to bring home.
 
One of the best parts about New Orleans is the fact that it’s legal (ages 21 and up) to drink alcohol in the streets. Finished with dinner but still working on that pitcher of beer? No problem! Get some go-cups, divvy it up and head out the door. The customers waiting in line for your table will sure appreciate it. Craving a beer but don’t want to sit in a bar? Grab a cold, canned single from the drink cooler or tub of ice at a convenience store.
Drinking is the fun part; finding a bathroom to make more room for drinking? Good luck. Bar hopping supplies you with one, as long as you buy a drink first (how else do people get so drunk?), but nasty was the norm.
 
Trapped in the French Quarter without the St. Charles Ave. streetcar running to the Garden District, we still didn’t lack for much. We enjoyed oysters, red beans & rice and crawfish etoufé. Hurricanes and Abita Turbodog (a Louisiana-brewed dark beer) satisfied our thirst and incredible music was everywhere to be found.
We listened to blues at a bar named Sing Sing (no cover but beer cost $6.50 a bottle), acoustic guitar at Tropical Isle, Dixieland jazz on the steamboat Natchez’s dinner cruise and sang along to the piano bar at Pat O’Brien’s.
By the end of vacation we had even found some of the locals’ secret hideaways. The Napoleon House (so named for offering protection from exile to Napoleon) served us their famous Pimm’s Cups (a gin-based English drink garnished with a cucumber slice) and a muffuletta (a plate-sized Italian meat, cheese and olive spread sandwich big enough for two) in a pretty little courtyard hidden from the street.
Sammy’s on Bourbon St. looked like a dive but offered traditional and delicious New Orleans fare in big and inexpensive portions. We eventually learned that the farther away from Bourbon St. and the cookie-cutter gift shops (like Mackinac Island here) the better off we’d be.
 
New Orleans’ troubles were never very far away, and we didn’t expect them to be. We saw a middle-aged white man tuck himself and his old comforter into the shadows behind a mausoleum on our cemetery tour. A black man asleep on the sidewalk one evening had only a tiny flattened cardboard box for a blanket and cardboard under his head.
It was difficult to pass by the dog and young white girl holding a sign saying she had been robbed and needed help. Was it really true? And there was no refusing the young black man who appeared from nowhere and handed me a flower. I was not expected to reimburse him for what he swore was his last flower, but my companions were.
New Orleans support showed up in unexpected places. We met a travel agent from Baton Rouge who had decided to visit Mardi Gras for the first time, and we shared beads with a U.S. Navy man who had flown 17 hours from Japan.
While dining at Hard Rock Café, we discovered that Louisiana brewing company Abita (www.abita.com) created a limited edition Fleur-de-lis Restoration Ale with a percentage of its proceeds going to the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation. Why, I wondered, couldn’t we find that beer at any other bar we visited in the city?
Local Mardi Gras 2006 poster artist Andrea Mistretta (www.mardigrasgraphics.com) is donating five percent of every “Spirit of New Orleans” poster, which depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes, to the local Habitat for Humanity to help build homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina. After buying our signed poster, I was pleased to discover that my first New Orleans t-shirt from 1996 depicts a print she had created for that year.
 
By the end of the week I was ready to go home. The smell on Bourbon St. was so overpowering (a mixture of rotting garbage, stale beer and urine baking in the sun), I had to cover my nose when we walked by.
We had accumulated too many beads – one suitcase ended up being overweight on the trip home – and we had enough battle scars for one parade season. I had bruises on my leg from leaning on the police fence for stability, my eye (hit squarely in the lid by some large patriotic-colored beads) was still extra-sensitive to light and my sunburned head had finally stopped peeling. Was this really supposed to be fun?
 
Truth? New Orleans still knows how to throw a successful Mardi Gras. And the tourist attraction that is Bourbon St. will help most businesses on that street survive.
The rest? Art galleries and clothing stores offered discounts. Others were willing to bargain. The three malls in the area are barely surviving – victims of looting.  According to The Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ newspaper, only 20,000 people out of 70,000 are still working in the city’s restaurant industry. We saw that firsthand – nearly every other window we passed had two signs in it, one declaring the business approved to open by the local health department and one advertising for help.
On the eve of Ash Wednesday, craving café au lait and beignets, we found the Café du Monde server in our section asleep in a chair. Not having the heart to wake her, we left and never went back.

As we left New Orleans, sharing a cab with another silent driver, we knew it wasn’t just about the beads – not at all about the beads. We came in support of the city, its traditions, its people. We came because we already had our nonrefundable tickets, not just to see the show.
I expected the guilt, fought it, almost cancelled the trip over it. Why should we be able to enjoy the city that so many may never come home to? But that’s something we can’t control. We visited, we spent our hard-earned money, we respected what we found and even that which we didn’t.
 
Bottom line? New Orleans needs tourists. Go for the French Quarter Festival April 21-23. Go for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival April 28-30 and May 4-7. Walk down Bourbon St., ride along the Mississippi, visit the Garden District or take a tour. Buy some original artwork off the iron fence around Jackson Square or volunteer with the anti-litter Katrina Krewe (www.cleanno.org) and help clean up the city. Money donations always help too. Discover what is unique about New Orleans and its people, however unfortunate it is that they may never be the same.

Carina Hume is a writer from Alanson. This is her first story in the Express.