Mardi Gras'New Motto: 'C'est Levee'
New Orleans Asks Itself, 'Is Katrina Going to Win,Or Are We Going to Win?'
By COREY DADE
Wall Street Journal February 16, 2006;PageB1
In a trailer parked beside a home whose second story was ripped away by Hurricane Katrina, Charles E. Hamilton Jr. has been planning a Mardi Gras parade.
Like many in the New Orleans area, Mr. Hamilton, the president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, has been trying to get his home repaired while his family lives out of state, but he has also had the surreal experience of arranging for the floats and the costumes and the maskers for the city's oldest predominantly black Carnival parade. He has heard displaced residents, mostly African-Americans, criticize the city for staging Mardi Gras after they endured great trauma and personal losses.
"I can understand what they're saying, but we've been around for 90 years," he says of his club, "and we are an intricate part of our community, black and white. We lost the Sugar Bowl to Atlanta, the Bayou Classic to Houston and the Essence music festival. There's one thing we can control ourselves -- because we put it on ourselves -- and that's Mardi Gras."
The theme of this year's Zulu parade: "Zulu, Leading the Way Back Home."
Nearly six months after Katrina inundated New Orleans, the good times will roll pretty much as usual when this year's traditional Mardi Gras processions kick off Saturday with the first of 28 parades that will culminate Feb. 28, Fat Tuesday itself.
But not far from the oak-lined Uptown parade route, the French Quarter and much of the Central Business District, which were largely spared by the storm, there are signs of the devastation and fitful recovery from Katrina that will dominate life again once the party is over. Sewer service, for example, has been restored to only about half of the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East neighborhoods, according to city officials. Thousands of homes remain wrecked and abandoned. Some residents, such as Mr. Hamilton's wife in Houston, remain scattered across the country.
The jarring juxtaposition underscores how hard New Orleans is trying to demonstrate its resilience by putting on the culturally and economically important festival that is emblematic of its party-hard tradition, even though the city is financially destitute and struggling to cover its estimated $2.7 million price tag for police, fire, rescue, cleanup and other services during Mardi Gras.
"It's morning in New Orleans right now; it's no longer the night of the storm," says Ed Muniz, the founder and captain of the Krewe of Endymion, Carnival's largest organization. "The thing that's kicking it off is the thing New Orleans does best, and that's Mardi Gras."
Carnival is an important cultural institution. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first organized parade in the city. While the city pays for ancillary services, the members of parading organizations themselves pay for the floats, the costumes, and the trinkets that they throw to the crowds through dues and fund raisers throughout the year. For Endymion, the more than 2,100 members each pay annual dues of $950, Mr. Muniz says.
And Mardi Gras has always been a way for citizens to use satire to deal with problems, from the military rule of Reconstruction to the aftermath of Katrina. The Krewe du Vieux, a small walking parade, has already struck the first note with a parade themed, "C'est Levee," spoofing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Mardi Gras is also an important moneymaker in a city whose biggest industry is tourism. The event generates roughly $300 million annually in direct spending on lodging, dining, shopping and other activities -- the equivalent of a Super Bowl, according to tourism officials. Mardi Gras this year is projected to generate half that amount.
Local tourism experts predict that up to 700,000 people could attend the festivities, which will feature eight days of parading instead of the usual 12 to help cut expenses. Typical attendance is about 1.4 million.
Tourism officials and hotel operators expect all 25,000 available hotel rooms in New Orleans to be booked, though about half are occupied by storm victims, insurance adjusters, hotel employees and other people connected to Katrina. Roughly 5,000 rooms remain closed due to storm damage.
Michael Valentino, whose family owns three boutique hotels in the French Quarter, expects to have about 100 vacancies as some disaster-relief workers check out temporarily to make more room for Mardi Gras visitors. But repeat customers will notice quickly that the super-attentive service Mr. Valentino's hotels were known for has been reduced to the basics. The job of concierge has "largely gone away," he says, partly because a third of his employees haven't returned since the storm hit in late August. During Mardi Gras, staffing levels will increase to about 100 people from the current 80, shrinking again after.
The 1,025-room Sheraton on nearby Canal Street makes do with 280 workers, down from 580. Overall, the New Orleans hospitality industry's work force has shriveled to less than 30,000, or barely a third of its pre-storm size, and a rebound is being hobbled by the dearth of affordable housing. Rents have soared as much as 60%.
While the suburbs around New Orleans are bustling, the city's population now is about 157,000, nowhere near the 485,000 who lived there before Katrina. Overall, the metropolitan area's population is estimated by state officials at 871,982, down from 1.3 million. Unemployment in the city and surrounding suburbs was 8.2% in December, the latest month for which figures are available, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Though that was less than half the November unemployment rate, the 3.8 percentage-point increase from a year earlier was the largest of any U.S. metropolitan area.
Nearly 20,000 New Orleans residents have requested temporary trailers from FEMA, but so far the agency has delivered fewer than 4,000. "We have enough in the supply chain to provide trailers for the folks in Louisiana that have requested them," says FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews, adding that the federal government can't accelerate deliveries until New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the city council settle a disagreement on where to set up trailer parks. However, city officials say that Mr. Nagin, with the support of council members, recently approved additional sites for more than 10,000 trailers.
Meanwhile, the city has issued about 15,000 permits to rebuild storm-battered structures, but electrical permits are lagging. Electric utility Entergy Corp.'s New Orleans operations, which filed for bankruptcy-court protection in September, says it has begun to address the demand for electric meters. Public services have been restored fully only in downtown and other relatively unscathed areas, such as the French Quarter and the Garden District.
To pull off Mardi Gras this year, city officials and the krewes went to extraordinary lengths: parading with fewer members, shortening the season, putting all the parades on a common route and seeking corporate sponsorship for the first time.
New Orleans officials expect to spend $1.7 million on overtime for police officers during Carnival -- costing $64,000 an hour on Fat Tuesday alone, the last day of parades. Police officials say the leaner on-the-street force of 1,420, down 15% since Katrina hit, will be adequate because parades are being herded onto a common route. The city government hoped to defray most of its costs by aggressively soliciting sponsors, but the refusal to offer a title sponsorship, in which a company's name would appear before the words "Mardi Gras," has apparently turned off many companies. The only sponsor signed up so far: the Glad Products Co. unit of Clorox Co.
Some of the krewes set to parade have raised extra funds beyond those needed for their floats and costumes to help New Orleans make a comeback. The women-only Krewe of Muses donated $50,000 toward city-worker overtime costs. Bacchus, which usually puts on one of the largest processions, is pledging $250,000 from its after-parade party to the Children's Hospital of New Orleans.
Mr. Muniz, the Endymion captain, says the subject of whether to hold Mardi Gras this year is a sensitive one but canceling should never have been an option. "Now, if there was no Carnival, what would you suggest they do, keep sulking? What's your alternative?" asks Mr. Muniz, whose suburban home suffered $40,000 in wind damage. "At some point you've got to come back. We need to celebrate life. The Mardi Gras is what we do. Is Katrina going to win, or are we going to win?"