NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Music blared in the courtyard of a French Quarter restaurant on Mardi Gras morning, but no one was there to hear it until Tom Gibson and Sheila Wheeler from Philadelphia walked out of their hotel’s nearly empty lobby.
“We expected a slightly lower key than the normal Mardi Gras,” said Wheeler. But the empty Bourbon Street was a shock.
Coronavirus-related restrictions in New Orleans include canceled parades, closed bars and a near closure of rowdy Bourbon Street. That, and unusually freezing weather, was prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of the Mardi Gras season: streets and businesses packed with revelers.
Certainly, some hardy season’s enthusiasts braved the cold. Many people, some in suits and some with cups of hot coffee (sale of take-out alcohol was prohibited) roamed the French Quarter.
On St. Charles Avenue, houses decked out as stationary “house floats” with giant mythical figures, circus animals, or dinosaurs drew a handful of people taking pictures. WDSU TV conquered a group of Mardi Gras Indians – African American organizations that marched for generations in brilliantly hued costumes with beads and feathers – on a short march through one neighborhood.
And satire has survived. A group of masked revelers in a neighborhood, joking about the tight restrictions, marched around a giant voodoo doll with the face of Mayor LaToya Cantrell and called her ‘Queen Destroya’, in footage captured by The Times-Picayune ‘The New Orleans. Advocate.
Regardless, it was a vastly diminished Mardi Gras.
Bourbon Street was eerily quiet unlike previous years. Police barricades sat at the end of each block, and officers were told to allow access only to residents, people working in local businesses, or hotel guests. The median strip of St. Charles Avenue, usually teeming with parades, was empty, save for the occasional jogger or streetcar.
A group founded by the late jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain, the Half Fast Walking Club, gathered outside the Commander’s Palace restaurant as usual, but they didn’t march. Souvenir shops in the French Quarter were mostly empty, and the staff at some restaurants eagerly signaled passers-by to enter.
Gibson had been to Mardi Gras before and remembered what it was like. “This whole street – you could hardly move,” he said.
To the east, Mobile, Alabama, which hosts the country’s oldest Mardi Gras celebrations, had also canceled parades. The city was not as closed off as New Orleans. Bars were allowed to open. But some downtown streets were closed to allow for additional outdoor seating and more room for social distances. Cold temperatures that caused snow flurries in the morning helped keep large crowds in until the early afternoon.
No snow fell in New Orleans, but at 10 a.m., the temperature was 27 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 Celsius), with the wind chill making it feel like 19 (-7.2), said National Weather Service meteorologist Phil Grigsby .
Trying to get into the mood of the season, Dave Lanser wore a luminous green cape and black mask with a sharply curved beak nose before heading to the neighborhood with some friends.
“I’m going for the ‘plague doctor’ look,” he said.
“It’s hard to wrap my head around it,” the New Orleans attorney said, looking up and down an almost empty Bourbon Street.
He lamented the effect the virus restrictions had on businesses and employees. But he said restrictions were necessary.
“I don’t think there is any way to do it safely this year,” he said. So I support canceling the parades, closing the bars, all that sort of thing. It’s just kind of the reality of it. “
Previously, Michael Bill got a fast food breakfast from a takeaway window just off Canal Street on the edge of the French Quarter. He looked at the empty street.
‘No one is bothered by the cold. It’s the COVID, ”said Bill. He said he’s been a ghost guide for 10 years, but was put on leave due to the delay of things due to the coronavirus pandemic
He didn’t blame Cantrell.
“The mayor is doing her best,” said Bill.
Cantrell recently ordered the closure. Even bars that could have operated as restaurants with ‘conditional’ food permits were closed for five days from Friday.
Various estimates showed that hotels were probably well below the 90% occupancy rate of most years. And city and state officials almost warned tourists away.
“If people think they will come to Louisiana, anywhere, or New Orleans and engage in the kind of activities they would have prior to the pandemic, they are mistaken and frankly, they are not welcome here to do so. , “Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a recent press conference.
Mardi Gras crowds last year who were later blamed for an early outbreak of COVID-19 in Louisiana.
Associated Press writers Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama contributed to this report.
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