Mardi Gras will go on in New Orleans in 2006

The show must, and will, go on, New Orleans City Council members, hospitality officials and Carnival leaders said Wednesday of Mardi Gras 2006.

“Mardi Gras is the best invitation to the world that New Orleans is open again,” Councilman Jay Batt, one of three council members who lost a home to Hurricane Katrina, said during the council’s first full meeting at City Hall since Katrina hit Aug. 29. The council held its first post-Katrina meeting Sept. 27 at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
 
“We cannot afford not to have Mardi Gras. That message would be — New Orleans is closed for business,” Arthur Hardy, publisher of Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide, told the council.
 
Hardy, one of a dozen speakers to address the seven-member council about Mardi Gras, reminded the council that Carnival 2006 marks the 150th anniversary of the first Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans.
 
“We can make it as special to be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras 2006 as it was to be in Times Square on that first New Year’s Eve after 9-11 in New York,” he said.
 
Mardi Gras Day falls Feb. 28. Hardy said the first Carnival parade is just 18 weeks from Friday night.
 
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said Carnival 2006 can serve as a “symbol” of the city’s and state’s post-Katrina and post-Rita recovery.
 
“Mardi Gras embodies everything that we’re all about,” he said, citing the importance of the city’s and state’s culture. “We can make this happen.”
 
Hardy said he spoke this week with representatives of 26 Carnival krewes that paraded in New Orleans this year, and 25 of them said they intend to parade next year.
 
“The krewes certainly want to have Mardi Gras,” Bill Grace, chairman of the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Commission, said.
 
Endymion captain Ed Muniz said the super krewe already has $1 million invested in Carnival 2006. The krewe has lost the use of the Louisiana Superdome due to Katrina, he said, but the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center may be available.
 
New Orleans Police Department Capt. Joseph Valiente said the NOPD will dive “full blast” into Mardi Gras preparations once the city administration gives the department its mandate. Whether 2006 will feature a full-scale or scaled-back Carnival season, “I don’t know,” he said.
 
Batt said Mayor Ray Nagin has indicated to him that he’s “all for” going forward with Mardi Gras 2006.
 
“Mardi Gras is the spirit of New Orleans. Go for it,” Councilwoman Jacquelyn Clarkson said. “We need to bring back all the troops that helped save us and put them on the floats.”
 
Naaman Stewart, vice president of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, formed in 1909, said the krewe will parade in 2006.
 
“We are coming back,” he told the council. “Things are not normal, but bringing Mardi Gras back will help people begin to normalize their lives.”
 
Zulu board member George Rainey said Katrina destroyed its offices and shop on North Broad Street.
 
“At this point, economics is a problem,” Rainey said. “The only thing that can keep us from parading is economics. All we need is some checks.”
 
Councilman Eddie Sapir said he does favor the commercialization of Carnival, but for next year only the city should consider obtaining national sponsors — what he described as “good clean sponsors” — of the event as a way to help the city pay to put on the event.
 
Barry Kern, president of Algiers-based Kern Studios, which designs and builds Carnival floats, said the 58-year-old company is “ready to go.”
 
“We need this to look forward to,” he said.
 
Blaine Kern, owner of Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World in Algiers and holder of the title “Mr. Mardi Gras,” said many others also are looking forward to Mardi Gras 2006.
 
“We’ve gotten calls from all over the world, I mean all over the world, ‘Is it happening’?” Blaine Kern, Barry Kern’s father, asked. “We’re going to do it and do it the way we should.”
 
Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau, said Mardi Gras 2006 would herald “The opening of the city in many ways.” It would put people back to work while also putting patrons back into the city’s hotels and restaurants and “set the stage for a multibillion-dollar comeback,” he said.
 
Perry said 20,000 to 25,000 hotel rooms will be available by January.
 
“Tourism’s going to be open,” he said.

October 14, 2005   Posted in: United States South