Fat Tuesday’s Lean This Year

For months, local politicians and civic leaders have been projecting dueling images of New Orleans. At times they portray it as a viable and spirited city eager to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina; at others they talk of a devastated landscape in dire need of help.

Today, that juxtaposition will be on full display as the city launches its Mardi Gras celebration -- billed as the nation’s biggest party -- on the site of one of the nation’s worst natural disasters.

No one knows what to expect.

At a minimum, it will be a subdued affair, with a truncated parade schedule and smaller crowds.

“It’s going to be a bit more mellow than usual,” said Arthur Hardy, who has published the “Mardi Gras Guide,” a popular handbook, for three decades. “But there is so much anticipation for this in the community. We need something other than sheetrock and wet carpets. It’s going to be like group therapy.”

Many floats have been designed to reflect the legacy of the storm.

One “krewe” -- as groups of parade participants and organizers are known -- has chosen the theme “Blue Roof Blues,” for the tarps that cover tens of thousands of leaky structures. One float is called “Drove My Chevy to the Levee but the Levee was Gone,” borrowing the refrain of the song “American Pie.” Another is “Oprah Comes to the Superdome.”

In an inglorious start to the typically dazzling and debauched centerpiece of the region’s $5.5-billion annual tourism industry, a Friday-night parade was canceled when its krewe could not secure the required insurance policy against accidents and injuries.

The Krewe of Atlas’ 37th annual parade had been scheduled for Jefferson Parish, west of New Orleans. It was to have kicked off the official parade schedule, which begins today at noon.

“We had everything set,” said krewe President Daniel Murray. “And they waited until the last minute to do this to us.”

Like many here, Murray is ambivalent about this year’s carnival, which culminates with Fat Tuesday on Feb. 28.

“The storm really took the heart out of the city,” he said. “A lot of people say that we need Mardi Gras. But there’s been a mixed reaction. Some say it’s going to help, and it may. But it’s going to be a strain too.”

Civic leaders are trying to put the best face on things. No one is claiming that this year’s festival will have the economic impact it has in the past -- bringing in more than $1 billion in recent years. But J. Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, predicted the event would generate more than $300 million.

That would be significant for New Orleans, which is broke and is maintaining basic services only through emergency loans. Katrina has cost the region an estimated $3.5 billion in lost tourism revenue.

In a statement, Perry noted that Mardi Gras often had been used to prop up a sputtering economy; one historic krewe, Rex, was created in the 1870s largely to fuel an economy foundering amid Reconstruction after the Civil War.

As Mardi Gras approached this week, there were signs of progress in the city. The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where thousands holed up in squalor after Katrina hit, reopened Friday. So did Harrah’s Casino, which served as a makeshift police headquarters during the storm.

At the Court of Two Sisters, a beloved brunch spot in the French Quarter, weekend business fell by 75% after the storm. But suddenly, reservations are pouring in.

“If we’re doing well this weekend, we’re hoping it means that the good times will continue through the month -- and convince other tourists to keep on coming,” said Michelle Fein Morantez, the restaurant’s marketing director.

Still, questions remain about the city’s ability to pull off the festival.

Just two emergency rooms here are functioning. Medical officials who fear they could be overrun are doubling the capacity of a clinic at the Convention Center.

City officials this Mardi Gras season attempted for the first time to defray festival costs by signing up corporate sponsors. The controversial move was met with deafening silence from the business community. Only one sponsor came forward: Glad Products donated an unspecified six-figure sum, as well as 100,000 trash bags.

One New Orleans City Council member said it was shameful that companies benefiting from the reconstruction effort had declined to underwrite Mardi Gras.

The council has voted to spend $2.7 million on police overtime and other festival costs, though no one is sure where the money will come from.

Many hotels have reported that they are booked, but that is a bit misleading. Of the 38,000 rooms in the region before the storm hit, about 23,000 are available for occupation -- at least a third of which are being used by evacuees and contractors.

“It literally changes by the hour, and hopefully there will be enough rooms to accommodate the crowds,” Hardy said.

On Bourbon Street, the Royal Sonesta Hotel’s 500 rooms were sold out, half to evacuees and half to tourists -- and one Britney Spears, a Louisiana native who is participating in Mardi Gras.

Mark Wilson, the hotel’s marketing director and the president of the French Quarter Business Assn., was upbeat.

“This is going to help put us back on the map,” he said.

No evacuees were displaced by the festival, said Wilson, who predicted tourist room cancellations would be few.

But there were suggestions Friday of potential snarls.

New Orleans native Leslie Barden arrived with her husband from their home in Bethesda, Md., to celebrate Mardi Gras. The couple had reserved a room at the Holiday Inn in the French Quarter, only to find, she said, that they’d been bumped. Hotel staffers referred a reporter’s inquiries to corporate headquarters, which did not return calls.

“They’re not giving me anything,” Barden said. “They’re saying: ‘Tough. That’s the way it is.’ ”

Portions of the French Quarter smell of paint as the city tries to spruce up. But across town, in the ruins of the 9th Ward, the arrival of Mardi Gras was a reminder that this is a city divided by wealth and race -- no different, in some ways, than before the storm.

The decision to press ahead with Mardi Gras was well-received in wealthier neighborhoods. Not so in poorer, largely African American communities that were destroyed by Katrina.

“They’re concerned about having a party,” said Robert Richardson, 52, whose home on Caffin Avenue was lost to the flood. “If it was me -- if I was running the city -- I’d concentrate on the people. We could have had Mardi Gras next year, or the year after that.”

Several of the two dozen parades will start just a few blocks from Dale Brown’s Uptown home, which was destroyed in the flood.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Brown said. “But we can’t do anything about it. That’s how things have always been around here.”

Kim Hudgins, who lost her home in the 9th Ward, is among several community activists hoping to stage protests during Mardi Gras to call on government officials to give more displaced residents the right to return and rebuild. The 9th Ward continues to struggle without basic services, including gas, water, electricity and phone lines.

“We are taxpayers. We are homeowners. And we want to come home,” Hudgins said, her hair peppered with dirt from another day digging through the rubble of her home. “If Mardi Gras has to happen, we might as well take advantage of it.”

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Times staff writer P.J. Huffstutter in New Orleans contributed to this report.