Quarterly Report: A Subdued Market
It’s Super Bowl versus Mardi Gras.
It’s a bloated, bombastic weeklong celebration of commercial promotions and pomposity, platitudes and pandering to the lowest of our sporting tastes--buy warm beer and fast cars--up against a city’s history, its biggest and best party, its personal advertisement for the lowest of our partying tastes--women taking off shirts to receive cheap trinkets and plastic beads, nonchalant nakedness splashed with cheap beer by guys driving fast cars.
And the winner is?
Good taste and some sobriety. A subdued murmur of quiet dinners and tasteful displays of fanfare. Printed signs and T-shirts in the pro-Ram or pro-Patriot vein instead of obscene slogans of the anti-Ram or anti-Patriot variety.
Some things can’t be faked, especially not in New Orleans.
The history, the music, the great food and sweet accent belonging to the residents are not for tourists.
And so, when the city’s biggest party, Mardi Gras, had to be split in half to accommodate the city’s ninth go at hosting the Super Bowl, it was not an improvement. For Mardi Gras or the Super Bowl.
There were Mardi Gras parades last weekend in the French Quarter. There will be more next weekend in the French Quarter. There will be some this weekend out in the suburbs. There will be some private Mardi Gras parties in Garden District homes decorated in twinkling lights and the purple, gold and green beads that are also draped around the merchandise in just about every store around the city.
The line to check into the Hyatt Thursday and Friday was long and winding but you could walk down Bourbon Street and not have bodies touching.
It’s not supposed to be that way during Super Bowl week or Mardi Gras week, when walking down Bourbon Street is a way to become acquainted with strangers. You should not be able to carry on a conversation or hear those of others.
“I don’t think a lot of guys feel it’s appropriate to be out on the streets partying,” said Ram defensive back Aeneas Williams, a New Orleans native. “I know guys on my team kind of feel like, considering the times and what has happened in our country, they don’t want to go out, getting in trouble, hanging out. I know people around town have thought the Super Bowl is hurting Mardi Gras. But I kind of wonder, isn’t it Sept. 11 that has hurt Mardi Gras?”
Said Patriot wide receiver Troy Brown: “This city has been pretty laid-back this week. It’s been kind of dull, which is good for the players. I don’t know if it’s good for the city. I hope that’s not a commentary on the teams involved. Are we boring?”
A little.
The Ram and Patriot rosters are filled with players who are more comfortable in prayer groups than in roving groups of party boys stumbling into Pat O’Briens. There has been little controversy, less buzz about this 36th Super Bowl. The betting line, 14 points given to the Patriots, is the third highest in Super Bowl history.
“We didn’t bring our kids because my wife thought it would be too ugly for our 14-year-old and 12-year-old,” said Jerry Hulse, a 45-year-old Ram fan. “But after we went out last night, my wife said, ‘This isn’t any different than what we’d find at home on the weekend.’ I’m not disappointed. It’s nice to be able to walk around the Quarter and look in the windows and stuff and not be hassled. It’s just not what we expected.”
Doreen and her band of jazz musicians are singing and playing in Jackson Square and the music is rousing. But it’s not about the Super Bowl. It’s about the sound. Doreen and her band are always about in Jackson Square.
The city’s conflicted identity is evident in many storefronts. Instead of “Super Bowl souvenirs” or “Mardi Gras souvenirs,” the signs advertise “New Orleans souvenirs.” There are Mardi Gras masks and beads next to Super Bowl hats and shirts.
And the mingling of merchandise hasn’t meant big sales.
“Mardi Gras Sale” read the sign at the Bayou Trading Company on Royal Street. “We wouldn’t normally be doing that in the middle of Mardi Gras,” owner Bruce Lowrey says, “but that may have more to do with Sept. 11 than with the split in Mardi Gras weeks.
“You can look out on the street and it’s like a normal weekend. I know the merchants here all consoled ourselves that the Mardi Gras/Super Bowl/Mardi Gras split would work for us, but it hasn’t produced. Splitting up has taken away from Mardi Gras momentum, I’ll say that. It has upset many of the Krewe and parade people, that’s for sure.”
In the New Orleans Centre mall, a shopping center connecting the Hyatt and the Superdome, a radio was playing and three people were listening to reports about an American newspaper reporter who had been kidnapped in Pakistan. Some 100 feet ahead, just outside the door, all you could see was chicken-wire fencing, plastic barriers and armed National Guardsmen standing and staring.
“You know,” said Hulse, the Ram fan, “maybe people don’t feel so much like partying with everything that’s happened. I mean, we’ll all be excited Sunday, and if the Rams win I imagine a bunch of us will go to the Quarter and have some beers. But I don’t think you’ll see a lot of guys getting in trouble.”
Hulse was wearing a strand of red, white and blue beads around his neck. He had just bought them at a souvenir stand in the mall. He held a strand for his wife.
They were Mardi Gras beads, to be worn for the parades or to throw at a comely woman. But Hulse didn’t know that.
“I think it’s nice,” Hulse said, “to have these symbols of 9-11.”
When Super Bowl meets Mardi Gras in 2002, then, the winner is solemn enjoyment over raucous debauchery. Which doesn’t make either the Super Bowl or Mardi Gras less fun. Only different.
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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com