On Fat Tuesday, Revels With a Cause

Mardi Gras Seen as Key to City's Revival

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After Katrina, Les Bon Temps Roulez
New Orleanians are tired. They are distracted. On the face of it, they seem normal and as lighthearted as ever. But they are not. And so it is with Mardi Gras -- a two-week pre-Lenten celebration -- exuberant on the outside, strange and different and diminished by loss on the inside.

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 28 -- Mayor C. Ray Nagin arrived downtown Tuesday morning on horseback, leading a parade of Zulu dancers, marching bands, and floats carrying men in outsized wigs. A raucous Mardi Gras crowd greeted him, and he in turn urged people to raise a glass -- and not with mere water.

"Now," he ordered. "Drink up!"

The bacchanal was on.

Mardi Gras 2006, an event that many doubted this flood-beleaguered city could carry off, concluded somewhat as usual on Fat Tuesday and was by some measures a success.

Parades drew appreciative crowds waving signs to paraders that said "Thank You for Rolling" and "Thank You for Not Forgetting Us." The day was sunny and warm. People in outlandish costumes -- nuns in miniskirts, a couple in evening wear and hip waders, a rabbit on stilts -- filled the French Quarter, the restaurants and hotels.

But with city and state authorities seeking billions in federal rebuilding aid after Hurricane Katrina, many here will gauge the event's real success or failure on the public relations message it sent to the rest of the country, upon whose goodwill New Orleans may depend.

Cable and broadcast network coverage of Mardi Gras was far greater than usual and may have made New Orleans as visible in America's living rooms as it has been at any time in the six months since Katrina's immediate aftermath. City leaders and many residents seemed acutely aware of what televised images might project.

City leaders said Mardi Gras represents an invaluable advertisement for tourism, one of the local economy's primary engines -- disputing criticism that it was unseemly to hold a celebration when so many residents have yet to recover from the storm. Nagin, for one, told the crowd that the revelry was for a good cause.

"We're going to party tonight, y'all," he said. "We're going to show the world that New Orleans is back!"

Similarly, the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation assembled a 2 1/2 -page memo for reporters answering the question "Why is New Orleans Important to America?" It is an indirect response to those around the country who have questioned whether New Orleans should be rebuilt at all, given the flooding perils.

A similar glossy pamphlet for tourists notes that after Katrina, people "were forced to imagine a world without New Orleans." It says, "Together, we came to the same conclusion: It cannot be done." The pamphlets cite New Orleans history, the petroleum industry and the city's role in the birth of jazz.

Sandra S. Shilstone of the city's tourism office said she expects visitors will go home from Mardi Gras having had "a wonderful, unique experience," but also knowing that there is much to rebuild. When tourists come and see the French Quarter, the Garden District, the warehouse arts district and other well-known spots, "they help the economy," Shilstone said, "and that will help us rebuild the entire city."

Mardi Gras generates $20.5 million in direct tax revenue for the city and costs $4.6 million for additional city services such as police, tourism officials said.

City boosters were engaged in a delicate dance throughout the nearly two weeks of Mardi Gras celebrations. They needed the normalcy of the bizarre parties to feel as if New Orleans still existed. And they wanted to put on their best face -- albeit, sometimes masked or painted -- to attract the tourists. But they could not let the rest of the world think everything is back the way it once was.

It certainly is not, and city officials and the residents who have returned say they need the help of the nation to rebuild -- and they are growing frustrated by what they see as declining interest in their plight by the Bush administration and Congress.

Things might only get worse, they said, if the ongoing disaster is obscured by the images of hordes of people in fright wigs, masks, fishnet nylons and boas, like those who roamed the streets, providing far more lively pictures than the emptied neighborhoods.

Indeed, the most obvious Katrina references at Mardi Gras were made in humor, not desperation. Many locals incorporated their plight -- and sometimes anger -- into their Mardi Gras costume. One man waved a large book titled "The Ka Trina Code by Michael Brown," the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. T-shirts advised: "Make levees, not war."

Fewer than half of the pre-storm residents have moved back. Large swaths of the city -- Lakeview, New Orleans East, the Lower Ninth Ward -- still lie largely abandoned. In many stricken neighborhoods, nighttime brings a darkness so complete it is impossible to walk without a flashlight.

Yet the disaster is largely invisible from the parade routes -- and the normal tourist pathways in the French Quarter and Uptown.

"I live in New Jersey, and people don't see how bad it is," said Judy Hanson, a Red Cross worker who came out to the parades Tuesday. "It just hasn't been on TV for a while."

"I'm afraid these people will never leave the French Quarter," said LaTonique Jackson, 28, whose Gentilly home was flooded. She was gesturing to the tourists who had come to Canal Street for the parades. "If people could really see what happened out there, I think they'd help us more."

"A lot of people in the country think we're trying to get more than we deserve," said Carol E. Davis, 55, whose home in the Lower Ninth Ward took in 13 feet of water. She is now living in Panama City, Fla., but said she wanted to see Mardi Gras. "A lot of people need to see it. They don't know -- or they forget -- how bad it was."

Still, she said, she was glad Mardi Gras had happened.

As the Zulus marched by and the people on floats threw beads to crowds, she said, "It's just nice to do something we used to take as normal."