New Orleans kicks off celebration

NEW ORLEANS -- Flamboyant floats with Katrina themes, marching bands, and flying strings of plastic beads filled a largely unscathed section of New Orleans yesterday as the hurricane-stricken city kicked off its 11-day Mardi Gras celebration.

Small but enthusiastic crowds greeted the scaled-down festival attractions on a damp and chilly day.

Five parades, put on by private groups, rolled down the same parade route to help cut the cost of police protection and trash pickup. More were scheduled for today and next weekend, leading up to Fat Tuesday on Feb. 28.

The social club Krewe du Vieux, known for its biting satire at the annual Mardi Gras parades, skewered political leaders for their hurricane response this year and incorporated a variety of storm debris and government-issued blue tarpaulins in their floats. Among the float signs was: ''Fridge Over Troubled Waters."

Blue tarps have been ubiquitous in the city, providing roof protection since the hurricane. But blue wasn't the only dominant color in the Carnival. Many floats and homes on the route were decorated in the Mardi Gras hues of green, gold, and purple.

Some marchers passed out bogus Federal Emergency Management Agency checks as they flung their ''throws" -- plastic doubloons and beads -- a tradition believed to bring good luck.

Children and families often gather on the same street corners year after year.

''What would the city be without Mardi Gras?" said 17-year-old Sadie Ables, standing on Lee Circle in the same spot where three generations of her family have gathered for decades.

Her mother, 37-year-old Shelly Guidry, conceded she had conflicts about the cost to the city, especially given how many people remain displaced.

Still, Guidry was on the street with family members and her 3-year-old son strapped in a seat atop a ladder, a tradition for children who grew up in New Orleans during normal years when towering crowds of adults make it difficult for children to catch beads.

''It's memories here," she said, gesturing down the street.

Helen Phillips, 62, said tradition and memories also brought her to her usual parade-viewing corner, on St. Charles Avenue, this year, hunkered in a lawn chair against the cold.

''I'm out here because of them," she said, looking at her 8- and 9-year-old grandchildren. ''We figured, why break with tradition this year?"

But Phillips didn't see many of the people who usually gathered on the same corner, and speculated they were stuck in Texas or Alabama or wherever the storm scattered them.

Not everyone was in the mood to celebrate.

''I think they're crazy," said John Gross, a 55-year-old welder who has been sleeping on a friend's couch for six months after his own house took on over 6 feet of water after Katrina. ''There are people that need places to stay, and all they're talking about is Mardi Gras."

The city's roughly 27,000 hotel rooms, down from a pre-Katrina 36,000, were almost entirely booked, although many were occupied by contractors and evacuees.

Less than half the city's pre-Katrina population of about 480,000 has been able to return since the storm; however, an estimated 250,000 former residents are believed to be living within a day's drive of the city, and a good number of them were expected to come back for Mardi Gras, city officials said.

Mardi Gras always falls on the day before Ash Wednesday. It signals the beginning of Lent and the end of the pre-Lenten celebration known as Carnival, Latin for ''farewell to flesh."

Imported to New Orleans by its French settlers, Mardi Gras has been celebrated in New Orleans since the 1700s. But the modern version can be traced to 1856. That makes this year its 150th anniversary, according to Mardi Gras historian Arthur Hardy.

The city has canceled the parades 13 times in the festival's history, usually during periods of war, Hardy's research shows. City officials flirted with the idea this year, but decided they needed the boost it gives to the tourism industry, the economic backbone of New Orleans.

The festival traditionally draws 1 million spectators -- and the economic impact on the city has been estimated to exceed $1 billion in past years -- but organizers concede that it will be hard to forecast the tax windfall this year. That also creates a dilemma for city officials trying to figure out how to pay for it. New Orleans city government attracted only a single corporate sponsor -- Glad Products, a major trash bag maker -- forcing the City Council to allocate $2.7 million to cover municipal expenses.

New Orleans's mayor, C. Ray Nagin, said this week that Mardi Gras should help the city shake off what he called its collective ''pity party," joining others who have taken to describing the celebration as a kind of collective therapy.

Compiled from news services.