Louisiana's New Orleans gets ready for beads, sweets and feasts, as the well-known Mardi Gras festival falls on Tuesday, the city will host its first full-dress festival following two years of canceled events due to the COVID-19.
Parade routes are shorter than usual, because there aren't enough police for the standard ones, even with officers working 12-hour shifts as they always do on Mardi Gras and the end of the Carnival season leading up to it.
But with COVID-19 hospitalizations and case numbers falling worldwide and 92% of the city's adults at least partly vaccinated, parades are back on after a season without them. The masks against COVID-19 will be required only in indoor public spaces.
And people are out and ready to let the good times roll. This year's theme will be the Roaring 20s.
The crowd Sunday, when the huge Krewe of Bacchus paraded, "was a record for us in the 10 years we've been open,” said Thomas Houston, bar manager at Superior Seafood and Oyster Bar, located at the start of the truncated parade route.
He expected similar crowds on Fat (Gras) Tuesday (Mardi) – only a state holiday in Louisiana – if the weather is good. Not to mention Ash Wednesday, when people following the Catholic tradition of meatless Lenten fare are out for seafood.
"It's not just a fun money-making time but you get to see people who've been around for 10 years,” he said.
Hotel occupancy, though, is expected to be about 66%, down about 19.5% from 2020, said Kelly Schultz, spokesperson for New Orleans & Co., the official sales and marketing organization for New Orleans’ tourism industry.
Parades were canceled last year because officials realized that tightly packed crowds in 2020 had created a super-spreader event, making the city an early Southern hot spot for COVID-19.
But "2020 was weird,” Houston said because two people were hit by floats and killed in the week leading up to Mardi Gras, and the mayor suspended the use of multiple floats hitched behind one tractor.
"Also the coronavirus was sort of looming over us,” even though its presence wasn't yet known in New Orleans, Houston said.
As it has for years, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club will open Fat Tuesday with a parade that started as a mockery of white festivities, with Black float riders in blackface and grass skirts.
Next come the elaborate and fantastical floats of Rex, the self-styled king of Carnival, chosen by a group of high society, old-money business people.
After that are the Krewe of Elks and the Krewe of Orleans, a not-quite-endless stretch of homemade floats on long flatbed trailers.
Mardi Gras is a tradition rooted in pagan celebrations of spring and fertility. Upon Christianity's arrival, religious leaders integrated these local traditions into the religion. When French explorers landed Point du Mardi Gras, near present-day New Orleans, they held a small celebration marking the first American Mardi Gras on March 3, 1699. In the following decades, New Orleans and French settlements continued to celebrate the holiday with masked balls and dinners accompanied by street parties. In the Spanish control of New Orleans, these rituals were banned until Louisiana became a U.S. state in 1812.
In 1827, a group of students made a celebration through the streets of New Orleans, and ten years after Mardi Gras celebrations took their shape. A secret society of New Orleans called the Mistick Krewe of Comus organized a torch-lit celebration in 1827, since then krewes have become an integral part of celebrations. Rex is known as one of the oldest Mardi Gras krewes participating in the festival since 1872.
