Source::AP
NEW ORLEANS,
Music blared from the courtyard of a French Quarter restaurant on Mardi Gras morning but nobody was there to hear it until Tom Gibson and Sheila Wheeler of Philadelphia walked out of their hotel’s nearly empty lobby. “We were expecting a little bit lower key than the normal Mardi Gras,” Wheeler said. But empty Bourbon Street was a shock.
Coronavirus-related restrictions in New Orleans included canceled parades, closed bars and a near shutdown of rowdy Bourbon Street. That, and unusually frigid weather, prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of Mardi Gras season: streets and businesses jam-packed with revelers.
To be sure, some hardy lovers of the season braved the cold. Knots of people, some in costume and some carrying cups of hot coffee (sales of alcohol to go were prohibited) wandered the French Quarter.
On St. Charles Avenue, houses decked out as stationary “house floats” with giant mythical figures, circus animals or dinosaurs, drew handfuls of people snapping photographs. WDSU-TV captured a group of Mardi Gras Indians — African American organizations that for generations marched in brilliantly hued hand-beaded and feathered costumes — on a brief march through one neighborhood.
And satire survived. A group of masked revelers in one neighborhood, poking fun at the tight restrictions, pulled around a giant voodoo doll with Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s face and dubbed her “Queen Destroya,” in images captured by The Times-Picayune’The New Orleans Advocate.
“I don’t think there’s a way to safely do it this year,” he said. “So, I support canceling the parades, closing the bars, all that kind of stuff. It’s just kind of the reality of it.” Earlier, Michael Bill was getting a fast-food breakfast from a takeout window just off Canal Street at the edge of the French Quarter. He surveyed the empty street.
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