Living off the fete of the land
It's Mardi Gras, but New Orleans is the Big Uneasy
by Eve Zibart
Washington Post
NEW ORLEANS - Mardi Gras is the tale of two cities, the New Orleans that was -- the home of elaborate Carnival floats and fancy dress balls, of coat-and-tie restaurants and Dixieland jazz bands -- and the post-Katrina New Orleans of For Rent signs, recorded classic rock, intoxicated frat boys and parades rerouted to skirt still-widespread devastation.
It's the promise of a million visitors and a billion dollars in tourist trade culminating today, Fat Tuesday, and it's the shopkeepers who close mid-afternoon because the only browsers are really just looking for clean bathrooms. It's a full house at Larry Flynt's Barely Legal strip club, and a dozing hostess at the empty Chris Owens music club. It's Jackson Square, 17 months ago gussied up for President Bush's promise of funding, now with its wrought iron gates locked to keep out the homeless.
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[photo by Alex Brandon / AP on msnbc.com web site. caption: "Clarence Williams wears a mask and a king's crown on Bourbon Street on Lundi Gras in the French Quarter of New Orleans Monday, Feb. 19, 2007."]
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