All bars in New Orleans are closed to Mardi Gras, restricted access to main streets under new rules | Local Policy

Bars will be closed, people will have to go through checkpoints to reach main streets like Bourbon and French streets and a strong police presence will patrol New Orleans in the days leading up to this year’s Mardi Gras as part of a plan that aims to crack down in the crowds to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The new restrictions were announced on Friday by Mayor Latoya Cantrell, who said the measures were necessary to prevent the celebrations from becoming overcrowded events, as they did last year.

“I prefer to be accused of doing too much than doing too little,” said Cantrell.

The new restrictions will start on the Friday before Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday is February 16th.

Under the new rules, all bars in the city will be forced to close completely on the Friday before Mardi Gras and will only be able to reopen on Ash Wednesday. This includes the large number of bars that have received conditional use licenses to operate as restaurants during the pandemic.

Traditional restaurants may remain open, but they will be prevented from serving bowls.

Sales of alcoholic beverages will be banned in the French Quarter.

Officials said any company that breaks the rules will be closed “on the spot”.

Bar owners had mixed reactions to the news on Friday, with some praising Cantrell for prioritizing residents’ health over the fun of tourists and others condemning the income they would lose as a result.

“I’m glad we’re not going to put accounts on bodies,” said Mark Schletter, general manager of Bar Tonique on North Rampart Street, on the edge of the French Quarter. “We are talking about five closing days to avoid 14 to 28 closing days if there were another peak … Neither option is optimal, but we are in a global pandemic.”

Howie Kaplan of Howlin ‘Wolf in the Warehouse District, a concert hall that has been trying since the beginning of the pandemic to replace lost income from canceled shows with food and beverage sales, questioned the fairness of the rules that allow traditional restaurants to remain open no go-termites, but that closes your establishment entirely.

“They are going to get alcohol from somewhere else,” he said. Furthermore: “They are not doing this at Jefferson Parish. So, what will stop people from crossing the parish line? “

The rules also close Bourbon Street for vehicles and pedestrians from 7pm. Loitering is prohibited on Bourbon Street, Frenchmen Street or N. Claiborne Avenue under Interstate 10.

Police superintendent Shaun Ferguson said police officers will be at all intersections on Bourbon Street and Frenchmen Street and will only allow residents, restaurant customers, those who wish to shop on the streets and hotel guests to pass. A fence will be erected along Claiborne from St. Louis Street to St. Bernard Avenue to avoid meetings.

Both the New Orleans Police and the Louisiana State Police will have extra patrols throughout the city.

The magnitude of the additional restrictions, together with the cancellation at the end of last year of all parades and balls, is unprecedented in the modern era of Carnival. But it is also the public health crisis New Orleans faces amid a slow release of vaccines and reports of new, more communicable variants of the coronavirus that are spreading in the city.

The city’s revelry in 2020 made New Orleans one of the first points of the coronavirus in the United States, brought criticism from the national media and contributed to the devastating number that the first wave of the virus caused in New Orleans.

Earlier this week, Cantrell made it clear that he would not risk it again.

“We understand that the world will be watching,” she said on Thursday.

A more immediate catalyst for the restrictions has been widespread outrage in recent weeks because, despite harsh speeches, city officials have done no more to disperse the crowd that was partying in the French Quarter over the weekend and have not tried to dissuade tourists from coming to City.