NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Music was playing in the courtyard of a French Quarter restaurant on Mardi Gras morning, but no one was there to hear it until Tom Gibson and Sheila Wheeler of Philadelphia left the almost empty lobby of their hotel. .
“We expected a slightly lower pitch than normal Mardi Gras,” said Wheeler. But empty Bourbon Street was a shock.
Restrictions related to coronavirus in New Orleans included canceled parades, closed bars and near stoppage of the turbulent Bourbon Street. This, and an exceptionally cold climate, prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of the Mardi Gras season: streets and businesses full of revelers.
To be sure, some tough season lovers faced the cold. Groups of people, some in costume and others carrying cups of hot coffee (the sale of alcoholic drinks for travel was prohibited) roamed the French Quarter.
On St. Charles Avenue, the houses decorated as fixed “floats” with giant mythical figures, circus animals or dinosaurs, attracted a handful of people taking pictures. WDSU-TV captured a group of Mardi Gras Indians – African-American organizations that paraded for generations in brightly colored feathers and beads by hand – in a brief march through a neighborhood.
And the satire survived. A group of masked partygoers in a neighborhood, mocking the strict restrictions, pulled out a giant voodoo doll with the face of Mayor LaToya Cantrell and dubbed it “Queen Destroya”, in images captured by The Times-Picayune’The New Orleans Advocate.
But, in any measure, it was a very small Mardi Gras.
Bourbon Street was strangely quiet, in contrast to previous years. Police barricades were located at the end of each block and police officers were instructed to allow access only to residents, people working in local businesses or hotel guests. The central construction site on St. Charles Avenue, usually filled with parade lovers, was empty, except for an occasional corridor or tram.
A group founded by the late jazz clarinist Pete Fountain, the Half Fast Walking Club, met outside the Commander’s Palace restaurant as usual, but they did not march. The souvenir shops in the French Quarter were practically empty and employees at some restaurants eagerly waved passersby in.
Gibson had been to Mardi Gras before and remembered what it was like. “This whole street – you would hardly be able to move,” he said.
To the east, Mobile, Alabama, which hosts the country’s oldest Mardi Gras celebrations, also canceled the parades. The city was not as closed as New Orleans. Bars were allowed to open. But some streets in the center have been closed to allow more outdoor seating and more space for social detachment. The icy temperatures that brought morning blasts of snow helped to contain large crowds in the early afternoon.
There was no snow in New Orleans, but at 10 am, the temperature was 27 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 Celsius), with the cold feeling of the wind making it 19 (-7.2), said the Service’s leading meteorologist. National Meteorological Office, Phil Grigsby.
Dave Lanser, trying to get into the spirit of the season, wore a luminescent green cape and a black mask with a thin, curved beak before heading to the neighborhood with some friends.
“I’m going to look like a ‘plague doctor’,” he said.
“It’s hard to understand,” said the New Orleans lawyer, as he looked up and down an almost empty Bourbon Street.
He deplored the effect that the virus restrictions were having on companies and workers. But he said restrictions are needed.
“I don’t think there is a way to do this safely this year,” he said. “So, I support canceling parades, closing bars, that kind of thing. It is the reality of that. “
Earlier, Michael Bill was having a fast-food breakfast in a takeaway showcase near Canal Street, on the edge of the French Quarter. He scanned the empty street.
“The cold doesn’t bother anyone. It’s COVID, ”said Bill. He said he has been a ghost tour guide for 10 years, but was dismissed because of the slowdown in business due to the coronavirus pandemic..
He didn’t blame Cantrell.
“The mayor is doing the best she can,” said Bill.
Cantrell recently ordered the closure of bars. Even bars that functioned as restaurants with “conditional” permission for food were closed for five days, which started on Friday.
Several estimates showed that hotels were probably well below 90% more occupancy in most years. And city and state authorities practically warned tourists to stay away.
“If people think they are going to go to Louisiana, anywhere, or New Orleans and get involved in the kind of activities they would have before the pandemic, then they are wrong and, frankly, they are not welcome here to do that,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a recent news conference.
Mardi Gras crowds last year that were later blamed for an early COVID-19 outbreak in Louisiana.
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Associated Press writers Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.