City toasts its survival

BY J. JIONI PALMER | NEWSDAY WASHINGTON BUREAU

February 26, 2006

NEW ORLEANS - The tuba thumps with might. The drums kick with authority. And the rest of the horn ensemble - pairs of trumpets, trombones and saxophones - blow with gale-force strength.

It's Friday night of Mardi Gras weekend and the Rebirth Brass Band is rattling the rafters at Tipitinas night club in Uptown with a funky rendition of "I'll Fly Away."

Maybe only in New Orleans could a band jam with such panache to a song about the afterlife that your hips have no choice but to sway.

And perhaps it only makes sense that as a testament to their will to survive, the residents of the Big Easy throw themselves a party roughly six months after Hurricane Katrina left much of the city in ruins.

"People outside don't understand," Noel Wright, 43, said one day last week as he took a break from installing Sheetrock in his home. "We didn't cancel Christmas. Why cancel Mardi Gras? It's part of life down here."

As the Carnival season, the period of parades and general gaiety beginning Jan. 6, builds in anticipation of Mardi Gras on Tuesday, remembrance of the devastation that befell the Gulf Coast region last year is the central - if unofficial - theme.

"I'm here with my brides," Rick Lander of Narrowsburg, N.Y., said, referring to his wife, mother-in-law and sister-in-law, all costumed in wedding gowns. "There are a lot less people, but the spirit is up."

Lander first attended Mardi Gras two years ago and decided to come back this year as a sign of solidarity. "I wanted to let them know they didn't lose everything," he said.

From the French Quarter vendors hawking T-shirts mocking former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown to the multitude of boarded-up houses just blocks off the parade routes, the legacy of Katrina and the challenges that remain are in sharp focus.

While a stroll along Bourbon Street any night will showcase the milieu of sex, booze, beads and bawdy music that has come to typify Mardi Gras in the national psyche, for most this year, the holiday is one where the city and her people come together to celebrate life.

"It's where you see the haves and the have-nots," said Carol Asher, executive director of the Tipitinas Foundation, an organization committed to supporting New Orleans' unique musical culture and heritage. "Bourbon Street is not New Orleans - that's entertainment."

Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is an annual celebration marking the start of Lent - the Christian season of fasting preceding Easter. A 150-year-old New Orleans tradition, Mardi Gras is characterized by a seemingly endless stream of parades, masquerade balls and overall merriment.

Although the city does provide basic services such as police, fire and issuing of permits, most of the festivities are produced and paid for by private groups called krewes that until about a decade ago were largely racially segregated.

With names drawn from Roman, Greek and Egyptian mythology, the krewes are secret societies that parade through the city tossing necklace beads, doubloons embossed with their insignias and other trinkets to the crowds of onlookers lining the streets.

Kevin Shires, a New Orleans native who now practices law in Birmingham, Ala., said riding atop a float wearing a mask and dressed in a costume is an exhilaration unlike none other he's experienced.

"I've had my 15 minutes of fame," said Shires, who has been a member of the Krewe of Endymion for about six years. "I was a rock star the past five years and I'm gonna be one again tomorrow."

With so much of New Orleans still in tatters and legions of its residents displaced around the country, Mid-City resident Phil White said she didn't think the revelry of Mardi Gras was appropriate, but decided the city would be worse off without it.

"I wasn't really for bringing it back," said White, a teller at GTE bank who shares a duplex on Bienville Street with her parents. "But it's going to help the economy and we need something to help the economy."

Slow recovery

Mardi Gras tourists will see some of New Orleans' famous restaurants closed and fewer hotel rooms available. Two of Mardi Gras' largest parades -- Krewe of Rex and Krewe of Zulu -- are scheduled for Tuesday, Fat Tuesday.