Tuesday New Orleans‘ first full-dress Mardi Gras since 2020 began, with several parades throughout the city, with masks, only being required indoors.
The parade routes will be shorter than usual due to the shortage of police for the regular routes, even though officers work 12-hour shifts during Mardi Gras and the end of carnival season.
However, after a season without parades, COVID-19 hospitalizations and case counts are declining worldwide, with 92% of the city’s residents at least partially vaccinated.
And everyone is out and about, ready to party.
As a result of the massive crowd on Sunday, Superior Seafood and Oyster Bar, located at the start of the truncated parade route, experienced its biggest group in 10 years of operation, according to bar manager Thomas Houston.
“It’s not just a fun money-making time, but you get to see people who’ve been around for 10 years,” he said.
Kelly Schultz, the spokesperson for New Orleans & Co., the official sales and marketing organization for the city’s tourism industry, predicts hotel occupancy of 66%, down 19.5% from 2020.
Last year’s parades were stopped after organizers learned that the city’s densely packed crowd in 2020 had generated a superspreader event, positioning it as an early Southern hotspot for COVID-19.
“Also, the coronavirus was sort of looming over us,” even though its presence wasn’t yet known in New Orleans, Houston said.
Every year, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club will open Fat Tuesday, followed by Rex, the self-styled king of Carnival, and then there’s the Krewe of Elks and the Krewe of Orleans, a with their stretch of homemade floats on long flatbed trailers.
