US: While parade spirits were dampened and numbers were down, the festivities carried on defiantly, write Linton Weeks and Peter Whoriskey in New Orleans
Mardi Gras revellers along St Charles Avenue and Canal Street on Monday night and over the weekend whooped for the marching bands, hollered for celebrities such as Dan Aykroyd, applauded the lavish floats and cried out for the trappings and trinkets tossed by costumed riders as they had for decades. But, behind the merriment and the masks, something was missing.
New Orleanians are tired and distracted. On the face of it, they seem normal and as light-hearted as ever, but they are not.
And so it is with Mardi Gras (literally, fat Tuesday) - the two- week pre-Lenten celebration which ended yesterday. It is exuberant on the outside, but strange and different and diminished by loss on the inside.
"What is there to celebrate?" asked Elphamous Malbrue (50), a veteran of the New Orleans police for 29 years, as he watched the Krewe of Hermes parade. "The spirit is just not here."
Members of the Orpheus Krewe ("krewe" is Mardi Gras lingo for social club) began to gather on late Monday afternoon.
John Beninate, the parade marshal, said the krewe's original theme, planned way before Katrina, was the "power of nature", but after the hurricane, they had to rewrite the theme. "It had to do with floods washing away things. We had to tone that down a bit."
They changed the theme to "signs and superstitions" and signed up movie stars Steven Seagal and Josh Hartnett to ride in floats.
As the krewes of Orpheus and Proteus prepared to parade, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club - which held its parade yesterday along with the krewe of Rex - staged its annual festival on the banks of the Mississippi.
The African-American krewe was especially hard-hit by Katrina. Last year, there were 600 members, said festival chairman Cornelius Garner. Today, the club is in touch with about 250 of its members. Ten have died since the hurricane.
Other New Orleanians said they were going to participate in Mardi Gras, but there is a great sense of absence.
"There are worlds of friends I miss," said former congresswoman Lindy Boggs, whose Bourbon Street house was damaged by wind and water.
"The culture is not there," said Detroit Brooks (50), a guitarist in the Charmaine Neville Band. "They are throwing the beads but it's not there."
Letting the good times roll allowed the city to mask some of the dismal statistics about the recovery. Parts of the city are in good repair, but not far away, whole neighbourhoods are obliterated. Canal Street is lit up like a midway at night, but large areas of Gentilly and the Lower Ninth Ward still don't have electricity. Groups of workers poured beers, sold Lucky Dogs and served fine meals, but many New Orleanians are out of work and far from home.
The city's pavements were crowded but far from overflowing, with officials estimating about 300,000 people in town for the celebration. In recent years, one million people would have come.
Flight numbers at the city's main airport have been cut in half. And, although the hotels for Mardi Gras were nearly full, that's largely because thousands of the rooms are occupied by workers and displaced residents.
About a third of the city's restaurants have reopened, but not everybody is eating in fancy cafes: the Red Cross is still serving 6,500 meals a day.
Mardi Gras celebrations were shorter this year. Most parades followed a truncated route that began in the west part of town and wound up downtown. It was more of a family affair. Along the tree-lined streets of uptown and the Garden District, friends and relatives pitched tents and children perched on special Mardi Gras step-ladders.
The Krewe of Mid-City wove along the route on Sunday with half its regular contingent of floats. Many were skirted with blue tarpaulin - the same kind that still covers many roofs here - because of flood damage.
What they lacked in material perfection, they sought to make up in satire. One float was called "Drove My Chevy to the Levee, but the Levee Was Gone", another "Rowed Hard and Put Up Wet".
But the deeper trouble was a lack of riders. Usually, about 250 board the floats. This year, only about 150 did. Some regulars have left New Orleans and couldn't - or wouldn't - come back. Others simply couldn't afford the $1,500 (€1,258) members were asked to pay.
"It's a little bit difficult when someone had the means to ride last year and this year they don't," said Gerard Braud, one of the krewe. "They don't want to talk about it." He said the krewe had decided to carry on. "We're laughing our way through it."
Street musician Peter Bennett said, "The spirit is the same, it's just on a lot smaller scale." Then he returned to his glass harmonica, filling Jackson Square with Stairway to Heaven.
"Everything's quieter," said Roy Blount, who was in Faulkner House Books in Pirates Alley, signing a few copies of Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans, published last year.
"There is a togetherness coming out of the storm. People seem connected," he thought for a moment, "except when they are . . ." He grasps but the only word he can find is "disconnected."
Owen "Pip" Brennan, one of the owners of the famed French Quarter restaurant bearing his family name, is the captain of the Bacchus Krewe. He lost his home in the Lakeview neighbourhood. Two of his sons lost homes as well. The restaurant is still closed, but he and many others decided to celebrate Mardi Gras, as usual - or as close to usual as possible - this year.
"The overall majority of feeling was we had to do Mardi Gras to let the world know that, 'Yes, we're on our knees - but we're not dead and buried'," he said.
A group of women drinking at a French Quarter bar wore hazmat (hazardous materials) jumpers, gas masks and boots - as well as the traditional Mardi Gras glitter and brightly coloured wigs. Purple labels identified the group as the Fema Fatales. Susan Kappelman said the group counted themselves as fans of the much-criticised Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Fema workers cleaned the city," she said. "People outside complain about them, but the people who were here realise what they've done."
For Elphamous Malbrue, the celebration is bittersweet. "By the time I get off from work," he said, "I am drained."
He tosses and turns many nights and can't sleep. He has been living on the Ecstasy, a cruise ship in the harbour. His family is living in Nashville, and his 12-year-old son is not sure he wants to come back home.