This year's Mardi Gras season is as much a statement of defiance as a carnival, but optimism is slow to return, writes Denis Staunton in New Orleans.
When the first floats appeared, the crowd along Metairie's main shopping street roared its welcome for the Thor parade, waving and calling for the strings of coloured beads that showered down as each float passed. As the bands played, the majorettes strutted and onlookers cheered or jeered each passing spectacle, it seemed for a moment that this New Orleans suburb was back to normal.
When a Christian riding club called "Ridin' on Faith" trotted past dressed as cowboys, everyone yelled "Brokeback Mountain!" and the ladies of Dance Connection were welcomed with wolf whistles and lewd, admiring roars.
The loudest cheers were for the mainly black West Jefferson High School marching band, led by two magnificent drum majors, heads proudly aloft as they moved past in great, prancing sidesteps.
The official theme of this year's Mardi Gras parade in Metairie was "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?", but the participants were also saying "We've survived and we're back".
Six months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is hoping that this weekend's Mardi Gras celebrations will convince the world that the city is back in business and ready to welcome visitors again.
Throughout the French Quarter this week, hoteliers and restaurant owners were painting, polishing and repairing at a frantic pace as construction workers shoveled asphalt into gaping holes in the pavement along Canal Street.
On Bourbon Street, where the bars and clubs cater almost exclusively to tourists, temporary staff have been drafted in from outside the city to help deal with the extra demand for liquor, beer and mixtures such as the Hand Grenade, advertised as the strongest cocktail in New Orleans.
The local chapter of the American Marketing Association has published a guide for visitors on how to behave during Mardi Gras and is urging local people to stay cool this weekend.
"The world is going to be watching to see how we handle the world's greatest free party. And for our city's sake, if we can help avert a single bad incident that the national media would use to tag the city unfairly, then we as marketers should do what we can," said the association's vice-president Malcolm Schwarzenbach.
New Orleans police officers were given new uniforms this week to replace those lost or looted during the hurricane but the police force remains severely depleted and half of the city's fire stations are still closed.
With more than half of the city's population still evacuated, flights in and out of New Orleans airport are at half their pre-hurricane level and only half of the city's taxis are operating.
Almost two out of three restaurants are still closed and most of those that have reopened are short-staffed, often serving a limited menu.
At Joey K's, a neighbourhood restaurant in the Garden district with plastic tablecloths and exquisite food, the choice this week was limited to oyster po'boys, spaghetti with meatballs and four other dishes.
The krewes, or social clubs, which organise the Mardi Gras parades, have been seriously depleted by the hurricane, which destroyed the homes of 90 per cent of the krewe of Zulu, the biggest African-American parade.
Most of the Mardi Gras Indians, who sew their own elaborately decorated suits and move through the backstreets, singing and dancing, on the morning of Fat Tuesday, are still evacuated - in Baton Rouge, Houston, Atlanta or even more distant places.
MANY EVACUEES WHO have returned to New Orleans are determined to rebuild the city but even the most optimistic get nervous when they consider that, with Katrina just six months behind them, the next hurricane season is just 100 days away.
After Katrina, Laney Chouest moved his investment company to New Orleans, where he has had property interests for many years, but he believes that business confidence in the city is fragile.
"The impression I get is that, for now, there is a demand on restaurants and other things but there's a sneaking sense in the background that it's going to kind of collapse," he said.
Federal agencies, congressional committees and this week the White House have published reports on what went wrong after Katrina came to New Orleans. Officials at national, state and local level have resigned or been fired, Congress has voted tens of billions of federal dollars for hurricane relief and the Army Corps of Engineers has been working hard to strengthen the levees that protect the city from floodwaters.
The city has yet to agree on a long-term plan, however, for the reconstruction of New Orleans - or even on the future shape of the city. The French Quarter, the Garden District and the Central Business District are gradually returning to life but badly flooded districts like the Lower Ninth Ward remain devastated and almost deserted.
The parts of the city that survived Katrina were the oldest districts that form a crescent on high ground while the hardest hit areas were mostly built below sea level and depended on levees for protection.
"Ultimately, I think rational people are going to make the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to live below sea level. There are many parts of the city not below sea level and we're in one of them here. So that's probably the valid, possible, rational size of the city," said Chouest.
Any decision to reduce the city's size is complicated by the fact that the areas most badly hit by Katrina were predominantly African-American and abandoning districts built below sea level would dramatically change the racial mix in the city, which was 70 per cent black before the hurricane.
THE ISSUE OF race has long been central in New Orleans but remains politically delicate and is seldom discussed directly, even in social circumstances.
In the French Quarter this week, I came across a group of men wearing long red robes, hoods and masks, marching behind a jazz band as they passed out beads and doubloons as they headed into Pat O'Brien's bar. These were the Druids, a secret social club that usually stages a Mardi Gras parade but scaled the event down this year.
Over a drink in "Pat O's", as the bar is known by locals, a short, friendly, grey-haired druid called Bob told me that all druids play important roles in other social clubs.
"If these people weren't here, there'd be no Mardi Gras," he said.
Looking around at the jovial, masked figures, it occurred to me that, not only were the druids all men, but they had something else in common.
"I hope you don't mind me asking, but are the druids all white?" I asked Bob.
"Yup," he said.
"Is that an accident?" I asked.
"Could be," said Bob, keeping a totally straight face at first before he started shaking with laughter as he clapped me on the back.
WHEN AFRICAN-AMERICANS became the majority in New Orleans a couple of decades ago, many white families moved out to the suburbs across Lake Pontchartrain and the city soon became 70 per cent black.
Mayor Ray Nagin, although black himself, won election with the support of a group of white businessmen known as the "blue-bloods", who saw him as a non-ideological Democrat with a business background who would encourage inward investment. Nagin alarmed some of his white supporters last month when he declared in a Martin Luther King Day speech that God wanted New Orleans to be predominantly black.
"I don't care what people are saying uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be," he said.
Nagin faces an election next month and his chances of keeping his job diminished this week with the entry into the race of Louisiana lieutenant-governor Mitch Landrieu. The younger brother of Louisiana's Democratic senator Mary Landrieu and son of the last white mayor of New Orleans, Landrieu says the city needs new leadership "to restore our credibility".
Chouest agrees that new leadership is needed but he predicts that the sense of uncertainty in New Orleans, over housing, jobs and the economic future, will intensify over the next three months as hurricane season approaches.
"I think the fear of people with the season approaching is going to play out in one way. When we have to actually evacuate, it's going to play out another way and when the storm actually hits, all bets are off," he said.