‘The heart of the city is still there.’ How this Mardi Gras stoked revival.
Societe de Sainte Anne parade goers march during Mardi Gras on Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in New Orleans. Celebrations on Fat Tuesday, which occur each year just before Lent, draw legions of both tourists and local residents.
Gerald Herbert/AP
New Orleans
As Jonathan Barnes rounded the corner of the Zulu parade route on Fat Tuesday last week, perched atop a float, he looked down at the partygoing Mardi Gras crowd. He felt a sense of peace. It was as if the world split into two, with cheering crowds and bright faces on either side.
Ahead of their float, as he tossed beads to the surging crowd, he could hear the echo of high-stepping marching bands bouncing off the bottom of the Claiborne Bridge’s underpass ahead.
It almost took his breath away. Joy was evident. He could see his city, his home – New Orleans.
Why We Wrote This
After a rough two years for New Orleans, last week’s Mardi Gras was not just the return of a cultural tradition. For many it marked a recovery of hope, community spirit, and normalcy.
“That, for me, was the moment where I was like, ‘Whoa, we’re back.’ This is what it used to be like before the pandemic,” Mr. Barnes says. “You saw everybody together, you saw unity.”
He’s still basking in that glow, much like many locals, now days removed from festivities.
On the heels of a weekslong binge of excitement and dancing, the city’s authentic culture sheds a light that’s still felt among residents. For some, it’s a happiness that’s become unfamiliar in recent years. The city has been deeply affected by the pandemic and by major storms such as Hurricane Ida this past August.
This year marked New Orleans’ first Carnival season since 2020. Within weeks after Fat Tuesday in February of that year, the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the nation. New Orleans became an early hotspot, with Mardi Gras identified as one of the first major super-spreader events.
New Orleans was shaken. City officials canceled Mardi Gras 2021. Decorated homes replaced the extravagance of parade floats. The brazen sounds of the city’s brass bands were muted.
It was a seismic shift for the city, and the first time Carnival had been canceled or reduced in scope in New Orleans since a police strike forced the celebration’s organizers to do so in 1979.
Today it feels like life has been breathed back into the city.
“Mardi Gras 2022 is going to be that symbol of when people look back and say it was a defining moment, where we got back as normal as possible,” Mr. Barnes says. “I just felt that spirit.”
Mardi Gras is the annual focal point of a tourism-backed economy. New Orleans boasts a roughly $10 billion hospitality industry. As the industry tottered in 2020, the city saw its general fund drop from $659 million to $583 million, forcing the city to furlough employees and cut contracts.
Without Mardi Gras and the host of festivals that follow it in spring, like Jazz Fest, the city’s marginalized communities take the hardest hit.
A 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 41% of Black-owned businesses nationwide were forced to close during the early days of the pandemic. Only 17% of white-owned businesses felt the same impact. (In New Orleans, a Black majority accounts for nearly 60% of its population.)
But Mardi Gras is more than just a draw for tourism. What the celebration means to the city has no sum of value, and its history and tradition have been ingrained into the city itself. Fat Tuesday, Carnival’s finale and a last chance to eat rich foods before the Lenten season, has been a state holiday since the Mardi Gras Act was signed into law in 1875.
For Nikki Ummel, a local poet and educator, there was a moment after Hurricane Ida hit the city last year when she wondered how much longer she could be in New Orleans.
The fifth-most-powerful storm to hit the U.S. mainland in recorded history, Ida had scattered power lines and shingles like dandelion seeds in a gust of wind. For weeks, where there should have been hope ahead, the stench of uncollected trash hung over city neighborhoods.
“But this Carnival season, this Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, it was a reminder that we still are what makes the city amazing,” Ms. Ummel says of Carnival 2022. “The heart of the city is still there.”
She’s noticed similar feelings resonate in the people around her.
“Over the past couple of weeks, I saw a light come on – in my friends, in my neighborhood,” Ms. Ummel says. “Everyone has hope again.”
Devin De Wulf, a local folk artist and the founder of the Krewe of Red Beans, feels refreshed by the return to normal, even if he had never forgotten what makes New Orleans special to start.
“People are thankful to have it back,” Mr. De Wulf says. “to have the culture back.”
New Orleans was prepared for this moment – not just with a longing for deep belly laughs together in the streets, but with a parallel determination to battle the pandemic. (Roughly 85% of the city’s adult residents are fully vaccinated.)
The tourists who flocked to New Orleans – in some years briefly doubling the city’s population – have gone home. Lent is underway with its blend of repentance (for the faithful) and cheap fried fish plates.
And if the city is rejuvenated, hard work remains, says Mr. De Wulf, who founded the nonprofit Feed the Second Line, which has aided the city’s culture bearers throughout the pandemic.
“It’s been a tough couple of years,” he says. “Now the joy part is back, and we just need to be appreciative of it and we need to work to make things as good as they can be.”
That joy is still buzzing in Mr. Barnes’ heart. Part of him hasn’t stopped throwing beads at the Zulu parade. He can still see the sun reflecting off smiles in the crowd as they chant for beads.
It was “a gumbo pot of so many characters,” Mr. Barnes says. “This is the life I’ve missed since the pandemic. This is incredible. We’re back, we’re back, we’re back, we’re back, we’re back.”