by Rex Wockner
[story filed February 28, 2006]
NEW ORLEANS --
It was a much smaller Mardi Gras in the gay area of the
French Quarter
this year but spirits were clearly high and some people
said they preferred
not being crushed by the crowds.
"I'd say it's
about a third as many people, but we only have 25 percent
of our hotel
rooms," said New Orleanian Volney Hill. "Also, most people
usually crash
with their friends and 80 percent of the houses are gone,
so their friends
aren't here either.
"So, I think
this is actually very promising," Hill said. "People are
going to get
here one way or another. I have more people staying with me
this year than
ever. I pretty much serve as a hotel right now."
Rafael Maldonado,
who came in from Mobile, Ala., for his 15th Mardi
Gras, agreed
that "it's a lighter crowd. It's usually packed full of
people throwing
beads here [in front of the gay bar Cafe Lafitte In
Exile]," he
said.
Local resident Reuben said he didn't mind the smaller crowd.
"It's more tolerable.
You can get around, you don't have to worry about
all the crampedness,"
he said. "It's better to me with a small crowd."
Local drag queen D.L. Broadway agreed.
"Sizewise, I'm
loving it," she said. "I like to spread out. I like my
little space.
I'm loving it because the city's making its money back."
It was Broadway's 26th Mardi Gras.
"It's bringing
New Orleans back," she said. "It's a great party, I love
to party and
I love to have a great time and I see people are smiling
and getting
into the celebration, so it's a blessing to me."
Broadway spent three months exiled in Pascagoula, Miss.
"Now I'm back
at my job at Head Start," she said. "I have a FEMA
trailer; it's
just my brother and I, and it's fabulous."
Paul Landry of Houston was at Mardi Gras for the ninth time.
"We wouldn't
have missed this year for the world," he said. "This is the
second-best
Mardi Gras I've been to. The spirit, the attitudes, the
blue-tarp theme,
the Katrina theme, the FEMA theme, the costumes are
more elaborate.
"The last good
one was when Jerry Falwell did the Tinky Winky thing,"
Landry said.
"The street was covered in purple Tinky Winkys. So there's
a theme this
year, something to poke fun at. People felt a need to come
down and help
and just be here. Being here helps."
Drag queen Amanda
Straddle from New Orleans said the smaller crowd was
"just as festive,
just as enthusiastic."
"As far as the
locals go, we're ready for a party and ready to get on
with our lives,"
she said. "There aren't as many tourists, but I'm
struck by how
many locals there are out here."
Stephanie Becket
from Fallbrook, Calif., came "to support my sister who
lives here.
My younger brother is gay and he's here with us, and my
parents came
and we love it," she said.
Her brother,
John Becket, who lives in San Francisco, said that although
there were fewer
people, "they're very all together, wanting to be here,
wanting to enjoy
it, wanting to prove that it's like it always was, a
no-one-can-keep-you-down
kind of thing -- real positive, real sincere."
About 189,000
of New Orleans' 462,269 residents have returned to the
city six months
after a total evacuation was ordered, Katrina hit, the
levees broke
and 80 percent of the city was submerged in up to 20 feet
of water.
The massive flooding
from the levee breaks destroyed or severely damaged
tens of thousands
homes. At present, only a third of the city's
residences have
reconnected to the electricity grid.
Sections of neighborhoods
such as Lakeview, the Lower 9th Ward and
Gentilly, where
the storm surge smashed through adjacent levees with
tsunami-like
force, remain nearly completely depopulated.
Other people
can't come home yet because of their children. Only 20 of
the city's 124
public schools are open.
D.L. Broadway
is not alone in living in a FEMA (Federal Emergency
Management Agency)
trailer. There are around 48,000 of the trailers in
the state, and
another 40,000 have been requested by homeless residents.
Rents are a problem,
too. One-bedroom apartments that used to go for
around $600
a month now go for up to $1,500.