New Orleans sobers up, settles down assesses Carnival

NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans sobered up, settled down and took stock Wednesday of its second Mardi Gras celebration since Hurricane Katrina hit almost 18 months ago.
Visitors seemed to think the latest version of the annual pre-Lenten bash was a success.
“It was great this year. I think the city’s really started to come back,” Sam Lewis, 59, of Birmingham, Ala., said as he and his wife Jean packed their car at a French Quarter hotel.
They are Carnival regulars in New Orleans but had skipped last year’s celebration, thinking it too close on the heels of the August 2005 disaster.
“It was fun as usual,” said Tom Harris, an interior designer from Charlotte, N.C. “Not as crowded. It was easier to get around and there was still a pretty big party.”
Kelly Schulz, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, said there were more people in town over the long weekend that ended Tuesday, but not pre-storm numbers estimated at more than 1 million.
An early estimate put the crowd as high as 800,000, she said. The number was based on such things as hotel occupancy rates and crowd-size estimates. Schulz said a 90 percent to 95 percent occupancy rate for hotels in the city remained constant throughout the weekend.
“It was not quite at pre-Katrina levels, but it was definitely bigger than the 2006 Mardi Gras,” she said.
Eric Williams, a bartender at the Bourbon Street Blues Co. for 10 years, said Saturday and Sunday crowds exceeded last year’s, but the crowds had thinned by Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday.
“It was good on the weekend,” Williams said. “But Mardi Gras was more like a slow Saturday night.”
On a rainy Ash Wednesday, Catholic Churches in the heavily Catholic city were doing a brisk business with the faithful forming lines to receive the traditional smudge of ash on their foreheads.
There are now 116 Catholic churches open in the city, down from the 151 before Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. Attendance on Ash Wednesday was high, the Rev. William Maestri, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, said.
The French Quarter, center of the most raucous celebrations, was quiet. People sat sedately at Cafe du Monde drinking cafe au lait and eating beignets.
“We’re actually trying to close,” said bartender Simon Locke at the Copper Monkey bar, where there were still customers to be served Wednesday morning. “These are mostly workers from the other bars and places in the Quarter. They’re just winding down.”
Although police said there were only minor incidents along parade routes and in the French Quarter, violent crime continued to plague New Orleans away from the revelry.
Three people were shot and one man was stabbed to death in three separate incidents late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Police Supt. Warren Riley said all three attacks were still being investigated, but he said he doubted any were related or had anything to do with the celebrations.
The tons of trash that Mardi Gras generates were cleaned up in record time this year.
By 9 a.m., St. Charles Avenue, where parades rolled for hours on Tuesday and people camped out for days, was clear of debris. Work on Bourbon Street was done by 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to Sidney Torres, whose company, SDT Waste & Debris, holds the contract to collect garbage in the Quarter.