Should New Orleans standardize Carnival parade routes? Here's what a Mardi Gras expert thinks

First the good news: The City is moving forward toward permitting Mardi Gras parades to roll in 2022. And, recognizing the shortage of manpower, the Mayor is wisely addressing difficult issues sooner rather than later. However, without consultation with the leaders or the membership of her own Mardi Gras Advisory Committee, she let out news that she is considering requiring all parades to start on Napoleon Avenue. If this happens, the impact is significant, and assuming this move includes Zulu, Endymion and Thoth, the effects will be historic.

For more than a century, Zulu has rolled on Jackson Avenue where its toast at the Gertrude Geddes Funeral Home is one of the annual highlights of Carnival. For 75 years Thoth has been known as the “Krewe of Shut-Ins” because its route, starting on Henry Clay, was designed to bring Mardi Gras to those who are not able to participate otherwise. And the super krewe of Endymion is so important to its starting point that the neighborhood association honored the club as the Mid-City Business of the year. People buy homes along and adjacent to parade routes. Businesses score a month’s income on some parade days. Schools and churches sell refreshments, parking spots and bathroom passes.

Perhaps the most stunning consequence of the move, which also affects 13 parades that start on Jefferson Avenue and Magazine, is that by shortening parade routes, the City is actually cramming more people into fewer blocks. Will moving hundreds of thousands of Endymion parade viewers from Mid-City onto the already overflowing uptown route create a super spreader event in a time when social distancing is still being promoted?

Logistically, moving the Endymion parade is the most problematic. If their tandems were disconnected, they would have 83 floats. The biggest ones cannot navigate the turn off Napoleon Avenue. On their Saturday, the Krewe of Iris (3,400 members) and the Krewe of Tucks (1,800 members) parades roll uptown with a total of 70 floats, (most tandem and double-deckers) and more than 60 bands. Add to that Endymion’s 3,200 riders and 26 bands and the question becomes, how do you “stage” these parades? Is uptown ready for 12 hours of gridlock? How do the floats and riders get from their dens to the formation area? Where do school buses drop off bands, and where do these units line up to be fed into the parades? And if these parades do roll back-to-back, will the undermanned Sanitation Department have the time to do clean up before 11 AM Sunday when the Okeanos parade rolls, followed by Mid-City, Thoth and Bacchus?

Read more: https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_fa4ceea4-3340-11ec-9d4d-cfea19a693c0.html