New Orleans arranges a party minus violence

By Doug Simpson
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — Lance Smith sipped his beer, surveyed Bourbon Street and offered an unusual Mardi Gras toast: He praised the police.

“The police officers are letting everybody have a good time,” said Smith, 33, a Las Vegas lighting technician. “They’re not giving us any problems.”

An estimated 1 million or more tourists poured into New Orleans to celebrate the Big Easy’s biggest party. But New Orleans — now and in the past — has avoided the problems faced this year by Seattle and Austin where a Mardi Gras parade was canceled and a curfew imposed after weekend rioters tossed bottles and smashed store windows.

In New Orleans, Mardi Gras 2001 again proceeded smoothly, with equal parts pageantry and partying.

Actress Glenn Close served as celebrity monarch for the Krewe of Orpheus, a social club founded by homegrown musician Harry Connick Jr. Whoopi Goldberg and network newswoman Hoda Kotbe also were among the riders on Orpheus’ 27 parade floats.

The king of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club — a mostly black krewe — arrived on the bank of the Mississippi River on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter Monday, beginning a jazz procession to his ceremonial meeting with the king of Rex, a predominantly white krewe. Krewes are traditional social groups that organize members for the festivities.

Mardi Gras traditionally begins early on Fat Tuesday when clarinetist Pete Fountain leads his Half-Fast Marching Club from Commander’s Palace restaurant down chic St. Charles Avenue with four other marching clubs.

By 2 p.m. Monday, beer trucks lumbering down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter were slowed to a crawl by throngs of hard-drinking revelers moving from bar to bar. Crowds gathered under balconies, begging the occupants to toss down the season’s traditional prize — strands of cheap plastic beads.

By Monday night, Bourbon Street was jammed with revelers and beads were flying as zydeco and blues bands played for revelers who were chased inside the bars by drizzling rain.