Mardi Gras celebration rocks New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — From the family-friendly avenues of the Garden District to raunchy displays in the French Quarter, New Orleans let loose with a Fat Tuesday party as parades rolled and revelers frolicked amid showers of beads, trinkets and music.

The French Quarter began to fill with costumed revelers soon after dawn. Some people hadn't stopped drinking since Monday's Lundi Gras prequel to Mardi Gras.

Wearing a bright orange wig, a purple mask and green shoes, New Orleans resident Charlotte Hamrick walked along Canal Street to meet friends.

"I'll be in the French Quarter all day," Hamrick said. "I don't even go to the parades. I love to take pictures of all the costumes and just be with my friends. It's so fun."

Brittany Davies of Denver was struggling through the early morning hours. Still feeling the effects of heavy drinking from the night before, her friends had her out again early Tuesday.

"They're torturing me," Davies joked. "But I'll be OK after a bloody mary."

The predominantly African-American Zulu krewe was the first major parade to hit the streets, shortly after 8 a.m. Most krewe members were in the traditional black-face makeup and the Afro wigs Zulu riders have sported for decades.

In the oak-lined Garden District, clarinetist Pete Fountain prepared to lead his Half-Fast Walking Club on its annual march down St. Charles Avenue.

Fountain, 82, gave a thumbs up to start off and his band launched into "When The Saints Come Marching In" as they rounded the corner onto St. Charles Avenue shortly after 7 a.m. It was the 52nd time that Fountain's group has paraded for Mardi Gras. This year, the group wore bright yellow suits and matching pork pie hats for its theme, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road."

In the Quarter, Joshua Westbrook of Dothan, Ala., had been on Bourbon Street drinking since Monday afternoon. His eyes were tired Tuesday morning but he was determined to see Mardi Gras through.

"I'm struggling, but I'm going to push through it," he said.

Wearing a purple wig, New Orleans resident Juli Shipley carried a gallon of booze down Bourbon Street and filled her friends' cups when they got low. "We're going to wander all day and people-watch," Shipley said. "That's the best part of Mardi Gras — the costumes. They're amazing."

Partygoers were dressed as Wizard of Oz characters Dorothy and the Wicked Witch, bags of popcorn, pirates, super heroes, clowns, jesters, princesses and lots of homemade costumes with the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold.

The raunchy revelry was expected to increase through the day.

After Zulu, the parade of Rex, king of Carnival, would make the trek down the avenue and to the city's business district, with hundreds of thousands of people pleading for beads and colorful aluminum coins, known as doubloons.

Along St. Charles, groups of people, many in costumes, ate breakfast as children played in the street. Small groups were already on the move. The Skeleton Krewe, 25 people dressed in black skeleton outfits, were on their way to the St. Louis Cathedral.

Tom White, 46, clad in a pink tutu, bicycled down the avenue with his wife, Allison, on their way to the French Quarter. "I'm the pink fairy this year," he said. "Costuming is the real fun of Mardi Gras. I'm not too creative but when you weigh 200 pounds and put on a tutu people still take your picture."

His wife was not in costume. "He's disgraced the family enough," she said.

The stakeout for prime spots along the Mardi Gras parade route started Monday, with legions of Carnival die-hards jockeying for the best places to vie for beads thrown from floats on Fat Tuesday.

Stephanie Chapman and her family had set up in their usual spot on the St. Charles streetcar tracks. They arrived at 4 a.m. Tuesday and would be staying for the duration.

"This is a beautiful day and we'll be here until it's over. It won't rain on my parade, but if it does I won't pay any attention," she said.

It was partly cloudy, but rain was not in the forecast. Temperatures were in the 70s.

Across the Gulf Coast, Mardi Gras was getting into full swing. In the Cajun country of southwest Louisiana, masked riders were preparing to go from town to town, making merry along the way in the Courir du Mardi Gras. And parades were scheduled elsewhere around Louisiana and on the Mississippi and Alabama coasts. The celebration arrived in Louisiana in 1682 when the explorer LaSalle and his party stopped at a place they called Bayou Mardi Gras south of New Orleans to celebrate. The site is now lost to history.

The end of Mardi Gras gives way to the beginning of Lent, the period of fasting and repentance before Easter Sunday.

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Pedicabs have arrived in New Orleans but controversy continues

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Pedicabs have arrived at last with great fanfare among New Orleans officials, but they are raising anxieties among operators of the iconic mule-drawn carriages that take wedding parties, conventioneers and other visitors on tours of the historic French Quarter.

Touted as a transportation option for tourists that will also provide new jobs, the vehicles that look like a cross between a tricycle and a rickshaw were unveiled last week at a news conference in the city's Jackson Square. Mayor Mitch Landrieu was one of the first passengers.

"We expect that over 100 full and part-time jobs will be created by the three pedicab companies, which is significant in this economy," Landrieu said.

Carriage owners, however, fear the pedicabs will only divide, not add to, the number of transportation customers. "There's always a limited number of discretionary dollars," carriage driver Pat Logan said Thursday as fellow drivers tried to entice passing tourists in the Quarter to climb aboard for $15-per-person tours.

"We're still recovering from Katrina," carriage business operator James Lauga said, referring to the August 2005 storm that breached levees, flooded most of the city and all but halted commerce for months. "We got set back 15 years with Katrina. We're slowly making the climb back. But it's still a struggle in this economy."

Another carriage owner, Alex Mata, filed an appeal with the City Council this week over the permitting process. Mata applied for a permit to operate pedicabs but lost out in the city's lottery for a limited number of permits. Mata said he doesn't like the vehicles and didn't relish the idea of getting into the business but felt he needed to in order to survive economically.

His appeal alleges a flawed lottery process in which applicants filed multiple applications and sometimes used proxies to increase their chances.

The city did not respond to a request for comment. A pedicab operator reached Thursday by The Associated Press declined comment.

Small numbers of pedicabs have operated in New Orleans on and off in the past but the business never took off for a variety of reasons. Talk of adding the people-powered conveyances to the transportation mix in the tourist-dependent city began again in earnest late last summer, culminating in a September 2010 City Council vote to allow pedicabs once rules and a permitting process were established.

Even then it took a year to establish the rules and issue the first permits. Hearings were punctuated by complaints about the new competition from taxi and carriage operators, and complaints from would-be pedicab operators that the lottery system proposed for issuing the permits would leave them with nothing to show for their initial investments if they lost out.

City officials opted for the lottery in what they bill as a pilot program that will initially allow up to 45 of the vehicles on the streets.

After their introduction last week, there was no evidence of the vehicles at Jackson Square on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon.

No matter, said Lauga. "These pedicabs are going to swoop in at the busiest times of the year," he said.

At first glance, the small pedicabs appear to pose little threat to the larger, high-riding carriages that are a familiar sight in the French Quarter. The carriages generally carry about eight people on extended tours of the quarter. The pedicab price structure outlined by the city, $5 per person for the first six blocks, plus $1 per passenger for each additional block, provides for inexpensive short hops within the Quarter and into adjacent neighborhoods.

"They're saying they're only going to do short routes and one to four people going a few blocks but that's not what's going to happen," Lauga predicts. "There's nothing to keep these guys from doing tours."

Aside from competition for the tourist dollar, Logan said he fears the pedicab operators will end up acting as tour guides, with no guarantee they will provide accurate information about the history and architecture in the Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods. "I have no idea if they know what they're talking about," said Logan.

Such criticisms were frequently heard about carriage drivers in years past but Lauga and Mata noted that the city now requires the carriage drivers to be trained as tour guides. "We're licensed tour guides," said Logan, who added that he practiced law for 30 years before retiring, taking a course in the city's history and obtaining a tour guide license and deciding to drive a carriage. "It turned out to be a lot of fun and, most of the time, profitable," he said.

For all his complaints, Mata said he'd drop his appeal if the city would agree to restrict the pedicabs from picking up fares in and around Jackson Square, the green space lined by St. Louis Cathedral, other historic buildings and busy Decatur Street, where the carriages line up to offer rides.

"We'd withdraw all our opposition," said Mata.

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