Houston News: Mardi Gras

Standing water from Hurricane Rita sopped the ground and sunk the concrete beneath the Krewe de Eusprit Rosaire's stage, rendering the platform unsafe for one of the biggest Mardi Gras parties outside New Orleans, reports Houston News. Otherwise, Mardi Gras organizers on the island have tried planning the annual event as if two major hurricanes never happened.
Organizers insist the lack of focus on Katrina and Rita shouldn't insult 150,000 evacuees still living in the Houston area, a number of whom are expected to catch beads and eat king cake in Galveston this year after being forced from Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina.

Last year, Galveston attracted 300,000 visitors for its two weekends of parades and Fat Tuesday. Hotels booking at an unusually swift pace since January suggest this year's celebration -- which began Friday and ends Feb. 28 -- could attract a record turnout, but organizers have shied from making a guess. Parade groups, businesses and organizers in Galveston want evacuees to feel welcome. But aside for some token marketing selling the island's Mardi Gras as a "Salute to the Gulf Coast," the storms that swamped the region in August and September didn't compel Galveston to adjust plans hatched months earlier.

"We didn't want to take any thing away from what New Orleans was doing," said Paula Brown, spokeswoman for the Galveston Park Board of Trustees that coordinates Mardi Gras. "We didn't want New Orleans to feel like we were competing with them."

The delicacy of acknowledging a tragedy amid the festivity isn't new ground for Mardi Gras. After Sept. 11, 2001, krewe leaders said Galveston toyed with last-minute patriotic themes and using more red, white and blue than Mardi Gras green, gold and purple.

In New Orleans, Katrina's influence -- like everything else there -- dominates Mardi Gras. Effigies of Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco will float through the parades, and satirical float themes like "Blue Roof Blues," offer a nod to the tarps protecting the tops of damaged and leaky houses.

Galveston's also paying homage to Louisiana, but it's mostly by sheer coincidence.
Months before the hurricanes, organizers settled on a New Orleans flair for the Mardi Gras season. They first nixed the Galveston tradition of naming an official theme and allowed krewes, the private social clubs that hold the parades and build the floats, to embrace the New Orleans custom of choosing their own.

Galveston also recruited a longtime Louisiana krewe, the Bards of Bohemia, but the troupe abruptly withdrew Tuesday. Corporate sponsors sapped from hurricane relief fell through and New Orleans barges busy with clean-up couldn't ship its floats to Galveston, krewe president Tom Luksetich said.

Others also had problems. Inspectors condemned a water-damaged stage the Krewe de Eusprit Rosaire has traditionally used, so they have to build a new platform, said krewe leader Valerie Clouser. Katrina's damage also crippled the output of bead-makers in the region, robbing Clouser of her fond drives to Louisiana to pack her car with boxes of doubloons and trinkets.
"I did more on the Internet this year than ever before," Clouser said.

Membership in Clouser's krewe mostly comes from the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, a small parish that sheltered 36 evacuees after Katrina. Among them were New Orleans' Emelda Watts and 18 family members, all of whom spent several weeks living in the convent behind the church.

Mardi Gras "is going to be strange, because everything will be magnified about how we can't make it back home," said Watts, the family matriarch and the only family member still living on the island. "It's going to feel like something's missing."

Still, it appears she'll have plenty of company. Encouraged by early reservations, some hotels scaled back marketing as the first weekend neared the unusual level of full occupancy, said Paul Schultze, president of the Galveston Hotel Lodging Association.

"Galveston's not the Big Easy but it's a good substitute," said Christopher Bertini, president of the Galveston's oldest krewe, Knights of Momus. "If you can't make it over there (to New Orleans), it's a quick fix."

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