Muted Mardi Gras: Closed bars, barricaded Bourbon Street

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Music blared from the courtyard of a French Quarter restaurant on Mardi Gras morning but nobody was there to hear it until Tom Gibson and Sheila Wheeler of Philadelphia walked out of their hotel’s nearly empty lobby.

“We were expecting a little bit lower key than the normal Mardi Gras,” Wheeler said. But empty Bourbon Street was a shock.

Coronavirus-related restrictions in New Orleans included canceled parades, closed bars and a near shutdown of rowdy Bourbon Street. That, and unusually frigid weather, prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of Mardi Gras season: streets and businesses jam-packed with revelers.

To be sure, some hardy lovers of the season braved the cold. Knots of people, some in costume and some carrying cups of hot coffee (sales of alcohol to go were prohibited) wandered the French Quarter. On St. Charles Avenue, houses decked out as stationary “house floats” with giant mythical figures, circus animals or dinosaurs, drew handfuls of people snapping photographs. WDSU-TV captured a group of Mardi Gras Indians — African American organizations that for generations marched in brilliantly hued hand-beaded and feathered costumes — on a brief march through one neighborhood.

But, by any measure, it was a vastly diminished Mardi Gras.

Bourbon Street was eerily quiet in contrast to past years. Police barricades sat at the end of each block and officers were told to only allow access for residents, people who work in local businesses or hotel guests. The St. Charles Avenue median, usually swarming with parade lovers, was empty but for the occasional jogger or streetcar.

A group founded by the late jazz clarinet player Pete Fountain, the Half Fast Walking Club, gathered outside Commander's Palace restaurant as usual, but they did not march. Souvenir shops that...