New Orleans Mardi Gras To Push Through Despite Hard Times

February 23, 2009 8:53 a.m. EST

New Orleans, LA (AHN) - Despite the recession, New Orleans is determined to push through with the Mardi Gras this week. According to Mary Beth Romig of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, downtown hotels reported more than 90 percent occupancy for the weekend.

More than a big party, the Mardi Gras is a business for the city as the yearly Lent event bring over 700,000 visitors who spend more than $ 1 billion in the city. However, participants must plunk in also their investments.

Members of the Krewe of Endymion, the largest parade group in the Mardi Gras, spend $600 to $1,000 per head on beads and other throwaways they toss from their floats, plus membership dues. The group spends over $3 million to stage a parade.

Aside from losing business if the Mardi Gras will not be held, residents insist it is an annual tradition rarely broken. In the city's history since it began to stage the event in 1858, the Mardi Gras has been canceled only 13 times, including the Civil War, World Wars I and II and the yellow fever epidemic, said Arthur Hardy, Mardi Gras historian. One parade was canceled during the Great Depression, while New Orleans went ahead and staged the Mardi Gras in 2006 while the city was barely recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

This year only three of 49 Mardi Gras parades in the greater New Orleans areas have been cancelled. A survey by a local business paper said 58 percent of residents stated money or the lack of it is not an issue for them during the Mardi Gras; 30 percent plan to reduce the parties they will attend, and only 4 percent admitted they could not afford to ride a float this year.

Residents of the Bolivar Peninsula, badly battered by the hurricane last year, held the 18th yearly parade at Crystal Beach with 34 entries.

Hardy told USA Today, "If Mardi Gras could survive Katrina, what's a little economic downturn?... It's genetically encoded into our DNA. It's who we are. An economy recession will never kill Mardi Gras."