It's probably the only entertainment event where the people who put it on pay for it and the audience gets a free ticket and we give free gifts to take home. |
It's showing the world that we're alive and almost well. |
Not having it would be like not having Christmas. |
People are choosing to celebrate. |
People seem to want to hug New Orleans right now, and this is one way they can do it. It's almost like a patriotism toward the city. |
The city government could have canceled this event, but they couldn't have put it on. |
The event will be practically the same size. If a visitor came and watched the events along the parade route, I'm not sure they would know we even had a hurricane. |
The fact that we're attempting to do this at all is, I think, history-making. We call ourselves the Big Easy, but we never seem to take the easy way out. |
The worst is over. The thought of not doing Mardi Gras would be devastating, both financially and psychologically. |
There is a private side to Carnival. It started as an event that we did for ourselves and it still is. The economic side is monumental and it's good for the city. But we chose to do this for us. |
There's a lot of satire in Mardi Gras. We also take shots at ourselves. We may be down but we're not out. |
They're wild people. They don't try to be in any way politically correct or socially elite. They have a toilet-seat float, for God's sake. Dignity is not their thing. |
We cannot afford not to have Mardi Gras. That message would be -- New Orleans is closed for business. |
We desperately need to let the world know we're alive and that we're open for business. We hope people see the devastation when they come, to better understand what we've been through. |
We have no model for this. Will the city ever be back to normal? We don't know. All I can tell you is we're going to enjoy this Mardi Gras. |