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New Orleans hosts its 1st full-dress Mardi Gras after a gap

New Orleans hosts its 1st full-dress Mardi Gras after a gap

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans’ first full-dress Mardi Gras since 2020 starts Tuesday, people are out and ready to let the good times roll with a day of back-to-back parades through the city and masks against COVID-19 required only in indoor public spaces. Parade routes are shorter than usual this time.

Hotel occupancy, though, is expected to be about 66%, down about 19.5% from 2020, said Kelly Schultz, spokesperson for New Orleans & Co., the official sales and marketing organization for New Orleans’ tourism industry.

Parades were cancelled last year because officials realized that tightly packed crowds in 2020 had created a superspreader event, making the city an early Southern hot spot for COVID-19.

As it has for years, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club will open Fat Tuesday with a parade that started as a mockery of white festivities, with Black float riders in blackface and grass skirts.

Next come the elaborate and fantastical floats of Rex, the self-styled king of Carnival, chosen by a group of high society, old-money businessmen.

After that are the Krewe of Elks and the Krewe of Orleans, a not-quite-endless stretch of homemade floats on long flatbed trailers.

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