Longer Parade Routes Approved For Mardi Gras In New Orleans

COVID-19 precautions wiped out most New Orleans’ Mardi Gras festivities in 2021, and a shortage of police officers forced the city to shorten routes for some of its lavish seasonal parades in 2022.

Now, city officials, and business owners are celebrating plans to let the good times roll on longer routes -- and in front of businesses that welcome the crowds -- with security bolstered by neighboring police agencies.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s official announcement Monday that parade routes were being lengthened was welcome news to Staci Rosenberg, a founder of the Krewe of Muses. It means the all-female organization and its signature floats — including a giant stilletto-heeled pump swathed in color-changing lights — will be able to roll again on Magazine Street. The thoroughfare lined with small shops, century-old cottages, bars and restaurants runs through neighborhoods that gave the parade what Rosenberg described as a more intimate, family-friendly atmosphere.

“It was important to send a sign, I think, to the world that we’re back,” Rosenberg said of plans to restore the longer route. “We’ve recovered from all kinds of things — the pandemic, the labor shortage, the police shortage.”

It also means bolstered business at Le Bon Temps Roule, a well known around-the-clock neighborhood bar on Magazine Street. Co-Owner Joe Bikulege said it was closed for 17 months because of the pandemic. Mardi Gras business, he said, usually enables him to put aside money to pay for taxes, insurance, building improvements and other emergencies.

“There’s a lot of people that make their living off Mardi Gras,” he noted.

Cantrell made the announcement, heralded by a brass band, at Gallier Hall, a 19th-century Greek Revival building that once was the seat of city government. She was joined by interim Police Superintendent Michelle Woodfork and, via video hookup, Sheriff Susan Hutson — who worked to broker agreements with other Louisiana law enforcement agencies to beef up manpower.

It marked a chance for Hutson and Cantrell, both of whom are elected officials, to bolster their political fortunes at a time when both have been under pressure. Cantrell, in her second term, is facing a recall effort a amid rising crime, unhappiness over delays in street projects and trash pickup, and questions about her use of a city-owned French Quarter apartment. Hutson, who took office last year, inherited a long-troubled city jail and is embroiled in political and legal battles over construction plans and security issues.

Manpower shortages have affected police departments around the country since the beginning of the pandemic and the nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd. Various estimates put the number of New Orleans police officers at around 900 to 950, about 400 short of the ideal at any time of year.

Exactly how many police officers and sheriff’s deputies from other jurisdictions will help with the parades wasn’t immediately clear. A spokesperson for Hutson’s office said in an email that agreements with other agencies were still being finalized ahead of the major parades.

Carnival season begins each year on Jan. 6 and picks up steam with a growing list of balls and parades. It reaches a climax in the final two weeks before Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday and Lent. Mardi Gras falls on Feb. 21 this year.

Last year, major parades were limited to a route that took floats, marching bands and walking clubs down historic St. Charles Avenue to the downtown area. The restoration of longer routes means the Krewe of Thoth can again roll by New Orleans’ Children’s Hospital after a nearly three-year absence.

It will be a return welcome by Dr. Scott Macicek. “It’s scary when your a child and you’re in the hospital,” Macicek said. “Having as many joyful experiences as we can create is important.”

Joe Bikulege, co-owner of Le Bon Temps Roule. The bar is open around the clock on Magazine Street — a busy thoroughfare left off last year’s route. Bikulege said money made during Mardi Gras bolsters income and helps pay for insurance, taxes and maintenance on his building.

By KEVIN McGILL

What To Drink In New Orleans, Where Cocktail Is King

Abigail Gullo prepares a De La Louisiane cocktail at Compère Lapin. CreditSara Essex Bradley for The New York Times

All stories about New Orleans drinking lore must now begin with the same disclaimer: Cocktails were invented there. Except they weren’t.

For years, many considered the city the birthplace of the cocktail. The tale is immortalized by Stanley Clisby Arthur in his lively 1937 book, “Famous New Orleans Drinks & How to Mix ’Em”: In the first half of the 19th century, Antoine Amédée Peychaud began to mix his spicy, neon-red bitters — which still bear his name — with spirits. “Peychaud had a unique way of serving his spiced drink of brandy,” Arthur wrote: He poured it into a coquetier, a double-ended egg cup. Coquetier (pronounced ko-kay-TAY) became “cock-tay,” then cocktail. “Presently, all New Orleans was drinking brandy-cocktails,” Arthur wrote. “In such fashion did the inconspicuous little crockery coquetier or egg-cup become the christening font of the cocktail.”

It’s a fun story — but it’s not the real origin of the cocktail. (The indefatigable historian David Wondrich has traced the word a few decades further back, probably to upstate New York, or possibly England, depending on how you define a cocktail.)

No matter. If New Orleans wasn’t the birthplace of the cocktail, it is certainly its spiritual center — where it is most passionately celebrated and where some of its most wondrous and varied iterations were invented: the Sazerac, the Ramos gin fizz, the Vieux Carré. “The quality of mixed drinks as served in New Orleans has always appealed to the sophisticated taste,” Arthur wrote, “but the drinks and their histories are forever linked with the past of this pleasure-loving city.”

Over a few winter evenings in New Orleans, I sought out some of those classic versions at decades-old bars and more recent additions, where bartenders are reinvigorating the cocktail scene amid a broader post-Katrina revival.

The links to the past that Arthur described are evident everywhere. AtCompère Lapin, a restaurant and bar in the Warehouse District and the newest spot I visited on my crawl, I chatted with the charming and gregarious bartender Abigail Gullo. She made me, upon request, a De La Louisiane, one of the city’s lesser-known inventions — a rye-based drink punched up with Peychaud’s bitters and absinthe.

I asked Ms. Gullo why Compère Lapin doesn’t have classic drinks on its menu. “Because we can make them,” she said, and everyone knows it. “And then if they have a Sazerac, what do they have next? I can guide them.”

1. Photo

   

   Bar manager Mark Schettler at Bar Tonique. CreditSara Essex Bradley for The New York Times

   Bar Tonique
   A few days before, I had started myself off with one of those classics. Having finished a book in Louis Armstrong Park midafternoon, I called a friend to make plans. “You know, you’re across the street from Bar Tonique,” he said. “And don’t worry about day drinking. No one in this town is going to give you a weird look for drinking in the afternoon.”

   So I headed across North Rampart Street to Tonique, a boxy spot that opened in 2008, with a three-sided bar, a few off-white banquettes and plenty of exposed brick. Colorful, handwritten slates outlined the ordering options: a collection of classic cocktails, with some originals mixed in, all at astoundingly reasonable prices (at least to this New Yorker’s eyes) of $5 to $10 (including happy hour specials) for almost all mixed drinks.

   Despite its modest size, the place had a pleasant airiness — there were only four other drinkers (I was the only one without tattoos, including the bartender). I ordered a Corpse Reviver No. 2, a tangy absinthe-tinged gin cocktail that dates to at least 1930. I was not the first to enjoy one in daylight: The name refers to its use as a hangover treatment.

2. Photo

   

   A Pimms Cup at the Napoleon House.CreditSara Essex Bradley for The New York Times

   Napolean House
   That evening, I met friends at Napoleon House, a French Quarter favorite that has functioned as a restaurant since 1914. It’s long on charm — heavily distressed walls; portraits of the Impastato family, who owned the restaurant until it was bought by the New Orleans dining impresario Ralph Brennan last year; dramatic swells of classical piano on the soundtrack — and short on drink choices. The list features fewer than a dozen options, though one is clearly the focus: the Pimm’s Cup, which gets its own section, with variations and the option of a souvenir glass for an extra $12.25.

   We tried the original (a simple mix of gin-based Pimm’s, lemonade, a little lemon-lime soda and a cucumber slice) and the ginger version (with mint syrup and ginger — too sweet for my taste), along with a Sazerac and, later, a bourbon milk punch. We asked for a Vieux Carré, a drink named for the very neighborhood we were in, but the bartender did not know the recipe.

3. Photo

   

   The bar at Cane & Table, as reflected in the dining room mirrors.CreditSara Essex Bradley for The New York Times

   Cane & Table
   Our next stop was Cane & Table, a short walk away on the eastern end of the Quarter. The bar, which opened in 2013, describes itself as “proto-tiki”; cocktails are drawn not from the 20th-century movement that brought us the mai tai and the scorpion, but from its spiritual predecessor out of the Caribbean, an area with complicated and important ties to New Orleans.

   Half of the menu ties drinks directly to their source, including the Labat’s Planter’s Punch, with three kinds of rum, lime and Caribbean spices (the menu dates it to 1694; Labat was a French-born clergyman, writer and botanist), and the boozy and sultry United Fruit, with gin, Bénédictine and Spanish vermouth (1935, from the “Bar La Florida” cocktail book). Even better, though, was a Cane & Table original, the sprightly Silver Tongue, which seamlessly combined bourbon, ginger, arrack and cream sherry.

   It was a busy evening at the bar, which was celebrating a Cuban-themed night. Customers seemed right out of central casting for a hip-and-young spot: bearded 20-somethings in jaunty hats and scarves shared tables and bar space with bearded 20-somethings in full drag. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine we were in ’30s-era Havana.
4. 1. Compère Lapin
      The next night, I visited Compère Lapin, where Ms. Gullo’s floral-patterned dress stood out amid the bar and restaurant’s brick, dark wood and white and black floor tile. (The cocktail program is by Ricky Gomez, an alum of the popular New Orleans bar Cure.) Over dinner, I sampled two original concoctions: the Mayor Rock, a challenging mix of mezcal, apple brandy, agave syrup and bitters (a friend accurately compared its scent to that of a Band-Aid, which somehow didn’t bother me); and the 17th Hour, a dry and herbaceous blend of barrel-aged gin, pear brandy, aromatized wine and bitters, served in a glass pinned with a sprig of rosemary.

   2. Photo

      

      Matthew Steinvorth prepares a Ramos gin fizz at the Sazerac Bar.CreditSara Essex Bradley for The New York Times

      Sazerac Bar
      After dinner, we headed to the Roosevelt Hotel. Inside its gleaming brass and marble interior is the Sazerac Bar, which migrated around town until it landed at the hotel (formerly the Fairmont) in 1930. It suffered damage duringHurricane Katrina and was closed until 2009, its gorgeous curvilinear Art Deco interior restored.

      We ordered a Ramos gin fizz, legendarily a favorite of Gov. Huey P. Long, and, of course, aSazerac, and parked ourselves in a banquette under one of the Deco murals by Paul Ninas. The Sazerac was satisfying, though the bar still uses Herbsaint, an absinthe stand-in (I prefer the real deal).

      The gin fizz, which Arthur said was introduced to the city in 1888 by Henry C. Ramos of Baton Rouge, is a tall, frothy number of gin, sugar, lemon and lime juice, cream, egg white, club soda and, most notably to the nose, floral orange flower water. I’ve heard it described as an adult milkshake, which isn’t far off.

      The vibe was mellow: jazz played in the background as about a dozen customers milled around the bar and banquettes. But we were fading and soon called it a night.

   3. Photo

      

      Pouring a Felix Leiter cocktail at Barrel Proof. CreditSara Essex Bradley for The New York Times

      Barrel Proof
      I began my final night of imbibing at Barrel Proof, which opened in 2014 in the Lower Garden District. It was packed with a young and rowdy crowd, possibly prepping their livers for Krewe du Vieux, the first parade of the season, the next night. The spacious interior does, in fact, feel a bit like the inside of a barrel, with its slatted wood ceiling, flanked by a stained corrugated metal wall on one side and dozens of bottles lining a long bar on the other.

      There are over 250 whiskeys, available in one- or two-ounce pours; I sampled a Hibiki 12 year, from Japan, and a Bowman Brothers Small Batch bourbon, from Virginia. And from the tiny cocktail list, I chose a frothy, almost purple-hued drink called the Felix Leiter — an apparent reference to a scene in “Live and Let Die,” in which Leiter, James Bond’s C.I.A. counterpart, is drinking with our hero in New Orleans and orders two Sazeracs. (“This is New Orleans. Relax!”) The menu listed the ingredients as “whiskey, cinnamon, lies”; I was too pleased with the mystery to inquire further.
   4. 1. French 75 Bar
         I headed back to the French Quarter and theFrench 75 Bar at Arnaud’s restaurant, a warm and eclectically decorated staple. The restaurant is about a century old; the bar, long a gentlemen-only club, opened to the public (and both sexes) in 1979 and got its current name in 2003. I grabbed an empty seat at the bar, behind which Chris Hannah, the head bartender, was wearing his usual white tux jacket and deadpan expression. I felt obliged to order the bar’s namesake cocktail, a combination of Cognac (lesser versions use gin), simple syrup, lemon and Champagne that dates to at least the 1920s.

         Seeing my glass empty, Mr. Hannah asked if I was in from out of town and what I liked to drink. New York, whiskey. “You want a Brooklyn?” he asked, referencing a classic rye-based cocktail that you rarely see, largely because it includes Amer Picon, a French digestif not available in the United States. “You have the Amer?” I asked. He nodded (like other ambitious mixologists, Mr. Hannah makes his own replica), then added: “Or a Creole,” which substitutes Bénédictine for the Brooklyn’s maraschino liqueur. “A Brooklyn if you’re homesick. But a Creole since you’re in New Orleans.”

         Less homesick than enjoying the moment, I went with the Creole. Delicious — and potent. I soon headed out past the scrums of drunken imbibers in the Quarter. It was a shockingly cold night, but I felt warmed by the drinks, and also by some genuine New Orleans hospitality.
      2. IF YOU GO
         Bars Both Old and New
         OLD

         French 75 Bar at Arnaud’s, 813 Bienville Street; 504-523-5433;arnaudsrestaurant­.com/bars/french-75.

         Napoleon House, 500 Chartres Street; 504-524-9752; napoleonhouse­.com.

         Sazerac Bar, Roosevelt Hotel, 130 Roosevelt Way; 504-648-1200;therooseveltneworleans­.com.

         NEW

         Bar Tonique, 820 North Rampart Street; 504-324-6045; bartonique­.com.

         Barrel Proof, 1201 Magazine Street; 504-299-1888; barrelproofnola­.com.

         Cane & Table, 1113 Decatur Street; 504-581-1112; caneandtablenola­.com.

         Compère Lapin, 535 Tchoupitoulas Street; 504-599-2119;comperelapin­.com.
      3. By DAN SALTZSTEIN, www.nytimes.com

The National WWII Museum Presents New Permanent Exhibit Road to Tokyo: Pacific Theater Galleries

Museum completes Campaigns of Courage pavilion with 10 immersive galleries on

World War II in the Pacific, opens additional stand-alone gallery on US Merchant Marine

On December 12, 2015, The National WWII Museum will open its newest permanent exhibit: Richard C. Adkerson & Freeport-McMoRan Foundation Road to Tokyo: Pacific Theater Galleries. Retracing the grueling trail that led from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, Road to Tokyo explores the evolving strategy for fighting relentless Japanese forces in Asia and the Pacific, examining cultural differences, logistical challenges and the staggering range of extreme conditions that confronted American military forces in Asia and the Pacific.

Along with Road to Tokyo, a new exhibit on the US Merchant Marine is scheduled for completion in December. LTJG Ralph E. Crump Merchant Marine Gallery is a stand-alone gallery that honors the mariners who risked their lives transporting weapons, men and matériel to distant warfronts. Features include a video, artifacts, a model of a Liberty ship and an engaging array of personal narratives. The gallery will be situated in the Solomon Victory Theater complex, at the end of the American Spirit Bridge – a new glass-and-metal bridge that connects the Museum’s Louisiana Memorial Pavilion with the rest of the six-acre campus for the first time.

Rich in content and expansive in scope, Road to Tokyo, Merchant Marine and the American Spirit Bridge offer visitors a more complete story than ever before of the American experience in World War II. After visitors begin their WWII journey in the Museum’s replica Union Pacific train car (just like new recruits heading to boot camp in the United States), the American Spirit Bridge takes them “overseas” to immersive exhibits that explore how the war was fought and won in Europe (Road to Berlin), and now the Pacific (Road to Tokyo).

Road to Tokyo encompasses 10 richly layered galleries showcasing over 400 artifacts (including a shark-faced P-40 Warhawk), interactive oral-history kiosks, serialized Dog Tag profiles, short films and re-created wartime environments. Located on the second floor of the Museum’s Campaigns of Courage pavilion, the galleries collectively explore the story of a world that was unimaginably alien to American GIs, a conflict of searing brutality and a victory so devastating it is hotly debated even today.

“The United States plunged into World War II following the Japanese surprise air attack on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor,” said Dr. Keith W. Huxen, Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Director of Research and History for The National WWII Museum. “The war forced President Roosevelt and his chief advisors to confront strategic challenges on an epic scale. Securing US victory in the Pacific required mobilizing American industry, gaining control of sea lanes and air zones, developing new technologies, executing  amphibious landings and overcoming vast distances.”

Road to Tokyo also highlights the story of the tenacious American spirit that carried the day. “The men and women who fought in the Pacific were courageous and deeply determined,” Huxen continued. “The exhibit features content on the relentless work of the Seabees who built runways for island-hopping aircraft, and the steadfast scientists who created vaccines against devastating new diseases. This is the story of the Americans who literally forged a path to Tokyo through ingenuity and great sacrifice.”

The opening of Road to Tokyo will complete Campaigns of Courage: European and Pacific Theaters, a pavilion that addresses the heart of the Museum’s mission: telling the vast story of how the war was won. Set in the center of the institution’s campus, Campaigns opened in December 2014 with the launch of Road to Berlin on the first floor. Together, the two exhibit floors draw visitors through a riveting narrative in a way that leaves a lasting impact and redefines the Museum experience – with emphasis placed on experiential storytelling.

Campaigns of Courage is also the primary setting for the Museum’s Dog Tag Experience, an interactive  exhibit that allows visitors to select a servicemember or civilian and follow the individual’s story through the war. As guests move through the galleries, they use digitally enabled dog tag cards to check in with one American’s unfolding story, viewing that gallery’s events through the lens of a personal narrative. Following their Museum experience, users can revisit the stories online and add digital artifacts and oral histories to create a personalized online gallery atdogtagexperience.org.

“Campaigns of Courage contains more than 19,000 square feet of exhibit space so that we can take visitors inside the details of each major challenge, deepening understanding of the heroic story of the war generation,” said Dr. Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, President and CEO of the Museum. “This tale is one of determination and sacrifice, and we’re honored to share firsthand narratives directly from those who fought to bring the war to an end. Completing this pavilion helps us complete our mission. We’re excited to forge ahead with our expansion while we still have WWII veterans alive to see it.”

A series of private and public Grand Opening events will be announced at the beginning of December. These events serve as a capstone to a year of accomplishment for the Museum, which celebrated its 15^th anniversary in June and was recognized as the No. 3 Museum in the nation by TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice™ awards – up from No. 4 last year.

The National WWII Museum tells the story of the American experience in the war that changed the world – why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today – so that future generations will know the price of freedom, and be inspired by what they learn. Dedicated in 2000 as The National D-Day Museum and now designated by Congress as America’s National WWII Museum, it celebrates the American Spirit, the teamwork, optimism, courage and sacrifices of the men and women who fought on the battlefront and served on the Home Front. For more information, call 877-813-3329 or 504-528-1944 or visit nationalww2museum.org.

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