Most business are prepped for the storm
After days of hoping, the organizers of New Orleans’ Southern Decadence have been forced to cut back the event significantly – the Saturday street party has been cancelled and the parade appears to as well.
With Hurricane Gustav looming and expected to hit just west of New Orleans on late Monday night, the city has already called for a “voluntary visitor evacuation”. New Orleans Mayor Nagin told tourists “it is time to leave our city, please begin the process of evacuation”. A mandatory evacuation is expected early Sunday morning.
Finer restaurants served their last meals on Friday night and most hotels forced their visitors to check out on Saturday morning and sent guests looking for temporary places to stay until they could find a flight, train or car out of town.
A diminishing number of stalwarts, including me, are taking the time to enjoy the remaining festivities (the bars still remain open) before our newly rescheduled flights for Sunday. While the gay part of the quarter still shows signs of life, most of Bourbon Street is boarded up and military vehicles are roving the streets in preparation for the storm.
We wish all New Orleans residents and visitors a safe evacuation and trip to their destination and hope that the storm ends up being a lot less than the dire predictions indicate.
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Scott said it all above in his post. We were very fortunate we were able to stay at our hotel, Chateau LeMoyne on Rue Dauphine, until Sunday morning. The Gen. Mgr and staff at the hotel were terrific. Our last meal was at Clover Grill (near the bars). It was fun seeing the few places in the city still open were the Gay Bars (LOL). Good luck to all the residents and business in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I hope the city is up and running again soon and hope all escaped damage. From what I could see, it was a very well organized evacuation. It was kind of eerie on Sunday morning seeing the French Qtr like a ghost town. See you all at Decadence, 2009.
Silver
As one of the Grand Marshals of Southern Decadence this year I would like to thank all who attended the festivities that were able to go on. It was heartbreaking to go through so many months of work to have the parade cancelled, but I realize it was for the best.
As much as we need the tourist dollars here since Katrina, it is not in our best interest to risk the lives of our tourists who come to support our great city. Thankfully, it was not the storm that was expected, but like they say, hindsight is 20/20. So many times before we had to evacuate or were expecting the worst and nothing happened. People grew weary of endless “crawling” lines of traffic trying to get out and chose to ignore such warnings. Then along came Katrina and changed everyone’s perspective.
Again, thanks for patronizing our fair city and we hope to see you back next year !!!!