New Orleans Needs a Better Way to Do Mardi Gras
NEW ORLEANS—Standing in line at the hardware store on the edge of the French Quarter one December Monday, I overheard the cashier talking to a regular customer about manhole covers that had exploded just before dawn that morning a couple of blocks away. Not to mention the usual spate of shootings that punctuate the daily news in New Orleans. It had been impaled in late October by part of a construction crane, which was being used to build a Hard Rock Hotel on the corner of North Rampart and Canal Street—the city’s main thoroughfare.
