By Clare Kennedy and Jacquelyn Ryan
Design: Jelena Schulz
How the creative and fun-loving people of New Orleans came up with a plan to remake the parade in a pandemic ...
The cancellation of this year's Mardi Gras parade looked like the beginning of the end to Rachel Elsensohn, owner of float-building company Mardi Gras Decorators in a New Orleans suburb.
Elsensohn owns two warehouses in Slidell, Louisiana, where she operates her business that serves five of the seven Mardi Gras carnival-coordinating krewes in St. Tammany Parish. St. Tammany pulled the plug on its plans for the February event in early December as COVID-19 cases soared in the region. By that time, Elsensohn’s employees had already started working on floats commissioned by their clients.
“The bottom dropped out,” Elsensohn told CoStar News. “But how do you go to your customers and tell them that you have to get paid, when they won’t get to use their floats?”
With few options at hand, Elsensohn laid off her staff two weeks before Christmas. But across Lake Pontchartrain, the people of New Orleans had come up with a creative plan to remake the parade for a pandemic: They were turning homes and businesses into “floats.” The idea is credited to a local woman, Megan Boudreaux, and grew from an offhand Facebook post that went viral.
The adapted version of the city’s famous carnival, which has been dubbed “Yardi Gras,” was quickly embraced by the residents and business owners of the Crescent City and has since spread to Mobile, Alabama – home to the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in the states – and other towns across Louisiana and Mississippi. Business owners, including landmark restaurant Commander's Palace in New Orleans' Garden District and financial services firm Iberia Bank, decorated their own real estate as part of the event.
But the "Yardi Gras" movement has truly been a saving grace to the artists, businesses and property owners of New Orleans, many of whom make their living on the annual weekslong citywide party. Mardi Gras is a pillar of New Orleans’ economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism and leisure, two industries that have been all but decimated by COVID-19.
The city, which is world famous for its food, hotels and nightlife, suffered large job losses from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its hospitality sector bore the brunt of the impact. About 20,100 jobs disappeared, a 21.5% decline in the hospitality industry’s total employment.
But for Yardi Gras, Elsensohn's workers may well have joined them. The same day Elsensohn let go of her staff she got a call from Devin DeWulf, founder of the Krewe of Red Beans in New Orleans. The krewe, which marches its own parade on foot during the Mardi Gras season, wanted to hire her company to deck out house floats on the Yardi Gras routes.
The Krewe of Red Beans is known for its elaborate Mardi Gras suits, studded by beans and grains of rice, and its commitment to supporting the people who make New Orleans' culture so distinctive. When the coronavirus pandemic began the krewe started Feed the Second Line, an effort to keep the city's musicians and artists employed through the outbreak.
The krewe, which initially canceled all of its Mardi Gras events, saw a big opportunity in Yardi Gras and went all in on the concept, with the aim of raising financial support for the artists who normally create the floats on the parade route.
As of Feb. 3, DeWulf said the organization had raised $300,000, enough to fund 24 projects and create 48 jobs. The krewe's commission allowed Elsensohn to immediately rehire her staff.
“It was great,” Elsensohn said. “We never missed a beat. It doesn’t cover everything — I still have bills to pay — but I was able to keep my people.”
Her employees set to work creating papier-mache, Styrofoam and fiberglass art to adorn private homes and two city institutions: the Children's Hospital and Blood Center in New Orleans. They made piles of giant flowers, pearls, beads, fish, and animals. In a tribute to the city’s medical staff stretched to the limit by the COVID-19 crisis, Elsensohn’s team painted portraits of five nurses.
The results have been nothing short of spectacular, DeWulf said in an interview with CoStar News.
“The artists’ output has been really excellent,” DeWulf said. “These are people who have spent decades honing their craft.”
One homeowner who rented pieces from Elsensohn was Ranna McSwain, whose home is on a typical parade route on Napoleon Avenue in uptown New Orleans. The public has responded very strongly to the display, which pays tribute to the Mardi Gras spirit and the late, famous jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain, she said.
“It was so uplifting just to see people’s expressions and reactions and how happy everyone is,” McSwain said.
All three believe Yardi Gras will outlive the pandemic and become a permanent feature of the Mardi Gras tradition. Neither DeWulf nor Elsensohn was surprised that New Orleans rose to the occasion.
New Orleanians “are fun people, and there have been so many moments that they’ve taken a negative and turned it into something positive,” DeWulf said. “A few years ago, a sinkhole opened up on Canal Street and we turned that into a party: Sinkhole de Mayo. That’s just what people do here.”