The Seven Mystic Sisters are kicking off our favorite day of the year! It’s officially Mardi Gras Day, y’all! pic.twitter.com/4iOtp9ogmv — Visit New Orleans (@VisitNewOrleans) February 13, 2024 They call her the muse of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival. She insists she’s a missionary https://t.co/0HanhUfre4 — The Associated Press (@AP) February 11, 2024 RIO DE JANEIRO …
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Carne ValePost + Comments (83)
More incredible photos, from the Washington Post – “Venice likes a good party, just not the crowds” [gift link]:
… A 29-day test, set to start on April 25 after a series of delays, will require day-trippers to book and pay admission to set foot on Venice’s core island. City officials note that tourists worldwide have long paid entry fees for museums, archaeological sites, even churches, with more-popular sites turning to visitor caps or time slots. This system, they say, is a mild version of those.
If deemed a success, the new fees — initially set at 5 euros, equal to $5.38 — would continue to apply on certain days, officials say, especially in high season, when tourists can outnumber locals by 3 to 1. Overnight visitors, who already pay a tourist tax at hotels, would be exempt.
Another experimental measure, starting in August, will limit tour groups to 25 people. That follows a cruise ship ban in place since 2021 that prevents massive ships from sailing past St. Mark’s Square through the Giudecca Canal and docking at the historic city center — though they can still make port nearby. Venice has also banned new souvenir shops on the city’s main arteries, and new hotels now require an official vote in city hall…
The number of overnight visitors hit an all-time high of more than 3.5 million last year. Day-trippers — who spend far fewer euros — number an estimated 10 million annually, although that could include people who visit more than once. Meanwhile, the year-round population of Venice’s core island has fallen to fewer than 50,000 people — below the total number of beds in hotels and short-term rentals.
Although the pandemic’s halt to global tourism dented wallets here, it also provided Venetians with a dreamy glimpse of a world in which their city was once again their own. Last year, as visitor numbers bounced back, the city also received a wake-up call. UNESCO experts recommended that Venice be added to a “List of World Heritage in Danger” — a potential PR nightmare for the mayor’s office. Among the reasons: the city’s inability to control mass tourism…
Mardi Gras beads are creating a plastic disaster in New Orleans. Are there green alternatives? https://t.co/UbvsW8Uo8T
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 11, 2024
… One way of making a dent in the demand for new plastic beads is to reuse old ones. Parade-goers who carry home shopping bags of freshly caught beads, foam footballs, rubber balls and a host of other freshly flung goodies can donate the haul to the Arc of New Orleans. The organization repackages and resells the products to raise money for the services it provides to adults and children with disabilities.
The city of New Orleans and the tourism promotion organization New Orleans & Co. also have collection points along parade routes for cans, glass and, yes, beads.
Aside from recycling, there’s a small but growing movement to find something else for parade riders to lob.
Grounds Krewe, Davis’s nonprofit, is now marketing more than two dozen types of nonplastic, sustainable items for parade riders to pitch. Among them: headbands made of recycled T-shirts; beads made out of paper, acai seeds or recycled glass; wooden yo-yos; and packets of locally-made coffee, jambalaya mix or other food items — useful, consumable items that won’t just take up space in someone’s attic or, worse, wind up in the lake…
Key this be your fault story for the day (gift link):
"Meet the ‘sisterhood’ making noise — and history — for Mardi Gras." https://t.co/KrfVBc8FBW
— Lisa Rowe ???????????? (@txvoodoo) February 12, 2024
Also great photos, from the Washington Post:
NEW ORLEANS — On the first Sunday in February, as local school bands arrived to march in the Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale’s Carnival parade, boys from St. Augustine’s Marching 100 and players from Edna Karr High School began an energizing battle between two of the city’s most popular bands. Cymbals were clashed then tossed into the air as competing drum beats and blaring brass horns turned Laurence Square, a small park in Uptown New Orleans, into a cacophony of sound.
At the edge of the square, members of the St. Mary’s Academy Cougar Marching Band stood stone-faced as they awaited the parade in tight formation. The band’s drum majors, Gilbrelle Stokes, 18, and Charland Thibodeaux, 17, stood at the ready, blue whistles in their mouths, as they prepared to direct the school’s 150-member marching unit, complete with a band, color guard, majorettes, flag team, dancers and cheerleaders.
Thibodeaux, a senior who has been marching with St. Mary’s since the third grade, was unfazed by the pressures of commanding such a large group.
“I always feel ready,” she said. “I been doing it so long.”
Marching band culture in New Orleans is ubiquitous, with groups performing at parades, weddings and funerals alike. Most locals can name their favorite high school bands, which are a highlight of Carnival season for all. School marching bands also serve as a training ground for the pipeline of talented professional musicians who steadily emerge from this birthplace of jazz…
St. Mary’s Academy’s skirt-wearing band first formed in 1937, making it the oldest Black girls band marching in the city. Today, it is one of just a handful of all-girl bands to regularly appear in Mardi Gras parades.
The school opened its doors in the French Quarter in 1867 and is still run by the Sisters of the Holy Family, a Black Catholic order founded by Henriette DeLille in 1842. DeLille, a multiracial nun (and current candidate for sainthood), believed in providing education for girls of color even when doing so was illegal. St. Mary’s was the first secondary school for Black girls in New Orleans…