NEW ORLEANS — By Friday mid-morning, the sidewalk side of the St. Charles Avenue parade route in New Orleans was packed with people waiting to set up on the neutral ground.
Charles Stevenson was there to save a spot for several families.
“We’ve been out here since like 6:30, 7 o’clock, you know Parkway came through and was like, you’ve got to pick up the tarps and stuff and we can’t put it back out until one o’clock,” Stevenson said.
This year, the New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways told paradegoers, that unattended tarps, tents, chairs, and ladders on the parade route would be confiscated.
The city also warned items on the public right-of-way earlier than 4 hours before parade time could also be removed.
Aubrey Miller said a Parkways crew told everyone they couldn’t set up on the neutral ground side until 1 p.m.
“They’ve been pretty nice,” Miller said. “It’s kind of a bummer, but we’ll make do. They picked up a lot. There were surprisingly a lot of things left unattended.”
City crews drove up and down the avenue looking for violators.
Tulane graduate student Kayla Washington took it all in from her chair under a tree and did some homework while waiting to set up on the parade route.
“Got here, I am currently coding my research that’s happening at a conference right after Mardi Gras and it’s just a nice day out, waiting, watching all the cars and people watching,” Washington said.
Just before 1 p.m., there was a mass scramble to the neutral ground as people rushed to stake out the best spots for Friday’s triple header parade lineup.
In the runup to the first big Carnival parade weekend in New Orleans, there appeared to be a spirit of cooperation between paradegoers and Parks and Parkways. Everyone is hoping that spirit continues into next week when the parades and crowds grow larger here on St. Charles Avenue.