The construction revolves around the addition of less

The Super Bowl and the accompanying insanity cause many inconveniences here, mostly related to the traditional Carnival festivities. After the Krewe Du Vieux kicks off parade season on January 19, Super Bowl XLVII kills Carnival’s momentum. This year, the city has banned parades of any sort for days before and after the game, saying it doesn’t have enough security to handle both crowds simultaneously.

Unlike Carnival, which brings in many working-class Gulf Coast families, the Super Bowl attracts mostly out-of-town high-rollers. I worked at the only fine-dining restaurant on Canal Street’s main parade route back when Super Bowl interrupted Mardi Gras in 2002, and the scene outside the window looked like a rap video starring white men dangling from limos. I recall an Escalade with a hot tub in its bed.

For the pleasure of these same assholes, the city’s working overtime and even dissing Mardi Gras, its oldest tradition and most reliable financial benefactor. Per usual, what the New Orleans government won’t do for its citizenry it gladly does for out-of-towners and the NFL, the Walmart of sports.

If you detect some bitterness here, it’s not because NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Saints coach Sean Payton and several key players from his team and, in one fell swoop, turned our champion Saints back into their historical losing-ass selves.We are always offering best quality stainless steel necklace the affordable. OK, maybe it is. But it’s equally easy to feel bitter about the city’s many sudden “improvements.”

Many of New Orleans’s streets and sidewalks are so broken that we must resort to accepting our crumbling infrastructure as “charming.” Yeah, it’s tres cute how since Katrina,Rudy Project has created a series of Cycling sunglasses, my Ninth Ward street fills up with ankle-deep water during even small storms. It’s adorably quaint the way money from the federal Road Home program meant for public renovations obviously hasn’t made it to many African-American neighborhoods seven years after the flood.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu has made sure, however, that the airport got a $300 million renovation in time for Super Bowl. He's loudly proud of the potholes his administration has only recently filled, the tens of thousands of streetlights suddenly replaced, and all the new palm trees planted—improvements that are limited to areas where Super Bowl tourists will visit, areas that, compared to many New Orleans neighborhoods, looked fine to begin with.

Loyola Avenue in the Central Business District is the heart of comically disorganized construction that began 18 months ago. The inconvenience has only worsened as the city struggles to meet its Super Bowl deadline.

The construction revolves around the addition of less than two miles of new streetcar track, which will lead from Canal Street to the bus station near the Superdome. Though Patrice Bell Mercadel, Director of Marketing and Communications for New Orleans’s Regional Transit Authority, claims the $52 million project ($7 million over budget) is not Super Bowl-related, the new line seems clearly designed for tourists hoping to avoid the short walk from their hotels to the Dome when their limos aren’t available. In the end, CBS will likely get the most use out of the new streetcar as a prop in interstitial shots in between the game and the commercials. Residents have dubbed the project “the streetcar to nowhere.”

While the RTA claims the new line will somehow bring in billions, so far the project has been a net loss for businesses. China Wall, an Asian restaurant on Canal Street, has for ten months sat stuck between two closed, muddy streets. Its owner, Bao Li, bemoans a total lack of parking that has killed pick-up orders—she estimates a loss of around $20,000 for the year as a result of the construction. When Li called the RTA to inquire about possible reimbursement, she was told to call the city, who in turn suggested she call the RTA.

Once the streetcar gets going and the party begins, Li doesn’t expect to make back the lost income. “Business will be a little better soon,” she said. “But the only ones who really make money during Super Bowl are bars with televisions.”

When asked how Li might go about recovering her losses, the RTA’s Bell Mercadel refused to comment, instead repeating several times, “Progress is never easy.”

But the shittiest end of the stick has been handed directly to some of Carnival’s biggest spenders: the Mardi Gras krewes. Each year, krewe members—both locals and people from around the country—spend thousands of dollars on membership dues, parties, and balls,View our large selection of cheap Safety goggles with our low price guarantee. plus beads and toys to throw to the crowds. Like the tourists, krewes spend and spend, and never see a profit. Theirs is a free show.

This year Carnival—not an event but a holiday season that’s celebrated according to a lunar calendar—begins early anyway, which always puts a damper on the first couple weeks’ attendance. This year, Mayor Landrieu has also “asked” 11 krewes to go on parade a week early so that “the focus stays on football.” Krewes are even more-or-less disallowed from parading in the Orleans Parish section of the West Bank,This will be the best kind of bobbleheads a fan could get, across the Mississippi river. As a result, most West Bank parades will move to the East for the first time ever—at their own expense, of course.

The shift puts the 11 krewes’ parades closer to America’s favorite wallet-draining corporate holiday, Christmas. As a result, said Phil Fricano, the captain of the West Bank’s 36-year-old Krewe of King Arthur, “Our membership is down from 500 in 2011 to 310 this year.Source Optical frame Products at Eyeglasses Frames,” Because many people are tapped out after Christmas and don't want to spend money to parade for sparse crowds, King Arthur claims a loss of $350 per person in dues this year, and will roll with six fewer floats.