Resurrecting the Life of the Party 

Make This Year's Bead Fest the Best:Mardi Gras 2006 

Mardi Gras: everyone knows that the beverage and bar industry symbolically lead the parade march, tap in hand, hurricane sloshing, like the pied piper of good, old-fashioned fun. This year should be no exception, with bar owners around the country determined not to let Katrina, Rita or Wilma rain on the parade, but to make this holiday one that counts.

    People have tromped through New Orleans for years on foot, on float, by car, by truck, on horseback and roller-skates. Carrying streamers, beads, drums, tambourines, trombones, accordions and any other merry-making, fun-loving, loud, bright thing one can hold — they come. They come from around the world and from down the alleyways, societies and cultures mixing just as fast as the drinks, and why? At the heart of it, exposed and at the surface in the flooded wake of Katrina, it is the fact that New Orleans has a spirit like no other. People flock to her cobblestone streets just to live for a few brief days during the Mardi Gras festivities, leaving inhibitions at the Parrish lines.

    Cities around the country have been imitating — but never duplicating — the party for generations. It is a cultural phenomenon to behold, and it has grown upward and outward since the French arrived in 1699 and named the spot Point du Mardi Gras. It is a time to let go, give in and laugh loudly.

Lending a Hand and a Song
    This year, however, there are hundreds of thousands who will be finding the true meaning of friends, family and celebration at a heart-breaking cost. Mardi Gras will endure around the country in 2006 as a testimony to the love of life and as a remembrance to all those lost in the flood waters, the crushing winds and the sheer miscalculation of how dangerous Mother Nature can be.

    This industry, as has been extolled through Bar Aid and Industry News coverage, is a constantly renewable resource for building excitement and bringing people together, and there is no other time in the history of our nation when the cause has been more dire. All around the country, bar owners are gearing up for another Mardi Gras, but this year the proceeds are finding the pockets of the needy instead of the cash register. In 2006, it seems the time has come to throw a party, not in imitation of old New Orleans, but in honor of her.

Making the Difference Happen
    “I am going to go out on a limb here, and I am going to say that every bar with a  Mardi Gras party will be doing something for the victims this year,” says Robert McCarthy, owner of Club M in Hollywood, Fla. “Maybe we will sell a hurricane for $5 and 20 percent of that will go to the Katrina victims and to help rebuild the city of New Orleans. "I don’t know, but it seems that everybody is following through with that.”

    Located directly in the center of the city’s own Mardi Gras parade route, Club M is the busiest place to be in Hollywood during the carnival season. The bar’s prime location sends hundreds of people through the doors on Fat Tuesday, and those that McCarthy can’t lure into the club, he serves on a rolling bar out on the sidewalk. Budweiser sponsors this Hollywood hotspot each year, and last year culminated with 10 empty kegs and six cases of spirits sold from Club M in one day. However, alcohol isn’t the bar’s only source of revenue. “We are going to have 20 or 30,000 people down here (in Hollywood). I am out there selling bottles of water for $1,” McCarthy says. “We sell balloons with Club M on them. I even give them away, just so that I have my name flying all over the place.”

Carrying on in Style
    Farther up the coast in Virginia Beach, Va., Central 111, known citywide for its outrageous theme parties, goes all-out on Mardi Gras each year. “We have gotten really well-known,” Owner Billy Hudson says of the grassroots advertising for his parties. “It is kind of already there, kind of easy for us because of the magnitude of the size of the things we put on. (Each party) really drives business for us the month of it and the month afterward.” This year, Hudson admits that while Mardi Gras is a touching issue, it is an unavoidable party. “I imagine it is going to be bigger,” he says of the 2006 pre-Lent season. “It is one of those things. You can’t forget about it. I think people want it.

    “I went down to Mardi Gras a couple of years ago,” he says. “I thought, ‘I never need to do this again,’ but now that it is potentially gone, there is a sadness to it. It is an American rite of passage, so I think it is going to be at least as big (in other places) this year.”

    Hudson says this year, to change it up, he is considering incorporating food into the evening’s festivities. Each year, Central 111 hosts a Jazz/R&B band, and in 2006, Hudson is toying with the idea of having a New Orleans-style dinner as well. One ticket price would most likely cover dinner, a few complimentary cocktails and dancing to the band afterward.

California’s Contribution
    The staff at Sutra, located in Costa Mesa, Calif., also will be joining the throngs of clubs and bars working adamantly to put together their first annual Mardi Gras party this year. No stranger to the eccentric and large-scale theme parties, Sutra’s Moroccan-style concept may not scream Cajun fiesta; however, the aerial performers, scheduled regularly inside the space, show Owner Doug McAlister’s willingness to put forth capital and creativity to make an average Friday night over-the-top. The lounge’s tendency toward burlesque and various sultry promotions should fit right in with the age- old idea of relinquishing inhibitions at Mardi Gras festivities.

    Following a seriously needed suit, Sutra operators will be adding to the donation plate this havoc-ridden holiday season, as well. “Sutra Lounge will be hosting a charity event for which the proceeds will go to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina,” Marketing Director Loni Charles Hayes says. “The idea is to have a fun celebration, but because there is so much history to the holiday, to give back to the people from New Orleans, which is the place that really claims this festive celebration as its own.” NCB