It's So Much More Than Football

February is always a festive time in New Orleans with the parades and beads and balls and king cakes for weeks on end. Marching bands are practicing and the sounds of tubas and bass drums resound throughout the city.

This February has the added element of a highly contested and crucial mayoral race featuring near daily debates and hourly robocalls. There has been great concern that citizens wouldn’t come out to vote since the election coincides with several Mardi Gras parades and now — what no board of elections could have imagined when planning the schedule — it’s the day before New Orleans plays in the Super Bowl. But already, early voting numbers have topped the Presidential election turnout, and the general tenor of the campaign has improved, as no candidate wants to be slinging divisive mud when the electorate is in such a good mood.

This election is important because, sadly, the facts of the city remain: we are still woefully short of affordable housing, too many families are making do with too little, and the crime rate is still through the roof.

But the overall feeling of the city has a shared effervescence that allows reality to recede like an extended collective “Calgon, Take Me Away” moment. Everyone’s a little nicer — just today a stranger stopped me from parking at one meter so I could take over her spot which still had time on it, shouting “WHO DAT!” as she drove away; TV sales are through the roof; and teachers are finding that using Saints’ yardage and points is uniquely effective at helping their students learn math.

The occasion has called for everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, with priests performing Catholic mass services in Saints jerseys and 5000 men wearing dresses parading down Poydras in honor of Buddy Dilberto, a now-deceased local sportscaster who swore he’d don a dress if the Saints ever made the Super Bowl. One bearded man in sequins said to us, “Try to do something intelligent in this town and you can’t find anyone to follow, but if it’s all foolishness, suddenly everyone falls in line!” Speaking of parades, the Saints will be getting a Mardi-Gras/ticker-tape style victory parade downtown whether they win or lose, as a thank you for what they’ve done for the city — economically and emotionally.

All Things Saints have taken up most of the Times-Picayune’s real estate in the last 10 days or so, but they always find room for Haiti coverage and New Orleans restaurants were among the first to step up as we re-launch Restaurants for Relief to generate additional funds for Haiti. (And just like Louisiana, Share Our Strength will be in this for the long haul.) All this town’s joy can seem misplaced when compared with the Haitians’ ongoing misery. But this city can relate more than most, and hopefully, on some small level, even something as seemingly shallow as the world’s biggest football game can demonstrate that what once seemed impossible can become not only possible, but transformative.

Comments

2 reader comments so far.