High winds on Mardi Gras Day truncated Rex’s route and kept Zulu from downtown New Orleans, taking a toll on business owners and on local school bands, which went unpaid for Zulu and other weather-affected parades. Then Rex announced that it would pay the bands booked for its parade, raising questions about the history of band payments from krewes – and why those payments matter.
Category: Top Story
Posted inLens Carnival Edition
The Lens Carnival Edition 2025
Our reporters stayed on their beats, covering how Carnival affects the way New Orleans works – and doesn’t work.
Posted inOpinion
Redemption and the Ultimate Punishment
“I remember feeling a flush of anger that the State of Louisiana was giving Bordelon what he wanted, relief from his guilt,” writes the author, who visited Angola with a film crew in 2010 as Louisiana was preparing to execute Gerald Bordelon. “My husband had died a few years before that, leaving me a widow and mother to two small children. Death, for me, was not something a governor should casually enter into with a signature — or that Bordelon could chase, to relieve his personal agony.”
Posted inEntergy
Renewable energy could meet the intense appetites of AI data centers. But Entergy is looking to fossil fuels.
Entergy, the Louisiana utility, has dragged its feet on renewables. Now, it seems that a proposed Meta data center in northern Louisiana might instead create an “urgent” push for dirty, fossil-fuel power. To power the center, Entergy will rely mostly on new gas-fired generators – paid for by ratepayers.
Posted inIn the N.O., Lens Carnival Edition, News, Top Story
Taking in parades together, but apart
New Orleanians maintain certain traditions at Carnival parades. We say hello to strangers, tote wagons and folding chairs and blankets. But along the St. Charles parade route, we most often settle in areas with our people.
Posted inLens Carnival Edition
Scattershot statutes
Is it illegal to carry a concealed gun while watching a parade in Louisiana? Depends who you ask.
Posted inLens Carnival Edition
Two decades of crotches as canvas
Best known for their merkins – pubic wigs – the Bearded Oysters have now been a symbol of feminist liberation for 20 years, within a few local parades, including Muses
Posted inLens Carnival Edition
The price of Passionfruit: how band directors balance the books
New Orleans band directors must see band as a small business, if they want to provide students — especially students in this high-poverty city — with instruments, uniforms, daily bus rides, food after parades, and all the tools they need to boost musicianship.
Posted inLens Carnival Edition
Floating an idea: a greener Carnival
Observers say that New Orleans may be seeing a culture shift, toward a more sustainable Carnival. This year, one parade – Krewe of Freret – even banned plastic beads. Key to these efforts is Grounds Krewe, a local nonprofit, which provides local krewes with tens of thousands of environmentally conscious parade-throws — read below for the Top Five sustainable throws!
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Who will end up paying for Gov. Jeff Landry’s temporary Super Bowl homeless shelter?
State officials are asking the federal government to reimburse $20 million in costs for the 200-bed shelter as part of a Super Bowl-Mardi Gras security package. The state is also tapping leftover COVID-19 rental assistance funds.