Even by New Orleans' lusty standards for revelry, last week's finale to weeks of Mardi Gras merrymaking was an epic blowout. There were John Bobbitt mimics, a Tonya Harding on roller skates with a baseball bat, and vendors peddling condom keychains. The 10-hour parade was viewed by 1 million revelers who overflowed hotels and French Quarter restaurants. As grateful merchants totted up the $10 million infusion, swelled for the first time by a riverboat casino, tourist-commission spokeswoman Beverly Gianna pronounced it "a grand and glorious party."
But beyond earshot of the festivities were the sounds of a city falling apart. In Gert Town, a 13-square-block warren of ramshackle cottages and ! abandoned apartments, crack deals were made as children played amid broken glass and litter. As night fell, there and across the city streets emptied and residents retreated behind double-locked doors and iron grates.
The mounting fear of violence in the Big Easy is no idle perception. The murder count last year hit a record 389, a 36% jump over 1992. Other serious crime is causing alarm as it becomes more brazen and frequent: smash-and-grab assaults on motorists at stoplights, robberies of French Quarter tourists. Bob Tucker, a computer-services executive, shot an intruder who jumped him in the driveway of his fenced home as he left for work one morning. Says Tucker: "Crime is out of control and everywhere."
That worry is turning neighborhoods rich and poor into armed camps. Residents of the stately Garden District along St. Charles Avenue sometimes pack pistols when they visit neighbors' homes for parties. Others act as sentries, carrying cellular phones when they walk their dogs. Rather than allow their children to play in yards, neighbors in one Uptown area banded together to build a walled compound. "Maybe it's like this everywhere, but sometimes I go from my alarm-locked home to my alarm-locked car to my alarmed office," says Bee Fitzpatrick, who runs an import store.
New Orleans' crime problem poses a special danger because of the economy's dependence on tourism and conventions. They are the principal industries left in town. "If crime begins scaring off visitors, it could kill the golden goose," warns Loyola University political scientist Ed Renwick. An equal concern is that crime and decay are impeding the effort to attract new business, which is vitally needed to replace thousands of energy-industry jobs lost in the 1980s oil bust.
The city government is nearly broke as well, heading toward a $40 million shortfall next year. A largely white exodus to the suburbs has left blacks with a 65% majority and reduced the city's population from 557,000 in 1980 to 497,000 today. The shrinkage has intensified a rolling budget crisis that has forced severe cutbacks in social services to a growing underclass of jobless and low-income blacks: 54% of African-American families earn less than $15,000. "Agencies are all overwhelmed," says Julius Wilkerson, who runs a private outreach effort for high-risk youths. "We need a dozen programs for every one we've got if we're going to give kids an alternative to shooting dope and killing themselves."