Butler: Last hurrah for Mardi Gras in Nevada City?

Photo by Bob Lickter

The Nevada City Chamber of Commerce sponsors the annual celebration and support for it appears to be waning among some board members. Others, like new board President David Painter, are more circumspect when measuring the value of the annual celebration.

It’s possible that we saw our last Mardi Gras parade in 2010.

The Nevada City Chamber of Commerce sponsors the annual celebration and support for it appears to be waning among some board members. Others, like new board President David Painter, are more circumspect when measuring the value of the annual celebration in downtown Nevada City.

“If something is working well,” he said, “you generally don’t want to dismiss it.”

A petition, meanwhile, has been circulated by some downtown businesses to protest this year’s Mardi Gras parade and fair. It says the street closure was bad for business and that “drunken revelry forces many businesses to close.”

The petition ends by asking the chamber’s board of directors to consider tossing this annual event into the dustbin of history.

The petition had 15 signatures from downtown business owners. It did not have any signatures from the owners of bars, restaurants, hotels, or beds and breakfasts, which should not surprise anyone.

The weekend of Feb. 12-14 was an exceptional one for those businesses. The three-day weekend included Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras. It started on Saturday night with a costume masquerade ball at Miners Foundry.

The owner of Friar Tucks said it was one of the best weekends for his restaurant and it came at a good time.

“It was like News Year’s for three days in a row,” Greg Cook said of the crowds at his restaurant and bar on North Pine Street. “This is just what the doctor ordered during this recession. It was a real shot in the arm.”

Cook, a former chamber board member, said he has talked to two bar owners who reported “record days” that Sunday. He’s prepared to fight to keep the parade, which has proceeded down Broad Street for around 15 years now.

“This event has some history behind it and now it has some momentum,” Cook said “It’s fun, it’s silly and Nevada City needs it.”

According to a report compiled by Tom Coleman of the National Hotel, every one of Nevada City’s 162 hotel and bed and breakfast rooms was taken on the Saturday night of Mardi Gras weekend. On Friday night, 130 were filled, and on Sunday it was 149.

Coleman, who contacted the hotels for his information, reported to his fellow board members at their February meeting that the weekend’s receipts were an estimated $44,000. Ten percent of that money goes to the city in form of transient occupancy taxes.

It was around ten years ago that the chamber took over the wildly successful Joe Cain Days and renamed it Mardi Gras.

Joe Cain Days literally spilled out of Wiley’s Bar on Commercial Street in the 1990s. Those revelers started it with an informal march down sidewalks in their Mardi Gras costumes.

It didn’t take long before it morphed into a full-fledged weekend event and parade, which packed the streets with crowds that were far larger, colorful and rowdier than seen this year.

Suddenly, the future of Mardi Gras seems in doubt and strong feelings exist on both sides of the issue.

At this time, the chamber board is not planning any specific meetings on Mardi Gras. Painter said the board will hear a report on Mardi Gras at its March meeting and then consider its next step carefully.

“My first instinct is how do we make this better and work for more people,” he said. “There may be ways we can tweak this so it benefits more businesses.”

If you would like to weigh in on the Mardi Gras debate, send an e-mail to cathy@nevadacitychamber.com or mail it to the Chamber at 132 Main Street, Nevada City, 95959. It’s an important conversation for the community to have.

Pat Butler is the editor and publisher of the Nevada City Advocate. You can read previous columns in the opinion section of nevadacityadvocate.com He can be reached by sending an e-mail to pat@nevadacityadvocate.com