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The New Orleans French Quarter is filling up with football fans. Huge crowds are expected through Super Bowl Sunday. Kelly Henderson, the manager at Fat Catz Music Club on Bourbon Street, says he’s treating Super Bowl week like Mardi Gras.
“We put our aces in places, our fastest bartenders on, and then we hope and pray,” Henderson said.
Businesses up and down Bourbon Street are looking for this week to make up for a tough January, when they had to close several days due to the New Year’s Day attack and the snowstorm. Henderson says he doesn’t look at Super Bowl week as a way to make up for lost time.
“We don’t feel like we lost, like time, as far as like making money. We’re hurt that we lost people, but we’re not going to let that stop us or slow us down,” Henderson said.
Bourbon Street has been transformed into a full-time pedestrian mall for this week, and there’s renewed talk of transforming it into a pedestrian mall permanently. Businesses had pushed back on that in the past. But Henderson says he’d support it under one condition.
“If they make Bourbons Street itself, just the strip, pedestrian, but leave the side streets as it is, it would be beautiful for us. Then, that way, the trucks that have to deliver merchandise can get in and out safely without having to worry about fighting with other cars,”
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