Four hours before the first major Uptown parade of Mardi Gras was set to roll on Friday, a small group of paradegoers begrudgingly pulled down and cast aside the tent canopies they’d erected on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground at Marengo Street.
They did so just after three sheriff’s deputies, lights flashing, rolled up onto the streetcar tracks — in a first run of what Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration says will be regular patrols this Carnival season to enforce a set of Mardi Gras rules the City Council passed two years ago.
An officer approached two men who had just finished unfurling several canopies. He rattled off some of the space-hogging equipment that people can’t erect four hours before the parade, per the ordinance: tents, sofas, certain ladders and viewing platforms, plus other items…