Year after year, we’ve had growth with our events, Katrina aside. But when you throw Katrina in the mix, we have the potential for an even greater number of people.

The only thing we can go by is sales and that increases 10 to 12 percent every year.

We started working very seriously with police and the city. We are spending more money on security and clean up.

People were, by and large, pretty well-behaved.

We’ve got 20 shuttles running from downtown to the neighborhood all day long and they’re free.

This is a winter festival and, Katrina aside, Mother Nature has as much to say about turnout as New Orleans.

Now we get people from New York City, California, Colorado. It’s a fun party. In the past, some people thought New Orleans was too big a deal and they didn’t want to go through that....

That’s something that we were talking about doing anyway. This will provide people with something extra to do on either end of the core area of the parade zone.

Out of sensitivity to the people of New Orleans.

Nothing like this has ever happened before. There’s no model for it. We could have 10 more people or we could have 10,000 more.

You want to have a great event, but not because of someone else’s misfortune.