Seattle PI

Unveiling a Mardi Gras makeover

Task force stresses family activities over nightclub presence

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

By KERY MURAKAMI SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Future Pioneer Square Mardi Gras celebrations will have more family-oriented activities, and even a different name, in an attempt to cut down on the drunken mayhem that left one man dead and scores injured during this year's Fat Tuesday party.

The event will be called "Pioneer Square February Fest" and have "as many daytime activities as nighttime ones, making it a full celebration for all the family," according to a plan adopted last night by a city task force.

The panel was created by Mayor Paul Schell after the Fat Tuesday violence in which 70 people were injured and one man, 20-year-old Kristopher Kime, was killed. Police eventually dispersed thousands of people with tear gas after roving groups of young men randomly attacked people in Pioneer Square.

The group will send a formal report to Schell. But because it was made up of Pioneer Square residents and business owners, the neighborhood will simply make the changes in preparation for next year.

Schell's chief of staff, Maud Daudon, said the mayor was pleased with the group's work.

Most significant, the group is recommending taking Mardi Gras out of the hands of the nightclubs that threw previous celebrations.

"It's a change in name, a change in approach and the experience people are going to have," said David Brewster, the former publisher of The Seattle Weekly and co-chairman of the group.

The task force had considered more controversial ideas such as creating a curfew, fencing off part of the neighborhood and charging admission to get in.

Unable to reach a consensus, the group left those issues for a new committee of residents and business owners to debate.

In addition, the committee will hire a full-time professional organizer.

The task force did agree on some other steps to tone down some of the hedonism of previous Mardi Gras.

It recommended taverns close earlier during the celebration and that checkpoints be used to keep revelers from bringing bottles and cans into the area.

"Imagine art and history tours, retail tours, a poetry contest, Spam carving, a soup and stew cook-off, a log pull, a parade, an all-ages non-alcoholic dance party in the new exhibition hall, fireworks off the boat landing, street performers and music in the clubs to drive away the winter blahs," the recommendation said.

There had been some talk of canceling Mardi Gras altogether. But the task force recognized that even if Pioneer Square didn't officially throw its annual Mardi Gras celebration, throngs of revelers probably would come to the neighborhood, anyway.

Borrowing from reforms St. Louis passed after its own Mardi Gras riot in 1999, the task force created the committee made up of the clubs, neighborhood residents and other businesses to oversee future events.

That way, residents and businesses still angry over the violence and vandalism would have a say in what future parties will look like.

The task force was one of three Schell created after the Fat Tuesday violence.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001