New Orleans Bars May Not Be Open Inside For New Year’s Eve

NYE In The Big Easy Won’t Be So Big In 2021

By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com New Orleans Blogger

New Orleans is a city that likes to let the good times roll, but those good times have been more like a trickle in 2020.

And that may continue though the last seconds of the year and into 2021, for New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has put forth a proposal that the bars will not be allowed to be open inside for New Year’s Eve.

Just about a month ago, Cantrell also made the announcement that New Orleans is canceling its famous Mardi Gras parades and celebration. And now the city’s second-biggest party event has had a bucket of water (instead of a bucket of beads) thrown on it.

The reason, of course, is a concern about rising COVID-19 cases. Cantrell wants the positive rate to be less than 5% and when she made the announcement it was at 5.5.%

The bars can still serve drinks out of to-go windows, which many of them do anyway. You just will not be able to go inside them to listen to bands, dance, hang out on balconies, hang out of open windows and do tube shots out of the cleavage of sexy shot girls.

New Orleans is PubClub.com’s #1 party destination for New Year’s Eve, and that may still be the case this year as destinations all over the world are canceling or curtailing NYE celebrations. New Orleans is a lot more than fireworks over the Mississippi; it has that  laissez les bon temps rouler attitude with fun people there to celebrate drinks to go, and, of course, Bourbon Street. 

It also has the Sugar Bowl, which in 2021 is hosting the College Football Playoffs semifinal between Clemson and Ohio State. But only 5,000 fans will be allowed into the Super Dome.

So while New Orleans will have many of the same elements on New Year’s Eve in the past it – like so many other places around the world – will not be the screamin’, awesome, year-ending party as is usually the case on NYE.