To all the Mardi Gras survivors and the few hangers on who haven’t found their way home YET…Happy Lent. How’s that penance and fasting working out for ya? For all the dire weather predictions, it turned out to be a great day. While the Quarter crowd was not as jammed as some years past, a good time was had by all. The spontaneous ballooning of crowds in the Bywater, Marigny and areas outside the Quarter were really fun to watch and created a whole new dimension to the day in the city. The Golden Lantern benefited from a packed Royal St. with a totally diverse crowd hell bent on fun and frivolity, I could hardly get to the bar for a Bloody Mary!
We are now knee deep in preparations for The Official Gay Easter Parade. The new advisory board has been hard at work to make this year’s Parade a great success. The usual fundraising events are planned, along with some new ideas and surprises to make sure this Gay New Orleans tradition continues to be a mainstay of Celebrating Easter in New Orleans for the LGBT community and all of our many supporters and friends in the area. As always the Parade serves as a fundraising mechanism for Food for Friends. Ambush is proud to continue to act as the catalysis for the event. The almost 20 year tradition has grown and we aim to continue that growth well into the future. A partial list of events is listed in this edition; there are some new ones which will be added soon. Watch and join us for the fun build up to the Parade on Easter Sunday.
We are working to grow the reach of Ambush, the distribution is getting back to where it once was regionally, and in the City we are adding more distribution points weekly. There have been some changes, and I suspect we will see more as we take Ambush forward into a larger print audience and increase our online presence. New Orleans has a vibrant, diverse, and active LGBT community. Ambush needs to be accessible to every part of that community. We are here to report on it, promote it, support it and be an ever increasing part of. Not all of the changes will be met with open arms by some but, even in a city as steeped in tradition, and history as this one, change and growth are inevitable. There only two choices in dealing with change, one can fight it and loose or one can embrace it and make it work for you. Going forward, we want to make damn sure the ultimate winner here is the LGBT community. All of it!
