There’s a holiday coming soon, and it’s one of the most well-known holidays for cultural appropriation. While cultural appropriation is no joke, this holiday most certainly is. I’m not talking about Cinco de Mayo, but rather the four year anniversary of Sinkhole-de-Mayo!
For those of you unfamiliar, let me tell you a tale about the most press I’ve ever received. It was April 29th, 2016, and New Orleans, as always, was plagued by infrastructure problems and 2016 had turned up a bumper crop of sinkholes.The city had already seen one on Magazine Street and another on Tchoupitoulas. But on that day, the third and largest of the sinkholes would appear. This massive, truck-swallowing crater opened itself up in the heart of the tourist district – on Canal Street by Harrah’s Casino.
My friends and I joked we should have a second line (a New Orleans style parade) from one sinkhole to the other. We would christen our event ‘Sinkhole-de-Mayo’ and we would parade from sinkhole to sinkhole, celebrating each one on our journey.
I took it a step too far. On May 2nd, 2016, I created a Facebook event and then proceeded to make one of the best mistakes of my life. I left the event public. I invited maybe a couple dozen of my friends and didn’t check Facebook again until the next day. I wrote a little blurb describing our the event: “Come out to the first ever Sinkhole de Mayo. Celebrate another ‘Catastrophic Failure’ the best way we know how: dancing, drinking, and general revelry. Bring your instruments, sombreros and margaritas, bring your traffic cone pinatas, and your makeshift maracas.”
Things immediately got out of hand. When I checked the event the next day, there were already a few hundred interested RSVPs and “Maybes.” My humble event blurb became my first quoted material. By the end of the week the event would have thousands of views, likes, shares, and garner all kinds of media attention.
Through the rest of the week, my days were consumed by sinkhole party logistics. It was to be held on the sidewalk and median near the sinkhole. That was a fine plan, when I assumed it would be me and a dozen friends. A few hundred? That was going to be a problem. It turned out, I wasn’t the only one who thought this. One day at work, I received an odd email from one of our customer service people. It said “Jen with the City of New Orleans needs you to call her ASAP.” Me and the other party planner got on a conference call with Jen. On behalf of the City, she expressed some concern about a large mass of drunk congregating on less-than-sound ground. We agreed.
We went into panic mode and began calling hotels, restaurants, nonprofits, and other organizations, attempting to find any location near the sinkhole where we could host our fiesta. We received calls from local news stations asking us for details about the event and if we had a permit. Spoiler: we did not. Eventually we reached out to the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. The Aquarium managed Woldenberg Park, just a short jaunt away from the sinkhole. They’d seen our event and thought it would be great PR for them. They agreed to host us at their location and even provide a cash bar, security, and DJ. In a stroke of genius, they also set up a photobooth where they would superimpose a picture of the sinkhole behind partygoers. .
I spent an evening making very sassy hard-hats with gemstones and feathers in them for our newly formed Committee to Rejuvenate and Save Sinky the Sinkhole (CRASSS) to wear the day of the event. I had a morning interview with a local news station and then spent the first two hours of the event doing more interviews for television, internet, and radio. I’d estimate we had at least two thousand people show up to the party.There was a Snapchat filter, T-shirts, a briefly-lived twitter account @CanalStSinkhole, and a drone video… it even made Time Magazine!
People came in all sorts of costumes. There were lots of traffic cone hats and sinkhole getups. One creative attendee even built a tribute sinkhole shrine at the park while another dressed as the sinkhole itself!.There were multiple bands in attendance, including a Mariachi band sent over by Harrah’s Casino.
Those few days were a wild ride and the party was a total blast. The best part, however, was yet to come. When the sinkhole first formed, the City claimed it was going to take three to six months before they could even begin repairs. After all the party press, including some international attention (there was a small blurb in the UK Guardian), construction began immediately! As the American Society of Civil Engineers put it, “When the party’s over, engineers will be at work on a six-month, $5 million project” to repair what the City’s mayor called a “catastrophic failure.” They began work on May 6th and finished in less than six months. So don’t ever discount New Orleanians’ love of parties, because partying really can change the world!
Carson Rapose 