In one of America's favorite party hotspots, residents and business owners say the stench of trash and bad decisions is being scrubbed clean like never before.

Now that Mardi Gras celebrations are behind us, Ash Wednesday begins a new journey for many people.

Hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets of New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras, leaving the city covered in detritus.

The 2025 Carnival Season -- marked by a weekslong pre-Lenten bash and complete with colorful parades, shimmery beads tossed from floats and streets lined with costumed revelers -- is reaching its conclusion on the Gulf Coast.

It’s a beloved Carnival season tradition in New Orleans — masked riders on lavish floats fling strings of beads or other trinkets to parade watchers.

New Orleans’ annual Carnival celebration has entered its high-intensity home stretch with a beefed-up police presence and a weather-scrambled parade schedule.

It’s Carnival season in New Orleans and that means the morning lines outside popular bakeries are long and the pace inside is brisk to meet customer demand for king cake.

COVID-19 precautions wiped out most New Orleans’ Mardi Gras festivities in 2021, and a shortage of police officers forced the city to shorten routes for some of its lavish seasonal parades in 2022.

One of Mardi Gras’ signature carnival krewes will be led this year by actor and comedian Adam Devine.

Ten months after Hurricane Ida damaged a museum celebrating New Orleans' African American parading culture, the Backstreet Cultural Museum is reopening.

City leaders are getting ready to vote on a proposal that would allow drinking in public in downtown areas.

Bridget and Lindsey discuss Fat Tuesday, Everything Bagel Ice Cream, and a potential baby boom.

Party-minded people dressed in traditional purple, green and gold filled New Orleans' streets for the city's first full-dress Mardi Gras since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Parade-loving New Orleans is getting its groove back.

People in a mostly maskless crowd walk down Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, Florida's famed South Beach, Monday, March 22, 2021. A party-ending curfew is in effect in Miami Beach, imposed after fights, gunfire, property destruction and dangerous stampedes broke out among huge crowds of people. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Florida’s famed South Beach is desperately seeking a new image. Ad“We definitely want people to come and have fun," Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola said Monday. Miami Beach took less proactive measures under Republican Gov.

Tourists from Brooklyn take photos on a nearly deserted Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. “We were expecting a little bit lower key than the normal Mardi Gras,” Wheeler said. Coronavirus-related restrictions in New Orleans included canceled parades, closed bars and a near shutdown of rowdy Bourbon Street. That, and unusually frigid weather, prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of Mardi Gras season: streets and businesses jam-packed with revelers. To the east, Mobile, Alabama, which boasts the nation's oldest Mardi Gras celebrations, had also canceled parades.

Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, is Feb. 16. As a French café and bakery with multiple locations throughout the region, Our Daily Bread in Blacksburg has been baking king cakes all season long. Usually, during carnival, there are parties, the person who finds the baby in their piece of cake is king for the day, hosts the next party and brings the king cake. Our Daily Bread has been baking king cakes the Mardi Gras season for years while this is the very first year Evie’s Bistro and Bakery in Roanoke is getting in on the celebration. Mardi Gras is Tuesday, February 16th and it just isn't Mardi Gras without the King Cake.