Let's call the whole thing off: Thank you for Chad Garrison's astute portrayal of Mardi Gras Inc. in the article "Party Nazis." I'm still not sure how this nonprofit organization got to its present place, but I do know that more and more people in Soulard are wishing they would leave. And it's worthwhile to note that many of the disgruntled business owners, like many of the area's residents, are afraid to speak out against this poodle dog of the liquor industry.

Please tell the excise commissioner that he's wrong to compare Soulard's Mardi Gras to Fair St. Louis and the Big Muddy Festival. Neither of those events take place in neighborhoods where people live and small businesses operate the whole year long. Furthermore, those festivals exist to celebrate music and culture; they offer a little something beyond institutionalized binge drinking. Better perhaps to look at St. Patrick's Day in Dogtown (note the larger, alternative event simultaneously held downtown) or Hill Day (where, once the annual festival started "getting out of hand," the neighborhood decided to begin under-promoting it).

And tell the president of the Soulard Business Association that while his prostitution analogy is perhaps a bit more apt, most of us in Soulard are really not interested in that line of work, thank you very much. And believe me, if we were, we'd be expecting a whole lot more than the paltry contributions that Mardi Gras Inc. has made to Soulard. It's unbelievable (fascist, as the RFT would suggest) that here in Soulard, neighborhood bars are supposed to dress according to the dictates of Anheuser-Busch, Captain Morgan, Southern Comfort or the mega-corporate liquor sponsor of the year.

Mardi Gras Inc. has turned our groovy, happy neighborhood event into a bloated, neutered, corporate-sponsored gross-out. I wish that they and all their guests would hold this year's event downtown, or in a cow field, or anywhere besides my neighborhood. Then maybe those of us left behind could get back to having a community party. We haven't forgotten what Mardi Gras in Soulard was like before the corporatocracy took over. We remember when lots of children came to visit the neighborhood and watch the parade, and our friends would come down and together we'd walk to a local bar to hear some blues or bayou music, and the bartenders were free to mix our drinks however we liked.

Kate Berger, St. Louis