Thursday would have been the opening day of the 2020 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. But after serving up an annual smorgasbord of multi-genre music, regional cuisine and fine crafts for 50 years, the fest was canceled. The killjoy was the coronavirus pandemic that made gargantuan gatherings impossible.

At 11 a.m., when an army of tropically clad music fans would have begun flowing into the festival through the Fair Grounds gates on Gentilly Boulevard, the scene was empty and quiet. Someone had hung bouquets of flowers on the gates, presumably as a memorial to the lost festival that promised performances by Lizzo, Dead and Company and The Who. One or two passersby took cellphone photos of the lonely scene, then quickly drifted away.

Only Leroy Mitchell Jr. lingered.

Mitchell came dressed for the fest. He wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, seersucker shorts, rain jacket, watertight golf shoes, a Jazz Fest baseball cap, blue rubber gloves and a paper face mask held securely in place with a Steve Gleason headband. Of course he knew that COVID-19 had robbed New Orleans of its premier music event. But he didn’t see why that should deny him his opening day ritual.

“I just always got there at eleven o’clock,” he said. “There’d be some people running like fools, with their tarps, and some just walking. There’s nothing like that feeling of chaos.”

Mitchell strode to the gate and hung a pair of pink sunglasses above the bouquets.

“I just wanted to show my love,” he said.

Mitchell said his family has lived in New Orleans for five generations and Jazz Fest had been a part of his life for most of his 53 years.

“Coming up, I wouldn’t even have a job if it meant I had to miss Jazz Fest,” he said. “I like it better than Mardi Gras. It’s always just the best time, being out in the sun. And everybody’s in a good mood.”

Mitchell said he is an international salesman for a company that provides credit card and payroll services to businesses. But he’s better known as the Whistle Monsta, one of the select group of over-the-top Saints football boosters known as superfans. Mitchell wears a huge whistle-shaped, sheet metal helmet to games.

After placing his tribute sunglasses on the fence, he returned to his car, where he planned to listen to a Kermit Ruffins concert that would kick off radio station WWOZ’s “Jazz Festing In Place” broadcasts. He said he’d arranged for home delivery of crawfish enchiladas, just like the ones he eats at Jazz Fest every year.

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Mitchell said that listening to Ruffins as the rain began to fall outside of the gates was “just right, just right.”

He advises forlorn Fest fans to do something similar to help endure the vacuum created by the coronavirus cancellation.

“Put on 'OZ, put on your Jazz Fest shirt,” he said. “I think this can help you heal, one little baby step at a time. I mean, think about it, what if we just had nothing?”

Meanwhile, several blocks away at the Sauvage Street side entrance to the festival grounds, a “virtual opening” was taking place.

For the past several years, Robert Strain’s job has been to unlock the gates of the Jazz Fest each morning, allowing the flood of fans to enter. Like Mitchell, he felt the need to perpetuate his personal custom, in defiance of the coronavirus.

So, wearing a facemask and his official fluorescent yellow security shirt, he and a handful of fellow security personnel and friends gathered at a little before 11 a.m.

“First, we did a countdown,” he said. “We grabbed the chain and pretended to open the gates.”

Abiding by coronavirus-era customs, the “virtual opening” was conducted at a prudent social distance and broadcast via Zoom to members of the Jazz Fest staff watching from afar.

“We just did it to show that we support Jazz Fest and miss it,” he said.

Strain, 51, explained that he spends most of the year as a carpenter working on home renovation projects, but for six weeks he’s the Jazz Fest’s event coordinator for on-site security.

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In a normal Jazz Fest, the last minutes before opening would have been hectic, he said, “taking care of last-minute details and making sure that everything’s ready.”

Then, Strain said, he gets to visit with early birds in the crowd that he hasn’t seen since the year before.

Strain said he’s been with the fest for 16 years and loves it. “It’s a job,” he said, “but it’s a family environment. We’re doing what we’re doing, but we’re having a good time.”

Thursday morning’s “virtual opening” could hardly be considered work, but the participants went out for a drink afterward anyway. They stood outside of Liuzza’s by the Track, a perennial pre- and post-Jazz Fest hangout. Someone had made bloody marys. A gentle rain fell.

“We’re supporting each other,” Strain said, “because we’re used to being together. It’s in the spirit of Jazz Fest.”