Can Scrim, the runaway dog, help pretty up Canal Street in time for French Quarter Fest?
The New Orleans icon may become a symbol of revival
December 15, 2024
Scrim, the legendary runaway dog who has remained at large for months despite being the object of a city-wide dragnet, may become the face of a civic improvement push.
If all goes as planned, some Canal Street businesses will be decorated with designs that include tributes to Scrim, just in time for the next French Quarter Festival, April 10 to 13.
The series of large-scale outdoor decorations, dubbed “Windows on Canal,” would be similar to the “house floats” — porches elaborately ornamented with Mardi Gras themes — that popped up in 2021, when Carnival was canceled due to the COVID pandemic.
The Canal Street decorations, which are projected to cost roughly $300,000, are a project of Celebrate Canal, a citizen-led nonprofit coalition that wants to improve one of New Orleans’ great thoroughfares, which is both splendid and pocked with blight.
Calling for a Canal Street comeback
Founded by Sandra Herman, Celebrate Canal reportedly has the support of advisers such as Saints owner Gayle Benson, philanthropist Bill Goldring, artist Terrence Osborne and architect John Williams.
Allying with that eminently respectable group will be the scruffy, off-white terrier mutt Scrim, who has somehow won the heart of the citizenry as he survived shootings, avoided traps, overcame tranquilizer darts, and once dove from a second-story window to remain at large.