Mardi Gras in New Orleans
Yes, now, where was I? So, having done most of my photogenic trips in quiet peaceful places, I was convinced by Kara to try something very completely different for me and go to Mardi Gras. And not just any Mardi Gras -- this was Mardi Gras in New Orleans itself. Given my usual aversion to loud parties, this was not the most normal choice for me to make.
But the opportunity presented itself. Kara had the hotel already and Epic was flying me to Orlando the week before, which made the flight to New Orleans quite affordable. And so I made the fateful decision to go.
Now I didn't realize when I was making the plans that I would also be sandwiched between three weeks of solid travel or that I would be trying to finalize the details on closing on my house, but that was all just details. After all, the fun was just beginning....
Now Friday was the quiet day of the trip. I flew in that evening (flying that
most direct of routes -- Orlando to Houston and back to New Orleans!) and Kara picked me up.
The weather was of course lovely and so was the traffic going into town. Some sort of accident
plus all the crazy crowds trying to get into town. There were busses full of drunken college
students getting an early start. And lots of rowdy drivers alongside.
And then there was the pretty young thing who decided to climb up on the side of the car she was riding in and start the ol' bump and grind routine like a true professional (who knows, maybe she was?). Then it was the come hither finger to the bunch of chest thumping Neanderthals two cars back. And then the lifting up of her shirt to let us all see the wonders that a kindly Mother Nature (or a skillful plastic surgeon) had endowed her with. Truly, I had arrived at Mardi Gras. And I was still 15 miles outside of the city stuck in traffic.
The truly best thing about this young lady's performance is that it distracted enough drivers that we were able to slip through along the side of the road and skip at least a couple extra minutes of waiting. Southern hospitality is matched only by Southern driving it would seem!
No pictures, boys! Sorry! But it was just early to bed after that. And while I was awoken a few hours later by our neighbors returning home from the bars (the walls in the hotel were paper thin), it was basically a well-needed rest to get ready for the big day ahead!
So, we slept in and had a slow start to the morning.
How slow? Well, by the time we got out to breakfast, it was basically time for lunch! We had
our brunch at Deanie's, which for me consisted of a sampler of different ways to prepare crawfish
-- ranging from fattening to instantaneoous artery-clogging (given that New Orleans is such a
health-conscious culinary experience, not!).
But the best part were the spiced red potatoes they served instead of rolls. Basically, they take small red potatoes and boil them up in Cajun spices. Then they recommend that you slather them in butter of course, but they were plain yummy no matter how you did them!
Then we took a stroll down Bourbon....
Of course, one might wonder why we went to Bourbon on a Saturday morning when everything was peaceful and quiet? Why not go in the evening when all the partying as going on and hordes of people were crowded all round?
That would in fact be the answer to the question! Not only were things fairly quiet, but you could actually see where you were walking and avoid the "splooge" (beer and other fluids that collect on the street over the days because they can't get the street cleaners in) on the street itself. In fact, it would be about the only way I would recommend going to Bourbon Street!
Of Bourbon, as you can tell, was not my thing. But
parallel to Bourbon is Royal Street, and that was definitely my sort of place! While we really
didn't have the time (or the money), Royal is the home of the high end antique shops and New
Orleans has a very nice collection of French antiques and other nice stuff! (More on that
later!)
The whole area has another nice architectural quality to it (and no, I don't mean the balconies from which they throw the beads!). And that is the courtyards that several of the older houses have (see picture on right). These rather charming places are hidden away from the main street and blissfully quiet and serene places to get away from all the bustle and partying on the streets themselves.
After spending some time on Royal, we made our way over to River Walk and met up with Kara's friends. Kara has a number of neat friends, who I had heard a lot about but had not met before. Chief among them was Keith, who manages a gift shop that sells a lot of cute knick knacks (painting of kids being cute and so on) that I am just a sucker for, but I was good and did not buy anything. Anyway, Keith himself is something of a raging queen, which is basically the type of person you want to have along with you at Mardi Gras anyway because he knows just how to have maximum fun.
Keith was still working, so Kara and I found some drinks (juice, not Hurricanes!) And sat by the river, watching the boats, and eating a grocery store King Cake. Then we went out to catch a parade and catch up with some other friends.
Before we go into the wall to wall parades, I should
explain a few things about Mardi Gras for the uninitiated (and I'm going to explain it from the
viewpoint of a novice, so I'll get a lot of things wrong, but there are plenty of places you can go
to get the straight dope on Mardi Gras). Mardi Gras is basically a series of parades. Depending
on where you go, you can see up to three in a single day (we were downtown, so we basically got
to see a lot of them). Each one has its own route and its own theme, but there are lots of
similarities as well.
Each parade is run by a krewe -- a private club of folks who agree to put up money, time, and effort to make the parade a success, including buying a ton of beads to throw to folks during the parade. The beads, after all, are the whole point! No beads, no one would bother coming. The krewes all have strange and odd names but some are quite venerable. I only saw two day's worth of parades, so you're only going to get a small sample of krewes in this account.
Each parade is basically the same. It begins with a truck
coming through to make sure there
isn't anything hanging so low that a float woulg get caught on this. Not that that is any
guarantee, since on Saturday night some high mighty krewe poobah got his costume snagged on
the entrance to the Superdome and nearly strangled himself. Then, you have the high leaders of
the krewe come through, maybe a marshall of honor, and then a float. The floats will have a
theme of some sort (King, Queen, Knights, Ladies, etc.) and be decorated and full of people
wearing masks who throw beads to the people on the sidelines.
The people then fight each other to grab these beads. Never mind that the beads are basically worthless or that after a parade of two, you have more beads than you could ever ever need, you'll be grabbing them out of the hands of little children or stomping on little old ladies to get them. You'd never believe that you too could become a "bead whore" (see right) but you could!
Even more desirable than the beads are any fancy geegaws they might throw out: doubloons (cheap tin coins), stuffed animals, or toy spears (which they chuck at the crowds alarmingly). In the old days, the beads were sometimes made of glass, but that proved to be a major safety hazard as they would break and shatter!
After a float goes by, then some high school band will
come through. It will be your usual set
up: drum majors, majorettes, brass, drums, maybe some cheerleaders or something, and then
they'll be done. They won't look terribly excited or anything, since by the time they get
downtown, they've walked 15 or so miles and they just want the whole thing to end! Worse still,
most of these bands will march in not one parade but several (as a fundraiser for their school).
The poorer the school district, the more often they'll march. And as a rule, the bands are usually
inner city (read: black). The krewes, on the other hand, are notoriously white (except for Zulu --
the black krewe). Remember folks, this is the South and that's how things are!
Also, in all fairness, not everyone enjoys a parade. And the decadence of the event brings out all the weirdos, including the usual collection of picketing Jesus freaks who seem determined to tell us that God hates us. Enough said, but seeing is believing!
So, here's a run-down of the parades I saw and some pictures I took of them. Most of them will blur together but that's sort of the way it is when you see one parade after another after another.....
Saturday early afternoon. I didn't get to see much of Isis. We ran into the parade on our way over to meet some of Kara's friends and watched them. I snagged a few beads, but basically had a late start and a lousy location for bead grabbing.
Saturday late afternoon. Tucks is apparently the goofy and fun krewe. Each year, they choose a particularly irreverent theme. This year, it was local politics and each float made fun of some scandal or another from the past year. Naturally, I didn't get most of the jokes, but it looked like they were having fun!
Saturday evening. Endymion is one of the super krewes that march after dark with lit up floats. Very flashy and spectacular, but hard to get good pictures of. We camped out to get a good spot to watch, but the crowds were quite rude and pushy (so much for Southern politeness) and you basically had to get mercenary and step on small kids to get beads.
In addition to the added crowds and popularity of the
nighttime parades, there are a few other odd highlights, like the guys who light the parade with
propane torches. Yes, that's a propane tank on the guy's back with an open flame in front.
Looks safe, doesn't it?? Anyway, between the floats and the bands there were these folks
carrying the torches. Their job historically was to actually light the parades so folks could see
them in the pre-electricity days. And they get tips from the crowds (in the form of loose change
thrown to them -- sort of the way that one throws bread crumbs at pigeons).
Oh, yeah, and LeeAnn Rimes was the marshall, if that stuff matters to you.
On Sunday we had more of a plan. We met up with some of Kara's friends who had staked out a piece of land along the parade route, just off of Lafayette Circle (near the end of the parade route) in the so-called "neutral ground" -- the grassy median between the two sides of the road. Since the parade route was only on one side, this provided a good comfortable place to sit. However, there wasn't much shade so we all got a bit of sun. And as the day went on, it got more and more crowded and more difficult to hold our spot. The rudeness of folks came out over time and the place got harder and harder to hold onto. By the end of the day, I was just plain tired of dealing with the people, bored with the parades, and just plain whiny. But here we go with Parades, Part Deux!
First of all, some shots of our prime real estate on neutral ground....
We started with Thoth (rhymes with "oath"). Big on the Egyptian theme, as if the krewes were not obviously Pagan-inspired as it was. Nice floats and lasted until the mid afternoon.
After an hour or two break, Mid-City came through. Their big symbol is the double hearts. They lasted until the late afternoon.
And before it went dark, we had an interlude with an odd group of artsy students who put on a mock parade, complete with their own goofy band and majorettes.
So, by nightfall, we
were all getting a bit tired and exhausted and some of us were just plain pooped. Bacchus (like
Endymion) is one of those big super krewes and being a nighttime parade, have lots of nice
looking floats -- big on monsters and dinosaur images. One of the popular ones is a King Kong
float that you are supposed to throw "junk" beads at -- in other words, all the beads that you've
caught but no longer want, you throw at the float, instead of waiting for them to throw beads at
you!
The marshall of the parade was Frodo Baggins himself (Elijah Wood). Keith was ecstatic to catch one of those pink beads that Elijah was throwing -- or, as we said, to get a pair of Frodo's pink balls!
But we didn't stay to the end. It was a bit cold and I was just plain exhausted from standing around. Plus, after a while, I was bored as well. I had enough beads to set up a shop and more than enough of the floats, bands, and other stuff.
We had made it through three parades in one day and I had seen my sixth parade in one weekend, it was time to go back home. Plus, leaving early meant not having to jostle with the crowds just to get back to the hotel.
Monday was my last day in town and we skipped the
parades (plus there really weren't many to skip). Monday is an "off" day falling between the
weekend festivities and Tuesday itself -- the actual day of Mardi Gras. Most of the shops are
closed and folks just loiter around and recuperate for Tuesday. It was also a rainy and cold day
(there were tornados to the north of New Orleans that day.
We went out to brunch in the morning with some friends of Kara's and then did a brief bit of antiquing on the outer areas of town. New Orleans is definitely a nice place to antique if you like 18th century French furniture. But I didn't see much in the photos department in the places where we went.
We did have time to drop by Cafe du Monde and pick up some beignets -- very greasy fried dough covered in confectionary sugar. And no, they don't have an Atkins-friendly version!
After that, it was basically time to head out to the airport and catch my flight home for more fun and adventures in home buying.
I, of course, had an absolutely lousy time and frowned at the whole frivolous nature of the festivities as you can see from the photo on the right. You would never catch me dead grasping for worthless trinkets, pushing aside small children and elderly people....no, not I!