This is one of my favorite pictures from New Orleans’ Mardi Gras. It’s from the Rex Parade in 1913. These days, it is no less popular and much more publicly debauched.
:eek:
Just goes to show you.
However, being outside in Springfield in February = freeze your ass off, so there’s that.
How does Carnival in Rio match up with Mardi Gras in New Orleans, in terms of debauchery? Crowd size?
Hate to break it to those of you who think that MG in NO is wall-to-wall debauchery, but it’s 90% family-friendly activity and 10% really drunk people from out of town. Seriously.
Shagnasty is correct that it’s a season and not just a day. Epiphany kicks off the 12 days after Christmas with king cakes being brought to offices and not much else. About three weeks before MG the krewes (clubs) start having official functions. There’s a club for every taste; men only; women only; gay only; WASPs only; African Americans only; old line FONOFs (fine old New Orleans families) only; etc., etc. and all of them have at least a private ball. As most clubs are traditionally all male, the following applies: members and male guests don white tie / tails and spouses /female guests don evening gowns and the daughters who are juniors in college are presented to society at a masquerade ball. Generally speaking, the closer to MG day you have your ball, the higher you are in the MG pecking order and the more exclusive your krewe.
Many krewes, but nowhere near all, have a parade. In total in New Orleans, Metairie, and the West Bank there are not quite 80 parades in the 10 days leading up to MG. Parades begin in the neighborhoods and head towards some business district. In the case of Uptown, where I live, the parades start on Napoleon Avenue, go to St. Charles Avenue, head downriver, get on Canal Street, and finish up either at the Convention Center or Superdome.
For most of the route (Napoleon, St. Charles, and much of Canal Street) it’s a family-friendly scene with kids on ladders so they can see and picnics and family reunions. Riders throw beads and doubloons and lots of stuffed animals, bamboo stick spears and tomahawks, foam footballs, candy, and specialty items. Zulu decorates coconuts to give out. Muses decorates shoes. Rex has special stuffed boef gras animals. Le Krewe d’Etat started the light-up bead/medallion craze. All throw plastic drinking cups. It’s a whole 'nuther Christmas for the kids and they enjoy getting the toys and other throws. High school bands and marching units add to the entertainment. Floats are often satirical and somewhat irreverent. So for 6.5 of a 7 mile route, there’s no debauchery - - or only a very little debauchery. More on that missing half mile in a moment.
New Orleans is a port city and, like most port cities, has an entertainment district that is set aside to allow sailors and out-of-towners to vent steam when in port. Having it set aside allows locals to avoid it much of the time and to visit it on occasion and it allows the police to focus their effort accordingly. It also allows residents of similar port cities to be a little indulgent in allowing out-of-towners to let their hair down with minimal repercussions. Come in, have fun, get a little crazy, let off some steam, laissez les bon temps roullez, etc.
In New Orleans that area has varied over the years but it’s now the French Quarter. Still a residential neighborhood for the most part, with world-class restaurants, music, art galleries, antiques shops, and historic buildings such as the St. Louis Cathedral (oldest continuously operating in the US), the Cabildo (where Lousiana Purchase was signed) and the Presbytere, it’s also home to Bourbon Street where bars are prominent. The FQ in general and Bourbon Street in particular are where out-of-towners bent on seeing the debauchery of MG spend their time. No parades go through the FQ. Few krewes have official functions there. Still, that’s where the media goes to report on MG, so there’s much misunderstanding and people from away understandably think that the whole town is like the FQ. Somewhat like judging all NYC based on Times Square on New Year’s eve.
About 1/2 mile of the parade route down Canal Street passes by the upriver side of the FQ and that’s where most of the flash-for-beads at the parade activity occurs. Much more flash-for-beads occurs around the balconies in the FQ and Bourbon Street. Most of the over-the-top drinking occurs in the FQ in general and Bourbon Street in particular, though we take beer and wine with us and our kids to the parades.
So, what little debauchery there is at MG in NO is largely done by out-of-towners in the FQ and on the margins of the FQ. Not to say that natives don’t have a good time and that you won’t find natives in the FQ on MG day, but they’re the minority.
Hope that helps.
A big honking deal here in the south of the Netherlands. The whole town is shut down for bussiness, and open to partying, for three whole days. Here is a typical street view.
The Dutch don’t celebrate Halloween; Mardi Gras is our only dress-up festival.
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Ivorybill, I used to live in the same area of New Orleans you do and I agree with the strict facts of everything you said. However, you don’t seem to be adjusting for the fact that New Orleans isn’t remotely similar to any other U.S. city and most people’s standards of debauchery go on there 24/7/365 anyway. Things just get a whole lot more crowded during the Mardi Gras season and often more expensive.
Living there, I never liked the time starting a few days before Mardi Gras. I was a part-time bartender and caterer at an upscale location (The Columns Hotel on St. Charles if you are curious) and things got very stressful although you could make a whole lot of money very quickly. The out-of-town crowd often interpreted the setting as pure anarchy which isn’t true. You could get as drunk as you want, drugs were tolerated as long as you didn’t make it completely obvious, flashing was OK, we even tolerated sex in the bathrooms but the failure point came when people didn’t understand that you couldn’t harm property or other people.
They only let some of the larger males work the front-lines at many of our events. Fights were absolutely not allowed in any form because of crowd control concerns. Any form of vandalism or stealing no matter how small would get you instantly bounced. I was bouncing at least 10 people or groups a day as Mardi Gras approached but I never did it by myself. We had hand signals like most places did just to form a V-formation of men and force people out the door physically and instantly with no argument. Many of them weren’t frat boys either. We bounced ladies in their 60’s by picking them up in a chair and carrying them to the porch and shutting the door.
People from other places may gasp but crowd control is a very serious and potentially dangerous issue that has to be watched at all times because you are dealing with an incredible crowd of drunk and/or high people that often don’t know the customs and think they can suddenly do anything that they ever were tempted to do. There isn’t time to assemble a judge and jury or engage in small-talk. We had to make sure the entire atmosphere was kept under control for everyone. Some of the French Quarter bars are even worse.
I wouldn’t call that completely family friendly by national or international standards. There is no way I am taking my young daughters to a parade in New Orleans proper close to Mardi Gras although I know the locals know how to handle that and their kids have seen lots more than children in other parts of the country have already. I would take them to one of the suburban parades or a cajun Mardi Gras in Cajun country though.
You live in a very unusual and special place. Keep that in mind.
I’m basing the following on my recollection that you came here for college and did not grow up here or stay here after your graduation. If I’m wrong, forgive me, but you don’t seem to be adjusting for the fact that people party a whole lot more in college than they do for the rest of their lives. I went to college at Sewanee - - a tiny place in rural Tennessee - - and there were wild parties - - debauchery if you will - - due to the demographics, not the location. I think that a lot of your recollections of living here are colored by your living here in your late teens and early 20s.
Agreed. $40.00 for one day’s parking at the Whale Lot by the Hilton/Convention Center Mardi Gras day as opposed to $10.00/day rest of the year.
This was the main point in my post. Those who make up the out-of-town crowd are the ones behaving like New Orleans is one huge hedonism hot-spot. This behavior is largely due to misperceptions about New Orleans in general and Mardi Gras in particular AND due to New Orlenians’ high degree of tolerance when out-of-towners get drunk and behave like idiots. Tolerance of a lot of that behavior does not mean, however, that anything goes all over town 24/7/365 and that the locals themselves approve of what the out-of-towners are doing. It also does not mean that a majority of the locals engage in that behavior at any time, though undoubtedly some do.
Again, largely the point of my post. As a port city, New Orleans, like other port cities, has developed a blind eye to some behavior by out-of-towners at some locations at certain times. Did management at The Columns tolerate similar behavior any other time than during the run up to MG?
snip the part about bouncing people from bars
Since when have bars in general been considered family friendly? Don’t know about you, but I’ve never taken my kids for coctails at The Columns. I would not watch a parade near any of the bars on St. Charles - - Fat Harry’s, Columns, Superior Grill, etc., not because they’re bars, but because they are magnets for out-of-towners who have had too much to drink. These are 20 yard blips in the 6.5 miles of family-friendly parading, which I didn’t think to mention. Thanks for pointing out the omission.
You’re letting your recollections of how crazy things were when you worked at a very popular BAR during Mardi Gras color your perceptions of the whole event and extrapolating what you saw in and around your bar to several miles of territory.
My kids and I have been parading for 10 years. They’ve not been exposed to anything more unusual in terms of crowd behavior than what they would see at a tailgate party. Some of the floats and marching groups in some of the parades can get a little risque’, but in the majority of the cases they are the exception to the rule and those exceptions trend towards the naughty rather than the debauched.
In 10 years of parading with kids I have had only one incident that crossed over from naughtiness. About eight years ago we were at a Thoth party on Jefferson and Magazine. We noticed that the riders were being unusually attentive to the balcony of our friends’ upstairs apartment. Turns out that one woman - - an out-of-town friend of the Tulane students renting the apartment - - was lifting her shirt. The out-of-town flasher was operating on the misperception that anything goes all over town and she was instantly made aware of the fact that it does not occur outside the relatively few areas that cater to the out-of-town crowd. Even though our hostess handled it very tactfully, the flasher was very ashamed and she stopped the free show. My kids - - then 8, 5, 2, and 2 months - - did not see it. One “incident” in 10 years. Not a bad track record.
These folksagree with me.
What do you call a suburban parade?
Thanks for the heads-up.