NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans native’s first Mardi Gras back home in 19 years confirmed for me what most people don’t understand: at least in the Garden District, the Crescent City’s carnival is the most convivial mass celebration imaginable. St. Charles Avenue’s crowds also are fully and wonderfully integrated and family-friendly too.
New Orleans has the reputation of wildness, crossing into debauchery. Mardi Gras behavior in the French Quarter, and perhaps in the neighborhoods of Treme and Bywater, may well merit that reputation: I don’t know because I wasn’t there. But for the first mile and a half of the parade’s journey down St. Charles Avenue, at least, the celebration rarely leaves PG territory even for PG-13. The crowds are full of families, black and white, with members ranging from the tiniest babies (usually in a parent’s chest pouch) to stooped great-grandparents.
The avenue is lined with stepladders with wooden safety benches perched atop, in which small children sit, with parents standing on the rungs behind them for ballast, while float riders shower them with beads, doubloons, plastic cups, and the occasional stuffed animals. Behind the benches, along the median that locals call the “neutral ground,” people line up ice chests, portable grills, and sometimes folding tables, enjoying an all-day cookout that passersby sometimes are invited to share. And though there’s plenty of alcohol flowing, it somehow seems on this day to lead not to aggression but merely to ever-goofier grins.
Attire is pretty much whatever you feel like wearing. A few people are in ordinary street clothes. A vast number aren’t in costume but are at least bedecked somehow or other in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold (or yellow). Plenty of revelers (of all ages) make a sort of half-hearted attempts at costumes, thrown together at the last minute: a unicorn hat here, a Superman cape there, a store-bought Chewbacca mask without a furry body to match.
And still a reasonable number, perhaps 20%, are in fully costumed splendor. A woman in an inflatable dinosaur suit. A bizarre melding of space-travel generations, with a Princess Leia walking alongside a Mr. Spock. And, with great but perhaps morbid creativity, a couple dressed head-to-toe as Corona beer bottles, with medical masks on their faces — in other words, Coronaviruses. The humor, sometimes but not always twisted, is boundless, as is the ingenuity.
The “main,” traditional Mardi Gras Day parade is Rex, King of Carnival. The Rex floats, made of Styrofoam and papier-mache mounted on trailers, are even more ornate and impressive than the ones I grew up with. Interspersed between almost every float and its follower, the marching bands — from high schools, colleges, and military outfits — play their music and dance with pride and gusto. With a few stops for Rex himself (the “king” in person, not the whole parade organization) to make toasts along the way, the 30-float parade takes nearly two hours to pass a single viewing spot.
And then — then! — then come the “truck” parades, in which well over 100 civic organizations, clubs, family groups, or just large groups of friends each sponsor, design, and ride in brilliantly decorated superstructures built atop 18-wheel flatbed trailers. The umbrella organization under which all these trucks ride gives awards for the best themes and designs. There always are numerous New Orleans Saints-themed trucks and some Louisiana State University football ones.
Puns are common: A nautical design festooned with the words “Seas the Day” was one example.
The whole atmosphere — floats, trucks, riders, bands, and viewers — is zany, whimsical, and joyous. So come next year, cher. I guar-on-tee you’ll pass a good time.
