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.