28 April 2024
The entire Carnival period in New Orleans and much of southern Louisiana, from Three Kings Day (6 January) to Shrove Tuesday (called Mardi Gras in French), is filled with not only King Cake and decorations. It is a series of parties, balls, celebrations, and countless 
festivities!
I know, most of us think Mardi Gras is the day of parades and dancing in the streets. We were surprised to learn that no, these continue for however many days the entire Carnival period covers. Easter was "early" this year, at the end of March. So that meant Lent began early in mid 
February. So Carnival lasted only six weeks. It sounds like plenty of time for celebrations, but no, it really isn't.
We learned that the various troupes are called krewes. Each krewe is somewhat neighborhood-based, and these krewes started as 
community social and support organizations. For example, one krewe raises funds to pay for funerals for people in their neighborhood. Another purchases prom dresses for girls who cannot afford to buy their own. Some might purchase groceries for elderly or indigent people. Each krewe seems to have their own way of helping 
their community, as well as providing ways for people in that neighborhood to come together and socialize.
One of the fund-raising events is a Carnival ball. Not ONE Carnival ball, no, each krewe will host a ball. At least it seemed that each krewe hosted a ball, I don't know. There were umpteen balls happening on the six 
or so weekends during Carnival, with news coverage of people in tuxes or glittering dresses and tiaras, dancing and partying. It seemed as if people could buy a ticket to any ball they wanted, and dance the night away. After all, New Orleans is known for their parties!
Another little known fact is that each krewe has their own parade. I lost count of how many parades were going on during Carnival. MOST of the parades were scheduled for the last two, two and a half weeks of Carnival, every single day. I think there were a few that were earlier, but I could be wrong.
Apparently each krewe is required to have a minimum of X number of floats. (I have no idea how many.) The floats can be two stories high, but no higher due to the trees which overhang most of the avenues. (Two parades were held up for an hour or two because the driver of the float didn't turn quite 
wide enough, and the float got caught on one of the overhanging branches of a huge tree! The floats are connected via trailer hitch to small tractors, making it extremely difficult to back up!)
There also are requirements such as Y 
number of marching bands. People on the floats. A cohesive theme to the floats and the costumes. I'm sure the list goes on and on, these were just the aspects we could see. Although the local news reports talked about some of these requirements, and whether certain krewes should have been disqualified from marching due to not enough marching bands in their 
parade.
And then the "throws!" It's a HUGE tradition here, people on each float throw things to the crowds. Each krewe has signature throws - my first parade, Krewe of Freret, had purple cups with their gold fleur de lys printed on them. There are also the strands of beads, in the traditional purple, 
green, and gold, but also just about every color of the rainbow! Mini packs of coffee! Plastic tiaras that glowed! Glittery purses, small pillows with krewe emblems, small soft footballs, it went on and on! The fancier and scarcer the throw, the more people wanted them! There was also a scandal that some of the throws 
from a certain krewe were advertising, which apparently is not allowed. Of course, if you have a friend on a float and they recognize you, you can get some of the more fancy throws tossed straight at you.
One of the former throws 
was toilet paper. This became a huge issue, because wet toilet paper is messy. It can clog up the rain sewers, it isn't easy to sweep up, and it just clings to everything. So only one particular krewe was allowed to throw toilet paper this year. Actually, what happened this year was that too much toilet paper got caught on the electric poles, caught fire or something, and somehow 
shorted out the transformers. So a few neighborhoods were without power one evening, until the power company could clear the TP off the poles! Never a dull moment during Carnival!!
And just to make life more interesting, and because the krewes are neighborhood-based, there 
are several different parade routes! It was rather confusing at first, but eventually we caught on - the parade route closest to us was along St. Charles Avenue, where the streetcar runs. Each krewe had a staging area where people would gather and floats would line up - for the St. Charles parade route, most krewes gathered near 
the river and headed north on Napoleon, then turned east and paraded along St. Charles and on into the French Quarter. Even if there were several krewes scheduled for the same route on the same day, start times would be staggered so that each parade began at a different time slot. Every parade route ended up in or near 
the French Quarter in town, somewhere near the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Street. That tends to be the center of the partying all night anyway, so this added to the festivities.
Parades were either scheduled for weekend days, or workday evenings. Some were
single-krewe parades if it was an especially large krewe, but most were
multi-krewe parades, especially the evenings. That last week of
Carnival, we had four or five parades nearby every night, beginning
about 5:00 PM and running until midnight!Once I realized that there would be parades on St. Charles, I had the brilliant idea of riding the streetcar and just watching the 
parade from there. Remember, this was in winter, so it was cold and generally rainy. So one Saturday morning, I drove the nine blocks to the streetcar, parked, and hopped on the next trolley to come by. We rattled and rolled on about a mile, and then stopped just before the next big avenue or boulevard. Because the rails were blocked, and the 
streetcar could go no further!
The streetcar runs on rails embedded in the median of a long east-westish avenue. In New Orleans, the medians are called "neutral ground," and are used for parking in heavy rains. Turns out the 
medians are also used for viewing parades! People are allowed to set up tents and chairs for parade watching, beginning four hours prior to when a parade is scheduled. D'oh! I was so naive, thinking people would only be on the sidewalk. Of course the median, and thus the streetcar rails, would be covered with parade viewers!
So what could I do, I got out and walked to the intersection of Napoleon and St. Charles. This turned out to be a perfect viewing spot, although I kept getting photos with people waving their arms around, trying to catch a good throw item!
It was chilly and drizzly. It was packed. And everyone was happy and cheerful, enjoying the color and glitz, and all the music! Most people were in warm clothes, but many were in purple-green-gold outfits! Women had glitter designs on their faces, or tiaras, or sequined outfits. Men tended to stick with various party hats, and sweatshirts or rugby shirts in purple-green-gold. Bead necklaces everywhere! (I had a lavender sweatshirt under my rain jacket, so I almost sort of fit in colorwise, LOL! Because kelly green and any yellow are so not my colors!)
Krewe of Freret had floats featuring various musicians from New Orleans - there was Trombone Shorty, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong, maybe Little Richard? Well, I'm sure music jazz aficionados would know who most of these musicians were. There may have been a Pirate Jean Lafitte in there, so maybe the theme was famous people from New Orleans. I was sort of clueless. But the music was great, the floats fascinating, the costumes and masks colorful! Several of the floats even had confetti guns, so there were periodic clouds of purple paper confetti raining down on us!!!
Yes, I caught a few throws. I also was hit with several throws, they come flying off the floats with a reasonable toss and then gravity adds to the velocity! My forehead was hit with only one set of beads, which stung a bit. But my hand was hit with a tangle of maybe eighteen or twenty beads, all tangled in a huge lump of glittery strands - wow, that hurt, and I had a bruise for weeks! The woman standing next to me said she was hit in the head with a ball of tangled beads a few years ago, and she ended up with a concussion from that! I can imagine!!!
Most people came with chairs and tote bags for all the swag they caught. It's considered déclassé to pick up anything that falls into the street, but most of us did anyway. What's a little mud? That's what soap and water are for! I helped the woman next to me collect some of the discarded mini footballs - she had a group of nieces and nephews coming to visit, and she thought they'd keep the kids busy and amused.
It really was fun, chatting with complete strangers, and kind of partying in the streets. It was morning, and I know my alcohol limitations, so I stuck with hot tea. That's why I was only sort-of partying - Carnival is definitely alcohol-infused! There were food and drink trucks nearby, as well as series of porta-potties.
Eventually the Freret parade wound down. There were rumors of another krewe scheduled, but no signs of the parade. By this time, I'd been standing and dancing in the cold drizzle for close to three hours, so I bade my new friends farewell and walked back to the streetcar. A quick ride back to where I'd parked our car, a short drive home, and back to warm up and tell Richard all about it! Well, and to wash my throws, because who knows who had their hands in the cups?
Last note about throws - much of the paraphernalia left on the street is swept up after the parades of the day end. But beads break, people abandon stuff, and the streets are still full of Carnival litter each night. The city has special bumper guards that are places near storm drains during the Carnival period, to try to keep all the beads, cups, etc. from going down into the storm drains and clogging up the sewer system. With the heavy rains, it's really important to keep the drains and sewers clear and in working order. There are a series of pumps throughout the city to keep water moving out of the sewers and into the river, which should prevent flooding in this very low-lying city. But we had some heavy rains which caused some parades to be postponed. And the water and sewer workers didn't get all the bumper guards moved in time. So those protective bumpers actually increased the flooding by not allowing the rain to drain down into the sewer system. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. I kept thinking a heavy mesh might help, except all the leaves would get stuck and block the sewer even more. It may be a no-win situation - both rain and parade throws are just part of the city's culture. I guess that makes flooding part of the city's culture as well.
Enlarged photos so you can see all the details:
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