Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras can be whatever you want. Don't be suckered by media reports that focus only on the exhibitionism and drunken orgies. Sure, some of Mardi Gras is becoming more and more like spring break as college kids pour into town, eager to have license to do anything. Thankfully, that kind of activity is largely confined to Bourbon Street. If that's what you want, go there. But if you avoid Bourbon Street, you will find an entirely different Mardi Gras experience.

The Season -- The date of Fat Tuesday is different each year, but Carnival season always starts on Twelfth Night, January 6, as much as 2 months before Mardi Gras. On that night the Phunny Phorty Phellows kick off the season with a streetcar ride from Carrollton Avenue to Canal Street and back.

Over the following weeks, the city celebrates Mardi Gras in its own inimitable fashion. For most people, this means attending a string of King Cake parties. The traditional King Cake is a round, braided coffeecake-like confection, dusted with Mardi Gras purple, green, and gold colored sugar, into which a plastic baby is baked; getting the piece with the baby can be a good omen or can mean you have to throw the next King Cake party. For the high-society crowd, the season brings the year's best parties, some of which hark back to the grand masked balls of the 19th century. Each krewe throws a ball, ostensibly to introduce its royalty for the year. There are dozens of these parties between Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras, but most are not traditional masked balls. (By the way, don't expect to be invited -- they are quite exclusive.)

Two or 3 weeks before Mardi Gras itself, parades begin chugging through the streets with increasing frequency. There are also plenty of parodies, such as the parade of the Mystick Krewe of Barkus and the Krewe du Vieux's yearly expression of decadence (open to the public). Barkus is, as you might guess, a krewe for pets that parades through the Quarter (some of the dogs get quite gussied up) and is a total hoot, while Krewe du Vieux are humans just having a wild time, preening in outrageous costumes.

If you want to experience Mardi Gras but don't want to face the full force of craziness, consider coming for the weekend 10 days before Fat Tuesday (the season officially begins the Fri of this weekend). You can count on 10 to 15 parades during the weekend by lesser-known krewes such as Cleopatra, Pontchartrain, Sparta, and Camelot. The crowds are more manageable than the ones you'll find just a week later. You should probably check to make sure those krewes have returned post-Katrina, as some were not able to for the 2006 and 2007 Mardi Gras.

The following weekend there are another 15 parades -- the biggies. The parades are bigger, the crowds are bigger, everything's bigger. By this point, the city has succumbed to Carnival fever. After a day of screaming for beads, you'll probably find yourself heading somewhere to get a drink or three. The French Quarter will be the center of late-night revelry; all of the larger bars will be packed. If you travel uptown or to Mid-City to see a parade, however, you might consider staying put and spending your evening at one of the joints nearby. The last parade each day (on both weekends) usually ends around 9:30pm or later; you might be exhausted by the time you get back to the hotel.

Lundi Gras -- In the 19th century, Rex's King of Carnival arrived downtown from the Mississippi River on this night, the Monday before Fat Tuesday. Over the years, the day gradually lost its special significance, becoming just another day of parades. In the 1980s, however, Rex revived Lundi Gras, the old tradition of arriving on the Mississippi.

These days, festivities at the riverfront begin in the afternoon with lots of drink and live music leading up to the king's arrival at around 6pm. Down the levee a few hundred feet at Woldenberg Park, Zulu has its own Lundi Gras celebration with the king arriving at around 5pm. (In 1999, for the first time, King Zulu met up with Rex in an impressive ceremony.) That night the Krewe of Orpheus holds their parade. It's one of the biggest and most popular parades, thanks to the generosity of the krewe's throws. And although it's a recent addition to the Mardi Gras scene (it began in 1994), it holds fast to old Mardi Gras traditions, including floats designed by master float creator Henri Schindler. For Mardi Gras 2000, venerable Proteus returned to parading, right before Orpheus.

Because Lent begins the following night at midnight, Monday is the final dusk-to-dawn night of Mardi Gras. A good portion of the city forgoes sleep so as not to waste the occasion -- which only adds to the craziness.

Mardi Gras -- The day begins early, starting with the two biggest parades, Zulu and Rex, which run back to back. Zulu starts near the Central Business District at 8:30am; Rex starts uptown at 10am.

Throughout the early morning, in between the parades, you can also see the elaborately costumed Mardi Gras "walking clubs," such as the Jefferson City Buzzards, the Pete Fountain Half Fast, and the Mondo Kayo Social and Marching Club (identifiable by their tropical/banana theme). They walk, they drink, they're usually accompanied by marching bands, and because they probably didn't sleep the night before, they don't move very fast. You can catch these "marchers" anywhere along their St. Charles Avenue route (between Poydras St. and Washington Ave.). Keep your eyes open also for the unofficial marching club, the Julus, which includes members of the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars and tends to follow the Zulu parade, throwing not coconuts but painted bagels.

It will be early afternoon when Rex spills into the Central Business District. Nearby at about this time, you may be able to find some of the most elusive New Orleans figures, the Mardi Gras Indians. The "tribes" of New Orleans are small communities of African Americans and black Creoles (some of whom have Native American ancestors), mostly from the inner city. Their elaborate (and that's an understatement) beaded and feathered costumes, rivaling Bob Mackie Vegas headdresses in outrageousness and size, are entirely made by hand. The men begin working on them on Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras, to get them ready in time for the next year. Traditionally, throughout the day, tribes of Indians from all over town converge along the median of Claiborne Avenue, underneath the interstate, where a large crowd of locals is always milling around to see the spectacle. If two tribes meet on the median or back in their neighborhoods, they'll stage a mock confrontation, resettling their territory and common borders. Because the Indians lived in particularly flood-ravaged neighborhoods, not that many were able to come back for Mardi Gras 2006 and 2007. Many suits were destroyed in the flood (a painful loss for them considering the time, effort, and pride that goes into the construction), though some tribes, such as Fi-Yi-Yi, were able to sew new ones post-storm. You can see some tribes gather around St. Augustine's school in the Treme, and also uptown. This unique cultural tradition is in considerable jeopardy thanks to the New Orleans diaspora, and it may be harder than ever for a tourist to spot them on Mardi Gras. Ask locals for rumors about times and intersections, and then bike, walk, or drive around (it's probably the only time a car is useful on Mardi Gras), keeping eyes and ears open for feathers and drums. (If you're lucky, you can sometimes catch these confrontations during other times of the year if the Indians are out to celebrate something else, like Jazz Fest or the mayor's inauguration.)

After the parades, the action picks up in the Quarter. En route, you'll see that Mardi Gras is still very much a family tradition, with whole families dressing up in similar costumes. Marvel at how an entire city has shut down so that every citizen can join in the celebrations. Some people don't bother hitting the streets; instead, they hang out on their balconies watching the action below or have barbecues in their courtyards. If you are lucky and seem like the right sort, you might well get invited in.

In the Quarter the frat-party action is largely confined to Bourbon Street. The more interesting activity is in the lower Quarter and the Frenchmen section of the Faubourg Marigny (just east of the Quarter), where the artists and gay community really know how to celebrate. The costumes are elaborate works of art, some the product of months of work. Although the people may be (okay, probably will be) drunk, they are boisterous and enthusiastic, not (for the most part) obnoxious.

As you make your way through the streets, keep your eyes peeled for members of the legendary Krewe of Comus. They will be men dressed in tuxes with brooms over their shoulders, holding cowbells. Ask them if they are Comus, and they will deny it, insisting they are Cowbellians. But then they might hand you a vintage Comus doubloon, and the truth will be out.

If you can, try to stay until midnight when the police come through the Quarter, officially shutting down Mardi Gras.

How to Spend the Day

While the national media focuses only on the Bourbon Street zoo, there are plenty of traditions and family-friendly fun that can be had elsewhere. What you come away with will depend on where you go and who you hang out with. Indeed, you need never see nudity if you plan your day correctly. Basically, there are three ways of doing it: nice, naughty, and nasty. See below for examples of each kind of Mardi Gras experience. Us? We prefer a mix of the first two.

Nice: Hang out exclusively uptown with the families. Find a spot on St. Charles Avenue, which is entirely closed for the day, and camp out with a blanket, a picnic lunch, and some kids if you can find any, and spend the day there. After Rex there are countless smaller parades (with trucks acting as floats) put on by the Elks and other groups (Zulu, alas, doesn't go through Uptown). Dressed-up families are all around. One side of St. Charles is for the parades and the other is open only to foot traffic, so you can wander about and admire the costumes, with walking groups (groups who make their own ad hoc parades) and everyone just milling about on the street. You might well get asked to join in a group barbecue or balcony party. New Orleans kids assure us that Mardi Gras is more fun than Halloween, and we can see why.

Naughty: In the morning, around the start of Zulu, head to Jackson Avenue or Claiborne Avenue and the neighborhoods around those main thoroughfares and look for the Mardi Gras Indians. It's a hit-or-miss proposition; the Indians themselves never know when they are going to start and where they are going to be, but running across them on their own turf is one of the great sights and experiences of Mardi Gras. Play it cool, however -- this is not your neighborhood. Consider not bringing your camera; this is not an attraction put on for your benefit, and the Indians do not like being treated like a sideshow carnival act. By early to midafternoon, they often gather at Indian ground zero, on Claiborne under the freeway, where a festival of sorts takes place. Post-Katrina, that traditional gathering did not take place; it may return in some form as time passes.

At noon try to be around the corner of Burgundy and St. Ann streets for the Bourbon Street awards. You may not get close enough to actually see the judging, but the participants are all around you so that you can gawk up close and personal at their sometimes R- and X-rated costumes. As you wander the Quarter, keep an eye out (or ask around) for the Krewe of Kosmic Debris and the Society of St. Anne, marvelously costumed revelers without floats. After the awards (about midafternoon), head over to the Frenchmen section, where everyone is in costume, dancing in the street to tribal drums, drinking, and generally celebrating Carnival as it should be, often well into the night.

Nasty: Stay strictly on Bourbon Street. Yep, it's every bit as crowded, vulgar, and obscene as you've heard (and you can't even see the floats from here). The street is full of drunks (and the occasional bewildered soul), few (if any) in costume, with balconies full of more drunks, dangling expensive beads (some with X-rated anatomical features on them), which they will hand over in exchange for a glimpse of flesh. Sometimes they show flesh themselves (and they are never the people who ought to be exposing themselves). This is the "anything goes" attitude of Carnival taken to an unimaginative extreme, and while it might be worth getting a quick peep at, it grows boring more quickly than you might think. The city has tried to keep this sort of thing confined just to Bourbon Street, and efforts seem to have paid off. Astonishingly, a mere one street over is like another world. Dauphine Street, just above Bourbon, is largely empty, while Royal Street, below, is full of naughty, not nasty, Mardi Gras participants.