My First Mardi Gras
I'm in an AirBnB in New Orleans, on Desire Street. Actual Desire Street. There's no streetcar line that serves it anymore, although I wouldn't be surprised if the tracks are still usable. There's a lot more track in the streets than there is in the current transit map.
This city gets really wild with street names. Like, Elysian Fields is a major street and in this neighborhood there is a Piety Street and two Bunny Friend Streets (North Bunny Friend and South Bunny Friend). In the French Quarter there are streets named Bourbon and Burgundy, of course. But that's only the beginning. Yesterday afternoon I noticed, on Google Maps, an event venue called Race & Religion and I was like, what? Well, it turns out that this venue is at the corner of Race Street and Religion Street. And there's Music Street and Arts Street and Painters Street and Tchoupitoulas and Perdido (which can mean "lost" or "damned" depending on context) and I haven't anything like completely explored this town, so there's no telling what will turn up.
This place is having an effect on me. Like, I've been on Zillow and Craigslist, looking at real estate prices, and I sure didn't do that in Tucson. I like it here. A lot. I mean, look at these Instagram posts. This is what the houses look like. How could I resist?
https://instagram.com/p/B9VS_LcpgMe
https://instagram.com/p/B9VSXr3JMx4
I drove down here mostly via the most direct route: I-95 as far as northern Virginia, then I-81 to I-75 to I-59, right down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. This meant that, long after I got into the cultural zone where libraries and grocery stores started having "No Firearms Allowed" signs next to their front doors, it was still definitely Winter, weather-wise. I got snowed on in Tennessee and there were also flash flood warnings. Then I popped out into Alabama and suddenly it was Spring/Fall.
I mostly depended on AirBnB during the drive and it mostly came through for me, with an interesting variety of overnight settings, from a former child's bedroom in a classic blue collar redneck house to a cot in a luxuriously appointed dining room with polished granite floors and giant Chinese-style flower pots. It wasn't until the last night before New Orleans that I got burned. The rental was a camper trailer in Pearlington, in the far southwest corner of Mississippi, and it was locked. There was supposed to be a way to get in and there wasn't. I got out my laptop, sat in the patio furniture, and typed for an hour while the sun went down, trying several times to contact the host. Nothing.
It got kind of chilly. I think that was when I actually caught the cold, although it didn't hit me that night or the next day. I got on the phone with the AirBnB staff and they comped me, not just a hotel room (at the Holiday Inn on Voter's Road in Slidell, LA, speaking of roads with unusual names) but also dinner, because the reservation was supposed to include a kitchen. (If you're ever in Slidell, I highly recommend the Lost Cajun Restaurant. Good value for money.) I used the hotel's wifi to find out where the next day's parades were and drove into New Orleans in the morning. Traffic and parking were nowhere near as bad as I'd been led to expect, although parking was every bit as expensive. It was an easy walk to the parade route, with a stop at a juice place. There were bleachers along the route, fenced, with bouncers at the gates. I bought a ticket for $10.
I soon found out that this city's reputation for friendliness is not exaggerated. The woman sitting next to me (blonde pony tail, three kids), as soon as she found out that this was my first Mardi Gras, was a fountain of good advice. It was from her that I found out about the Parade Tracker app, which connects your phone to the GPS tracking devices in the lead vehicles of every parade so you can follow them on a map and get some sense of how far away they are.
Now, a lot of the characteristics of a New Orleans Carnival Parade are the same as other parades: the marching bands, the flag teams / baton twirlers / dancers, the floats with pretty young women in fancy costumes waving to the crowds, the big shots in open cars, the groups on horseback or on motorbikes, etc. What makes New Orleans different is the floats the size of city buses with two layers of balconies from which costumed riders toss swag, mostly the famous strings of beads but also candy, toys, plastic beer cups, and random small, light-weight gifts. From a pagan point of view, it's a giant prosperity ritual. The explanation for the festival colors (green, purple, and gold) is that they represent royalty and growth, which reinforces the prosperity thing. For a little while during the parades, scarcity has been abolished and shinies are literally falling on us. I collected a half dozen or so of the necklaces just because they were flying at my head and it was catch 'em or be whacked by 'em.
Leaving the French Quarter, the traffic was just as bad as I'd been warned about. I'd opted to rent a cabin out in the countryside for the remainder of the month and it was dark by the time I found it. Tired all out of proportion to the amount I'd actually exerted myself, I had some of the biltong my brother and his wife gave me for Christmas and crawled into bed.
And in the morning I had a cold, one of those ache-all-over, no-energy kind of colds. It was Sunday. There were parades. But I wasn't going anywhere.
I spent almost a week doing not much at all, just hanging around the cabin. It had patriotic-themed decor with occasional Bible references and a hole in the front window that sure looked like a bullet hole, just the thing to make a Northern Pagan leftie feel like a fish out of water, but the host and his wife were sweethearts who gave me chicken soup and kumquats from their tree.
By the time I was ready to face the world again, the city was on the countdown to Fat Tuesday itself. On Saturday I drove in as far as Metairie, a western suburb, where parking costs little or nothing, and took public transit to the Mid-City parade route. The crowds were thicker for this one, partly, I suspect, because the Krewe of Endymion was marching, and Endymion is known for putting on an exceptional show. It's not accidental that Endymion's floats are frequently featured in Mardi Gras promotional materials. They had some amazing stuff. I regret that I didn't get any good pictures of it.
One thing that took some getting used to was the rampant cultural appropriation along with just flat-out erroneous history and mythology. New Orleans has plenty going on in terms of environmentalism, racial justice, and other good leftie causes, but the cultural respect aspect of political correctness is something they don't seem to get too worked up about, at least not during Carnival. This was also true in the crowds, where I saw a white guy with a grey buzz cut and a MAGA hat pass two drag queens, one in a green wig, one in a purple one, without any kind of negative reaction on the part of either. It was all very live and let live.
The next day, I drove to Metairie, parked, and didn't go anywhere because Metairie was where the Krewe of Athena was marching, along with two other all-female krewes, Nyx and Pandora. This time I was actively trying to catch throws. I scored 8 Athena-printed beer cups, a necklace and a ring that both had LEDs in them so they flashed, and the following photos.
https://instagram.com/p/B9C2HWopp_g
On Monday I didn't go in. I rested up because I wanted to see the Krewe of Zulu, one of the oldest and most famous krewes, known for the satirical elements in its float designs, and it looked like Zulu would be rolling at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, so it would be a long night.
And on Tuesday morning, the Parade Tracker app woke me up by notifying my phone that Zulu was rolling. I had misread the website. Zulu rolled at 8 a.m., not 8 p.m. and there was no way I could get there in time.
In fact, I didn't go into the city until the parades were over. I had a costume and I wanted to wear it, with my light-up necklace, on Bourbon street, to take in what my brother called "Halloween with adult beverages." There was even some handing out of treats. All the buildings in that part of the French Quarter have second floor balconies and many of them had people in costume doing the same thing the riders on the floats had done, tossing swag to the crowds in the streets. I think I got more hugs from drunken strangers than any other evening of my life.
https://instagram.com/p/B9CzasQp2eD
A lot of magical things happen at Mardi Gras, but one magical thing happens in its aftermath: lodgings in New Orleans become affordable again. So I said goodbye to the little cabin and scheduled five nights on Desire Street. And in the days between those nights, I may have fallen in love with this city.