Why watch when you can be the parade

“Why watch another parade when you can be the parade?”
--My children’s wise Aunt Pam, on FQ (St. Anne or Kosmic Debris) v.
Uptown watching trucks debate

Most of the weekend is easy. Saturday: parades. Saturday night: an old buddy’s Endymiom Party. Saturday midnight: MoMs. Sunday: I sleep in, Aunt Pam takes the kids to the parades. Sunday night: Bacchus at Tipitina’s. Monday: Lundi Gras and Parades.

But what to do on Carnival Day?

As I said when I started this blog, I’ve been a Quarter person since I was born. If it was just me, there wouldn’t be any question what to do on Mardi Gras Day. See Zulu and maybe Rex for old times sake in the madness of Canal Street, then retire into safer parts of the Quarter, where friends still knew people with homes and offices for bathroom and general madness breaks, ending the evening down in Marigny.

The kids changed all of that.

So, do I take them over to Napoleon for the day and miss Zulu? Do we brave lower St. Charles? (I talked to one person who said they had a great spot on St. Charles, “right near where the shooting was last year.” Um, OK. )

Or do we just toss caution to the wind, and join Aunt Pam or friends behind St. Anne or Kosmic Debris, kids and all?

One friend who hauls a big bass drum in Kosmic Debris every year pointed out that he always brought he daughter (now in her teens at NOCCA) to the quarter. Aunt Pam and others point out that 1) I have more sense to get near the bad blocks of Bourbon on my own, much less let my kids get near there and 2) we know where to find bathrooms in the Quarter (sister’s friend’s house, and a friend’s friend’s law firm).

Will my children be struck blind if they see two guys in leather thongs shackled pierced nipple to pierced nipple?

My gut instinct is, we go to the quarter. My quarter friends are all marching behind St. Anne this year, including a couple who usually join Kosmic Debris. As Aunt Pam wisely pointed out, “why watch another damned parade when you can be the parade?”

So, it’s decided. I think. We go downtown.

Coming Home to Carnival

My earliest memories of Mardi Gras are of downtown. Rex turning onto Canal, a fleeting glimpse of Indians on the neutral ground at Galvez as we drove down Canal to my Aunt’s place in the Quarter, sitting on the stoop at my Gert and Sadie’s place on Royal watching Mardi Gras of around 1960 go by.

My great Aunts Sadie and Gertrude Folse lived in an apartment at 824 Royal Street, now the Hove Parfumeur, and for the first decade of my life, that is where I spent Mardi Gras Day. I can remember as clearly as any early childhood memory can be, sitting hoisted on my father’s shoulders somewhere on the French Quarter side of Canal, watching Rex roll by.

After Gert and Sadie moved to Thibodeaux in their advancing old age, I remember spending a couple of Carnivals on Napoleon just off St. Charles, and one year riding the truck float from the Vista Country Club. But as soon as I could shake loose of grownups (starting probably a bit too early), I was headed back to the Quarter.

By the 1970s, my friends and I were firmly into costuming, and constituted part of what we sometimes thought of as the Krewe of Wildlife & Fisheries. If you ever stopped by there to visit the bushes or for other herbaceous refreshment, you know about where I’m talking about. We went to MoMs (old lakefront and UNOvians that we were). We were the Mardi Gras.

Then, in 1986, my life changed drastically and I moved away from New Orleans, first to Baton Rouge and then to Washington, D.C. Nineteen eighty-seven found me in a rented tuxedo wandering the bowels of the Washington Hilton in the wee hours of the morning with a H brass band and a dozen die-hards, trying to find some place to continue the party after the last hospitality suite threw us out.

But after 1987, I put off going back for Mardi Gras. First, my wife was in grad school and I wanted her to come, but Mardi Gras kept bumping up against midterms or other critical school dates. Then, in 1992, my daughter was born. Two years later, we moved to Detroit Lakes, MN (The Waveland of the North), but only I had a job. Money was tight. My son was born. No Mardi Gras, except for Ma Mere’s king cakes and wild dancing with my little kids on Fat Tuesday evening.

The longer I was away, the easier it became to just not go back for Mardi Gras. We came home for other reasons. A friend got married. A funeral. But these were never near to Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest.

Before I knew it, it was 2004. In 2006, it would be twenty years since I’d last been to Mardi Gras.

Almost twenty years since I’d watched Krewe of Druex, or been to MoM’s ball. Almost twenty years since I’d Ritz-died a pair of tights or a bit of old Krewe suit.

Almost twenty years since I haunted the Wildlife and Fisheries Building, tumbled behind Kozmic Debris, eaten my usual Mardi Gras meal—the Comus Corn Dog—before hectoring the débutantes going in to greet Comus from their Canal St. balcony with overly-loud “Ooohss” and “Ahhssss”.

Almost twenty years since I’d stumbled back through the Quarter to the side door entrance to Betz Brown’s Abbey (it’s very best incarnation and the living room to a decade’s worth of Quarter Rats in the 1980s), to finish partying well into Ash Wednesday.

Almost twenty years since I’d lain on my coach with Pharaoh Sander’s Love is Everywhere in loop mode on the turntable and rested up, or eaten a bowl of my traditional Ash Wednesday Chili.

Worse than my own deepening self-pity, my kids—now twelve and nine—had never seen Mardi Gras.

Since they were small, we had read Mimi’s First Mardi Gras, sent by their Aunt Pam. In Kindergarten, I had arrived with a boom box and a king cake and throws and lead their kindergarten classes in a second line around the classroom.

We had watched Mardi Gras Day video tapes of WDSU’s parade coverage. Every year MaMere’ sent a King Cake, and we feasted and danced wildly in Paper Warehouse masks in front of the picture window for the entertainment of the neighbors.

But they had never been to Mardi Gras; never seen a “real” parade.

We decided. It was time to Come Home to Carnival.

By Markus, the publisher of Wet Bank Guide