Mardi Gras 2006


2/26/06: John Burnett, NPR reporter. Tons more pictures of Mardi Gras on flickr. And Tom's got some great shots, too.

The events of the past week and a half have built steadily to the crescendo that is Fat Tuesday, with each day contributing stories that I'll remember and laugh about every year from now on when I think back to my very First Mardi Gras.

I've never felt so proud to be a New Orleans resident, to be able to tell the people we met in the street, "I live here. Do I like it? I love it!" Look at me - I've picked up saying "for" when indicating at what time I'll be ready, and I can (almost) distinguish between the accents of a person from Chalmette and Lafayette! I wound my way through back streets to avoid parade routes and, aside from one horrific traffic event when I slept in my car (I'll come back to that), I successfully navigated my relatively new home like a native.

For the past six days, this city has felt ALIVE, buzzing with the excitement of reveling in a tradition that has brought its disparate inhabitants together in some semblance of harmonious celebration every year for the past 168 years.

Party-goers own the streets for most of this time, though by most evenings the trash and un-caught beads have pretty much taken over. $6 Dominoes pizza boxes clutter the corners where sidewalk meets building, and hundreds of forgotten or undesirable throws are strewn hapharzardly about the neutral ground. New Orleans is a notably friendly town to begin with, but there's something about the child-like joy parades evoke (along with the endless supply of alcohol that is more ubiqitious here than water) that makes this place more like a cross between one big college town and the largest close-knit neighborhood block party you've ever seen. People here are just happy. And happy is a wonderful thing to see when blue tarped-roofs and water lines are still visible in the background.

The parades were absolutely amazing and the weather was perfect. We caught Thor on Wednesday in Metairie (the rest were all in Uptown), Muses Thursday (famous for being the only Krewe with an entirely female membership, and for throwing decorated shoes to the crowds), Iris and Tucks Saturday, Thoth, Mid-City, Bacchus, and Endymion (the two 'Super Krewes,' so named for being the biggest and best) on Sunday, and Zulu (it was ironic that the painted figures on their floats were white when it's the only all-black Krewe) and Rex today. The scale of the floats surprised me, considering I had been expecting rinky-dink, paper mached ones and not the huge monstrosities they turned out to be. The evening parades, with their elaborate lights and mechanized parts, were by far the best. If you're interested in more history or what Krewes are all about (it was foreign to me until several weeks ago): nola.com.

We camped out with a tent and a grill for Saturday's parades, and hung out with various other friends with connections to bathrooms and food for Sunday. Friday's festivities were centered on seeing the Rebirth Brass Band at Tipitina's on Tchop (AMAZING!! they also walked in several of the parades), and Monday was spent on the Cetco-sponsored balcony at the Royal Sonesta hotel on Bourbon. For the big day on Tuesday we watched the parades from the company's grandstand in front of our building (great view) and then went to the Acme Oyster House, which Halliburton had rented out for its private party.

The two vendor-sponsored events were amazngly cool, definitely one of the best perks of the job I've found so far. At the Royal Sonesta, there was an endless supply of beads to chuck at the people three floors below. We left the Square at 2:30 and stayed on the balcony until well past midnight, knocking full beers out of the hands of unsuspecting people, tossing beads into the convertibles that drove by, and consuming the free food and alcohol. At one point a target got annoyed that she had been hit and told a cop nearby, who promptly came up to our balcony and kicked someone off for throwing too hard (he was just the scapegoat, and ended up coming back out about 10 minutes later). I really enjoyed chatting with coworkers in the relaxed atmosphere that, though work related, was clearly socially oriented; it felt less forced and fake, less like you were trying to constantly impress someone or win their respect than at similar hand-shaking sorts of events in college. Oh! AND, while riding in the elevator back up to the suite guess who else was jammed with me and 7 others?!!? CHARLIE GIBSON!! Charlie Gibson, of Good Morning America fame! Someone else in the elevator recognized him first and said something, after which I asked if I could shake his hand -- and he said, "sure!" so I did!!! I SHOOK CHARLIE GIBSON'S HAND!!! I'd say I'm never washing it again, but that'd just be dumb after being on Bourbon street for so long.

I've eaten at the Oyster House once before and knew to expect good food, but I think it was even better today. I ate at least 4 raw oysters and 10 fried ones, plus fried shrimp and catfish and gumbo and rice and beans and sausage and hush puppies. It's fun to finally be at the point of being here long enough to where I could walk in and immediately see 10 people I knew besides the 5 I had come with. Ah, plus there was the random driller we had met Saturday night who happens to be a Halliburon person contracted out to us. But that story's for another post.

Sunday night while waiting for Endymion to start after Bacchus had rolled by (Endymion had postponed their initial Saturday start because of forecasted rain, which was hard to believe at 1pm when it was absolutely beautiful out, but sure enough at 3:30 on the dot when their parade would have started, huge drops started to plummet from the sky), our group was approached by a man with a mic, asking us if we were from here. We came to find out that he was John Burnett, AN NPR REPORTER for All Things Considered - I was estactic and star struck and immediately thought to ask him for a group picture after we all gushed about how WE ALL LISTEN TO NPR and talk about the stories in our car pools and over breakfast. He was pretty taken aback by this group of 7 early-twenties, fresh faced kids who were fawning over him - he told us, "Wow, we never get this kind of attention!" We didn't fit the profile of who he wanted to talk to (experienced Mardi Gras goers, which none of us were), so we weren't in his story, but it was sooooooooo cool to meet him. I was a giddy school girl for a solid 45 minutes and immediately called my mom and Jody to boast.

Endymion included some big names on their floats, including Willie Nelson, John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Anderson Cooper, Elijah Wood and some others I can't remember (Bacchus had Michael Keaton), and ELIJAH WOOD TOTALLY THREW BEADS AT ME!! I caught several pieces of plastic spooled together by flimsy string that had been TOUCHED! by Elijah Wood. I was a giddy, uncontrollable school girl for another 2 hours.

Unfortunately, after we walked back to our cars parked at Gabe's in the Warehouse district (we had been watching Sunday's parades much further Uptown, a solid 30 minute walk down St. Charles) the parade had gotten to the area so all sorts of streets were closed and the traffic was not moving at all. Courtney and I were exhausted so we decided to take a nap in my car to wait out the parade, only to be woken up by several raps against my window from a rather large man yelling, "It's dangerous - you shouldn't be sleeping in your car!" He continued to yell with concern until we showed signs of clearly being awake and putting the car into 'drive'. I chose the most-trafficky way to get home (ugh! I was so frustrated) so it took me an hour to go the 7 miles home.

I especially liked walking everywhere we wanted to go, the impetus for which was the horrendous traffic everywhere (see above), and fully appreciated the great deal we have with our downtown parking contracts. We're allowed to use the parking garage we use for work ALL the time, including Mardi Gras, and it's literally 3 blocks from Canal and 2 blocks from Bourbon. Free. (well, not technically since we pay $25/month. but it feels free at times like these.) Having my office to leave stuff in and use the bathroom was key, too.

And now that I know what a party New Orleans is capable of, even post-Katrina, I can't wait for jazz fest, which includes Dave Matthews Band, World Leader Pretend, Jimmy Buffet, Kieth Urban, Cowboy Mouth, Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco, and TONS of other famous jazz/funk bands! And I've got lots of space for visitors! :)

February has certainly been a whirlwind, and March is already sweeping me along - I'm going offshore for three days tomorrow. I'm excited for many reasons, but one of them is that I seem to get lots more sleep out there than when I'm here in my distraction-filled house. And I've slept about 15 hours total in the past 6 days, so I'll take every hour more I can get.

I've figured out what I'm going to do for Lent, something I'm excited to share but will have to wait until I get back because it's too important for me to try to describe through rapidly shutting eyes.

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone!