It all ended at midnight, Fat Tuesday. Avoiding goodbyes, the sulking couple wandered, heads bowed, on a side street toward Canal, as if searching the ancient pavers on the Quarter’s cobbled road for advice on what parting words to say.
—-Steve Prusky, The Last Parade
New Orleans – Mardi Gras, Krewe of Zulu parade.
There are millions of Mardi Gras stories from New Orleans – a lot are the same.
Read it here:
from The Flash Fiction Offensive
“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
waiting for a parade
Nola Brewing
New Orleans, Louisiana
“there was something about
that city, though
it didn’t let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.”
― Charles Bukowski
waiting for a parade
Nola Brewing
New Orleans, Louisiana
“Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.”
― Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
waiting for a parade
Nola Brewing
New Orleans, Louisiana
“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists…but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!
—-Shakespeare, The Tempest
Nola Cherry Bombs Dance Troupe
performing with
Daria & The Hip Drops
Bayou Boogaloo Festival
New Orleans, Louisiana
NOLA Cherry Bombs
NOLA Cherry Bombs
Bishop Arts District, Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)
About two weeks after Mardi Gras, Bishop Arts District, Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas
Bishop Arts District, Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas
“Come with uncle,” I said, “and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited.”
—-Alex, A Clockwork Orange
Mardi Gras
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)
I was riding my bike around downtown, and ended up in Deep Ellum in time for the First Annual Deep Ellum Mardi Gras Parade. I’ve been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a couple times as well as the Bishop Arts version the last couple years – and Deep Ellum has a way to go to meet those standards – but it was still a blast and a great start.
Everyone met up at The Free Man and set out down the sidewalk playing Louisiana music and having a lot of fun. The sun was setting and I had a long way to go to get home on my bike, so I wasn’t able to stay for all the festivities. I’ll plan better next time.
If you missed it, they aren’t waiting until next year. There’s already another parade scheduled on Fat Tuesday.
Laissez les bons temps rouler.
The music started at The Free Man.
First Annual Deep Ellum Mardi Gras Parade
(click to enlarge)
First Annual Deep Ellum Mardi Gras Parade
(click to enlarge)
First Annual Deep Ellum Mardi Gras Parade
(click to enlarge)
First Annual Deep Ellum Mardi Gras Parade
(click to enlarge)
First Annual Deep Ellum Mardi Gras Parade
(click to enlarge)
“To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid.
Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge.
Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD’s in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year–people whose names you may or may not even know but you’ve watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they’re not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year?
It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to.
Now that part, more than ever.
It’s mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88’s until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don’t and promising yourself you will next year.
It’s wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who–like clockwork, year after year–denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one.
Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.”
― Chris Rose, 1 Dead in Attic
Bead Tree, Gibson Quad, Tulane, New Orleans, Louisiana
“I dust a bit…in addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
~Ignatius J. Reilly”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Bead Tree, Gibson Quad, Tulane, New Orleans, Louisiana
“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Last year, this woman was riding in the Bishop Arts District Mardi Gras Parade with a (small) alligator:
Instead of beads, this woman wanted to throw live alligators.
and this year, she was back. This time with a giant snake (I believe it is a reticulated python – but I could be wrong).
Luckily, she didn’t throw anything.
Don’t worry… she was riding on the Dallas Zoo float… so I guess she knows what she is doing.
I noticed, while milling around the Bishop Arts District before the Mardi Gras Parade, a little piece of cardboard box down an alley, with two disposable cameras sitting on it.
Camera in the wild.
The box said:
I may not have mega-pixels
But I’m still pretty awesome
Facebooke.com/camera.bishop.arts
I thought about grabbing a camera and taking a shot, but hesitated and some other folks grabbed it first. You snooze, you lose. The idea of leaving a cheap film camera sitting around for people to use is pretty cool….
And now the pictures from the Mardi Gras Parade are up on the facebook page.
As far as the note goes… I have no idea about the misspelled URL.
I’ll keep checking back though, see what develops.
Mardi Gras Parade, Bishop Arts, Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas
Fight for the beads.
I have this thing about Mardi Gras beads. I love to catch parade throws – yelling “Beads! Beads!” or “Big Beads!” – making eye contact with the Krewe member on the float – the cheap bilious plastic string floating through the air – the jump – the catch – and finally, adding the string to the growing collection around my neck. It’s stupid, but I love it.
Two years ago, in New Orleans, we went out to a night of smaller parades on Thursday or something… sort of a warm-up for the big Super Krewes that were coming up on the weekend. I like these smaller Krewes – they have an irreverent sense of humor that the big, expensive parades can’t match.
At any rate, after a day and night of catching, my neck was festooned with a thick collar of plastic beads – especially the smaller ones thrown by the less-well-financed Krewes of that afternoon and evening. We were hungry so at two in the morning or so we ducked into an Italian Restaurant out on St. Charles past Tulane.
As we sat there I became a little self-conscious about the beads and decided to take them off. That’s when I realized that they were terribly tangled around my neck and that I was trapped, slowly choking in a noose of bright plastic spheres strung on string. I sat there trying to work on the beads while fighting back panic.
“Just cut them off, here I have scissors in my purse,” said Candy.
“No, I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“They’re Mardi Gras Beads! I can’t cut them.”
“They’re just cheap plastic. Cut ’em off.”
But I couldn’t. I have no idea why, but the fact they were thrown through the air and caught made them special, somehow. It took me an hour of careful, patient untangling to get them off.
Now, I’ve accumulated a big plastic tote full over the last few years. It sits in the bottom of a closet and I should throw them away… but I can’t do it. What I need to do is find a parade and walk – throw them myself – return them from whence they came. Back into the wild – catch and release.
That I could do.
Well, for the last two years we are way too broke to go to New Orleans for Carnival. The best we could do, last year and this, is go to Oak Cliff for the Bishop Arts Mardi Gras parade.
It isn’t New Orleans… but it will do . It has to.
Bill Chance 