It occurred to me tonight that Australian's don't really do parades. We don't have the big Thanksgiving Day parades, we don't have huge St Patrick's Day parades, we don't have local parades and we certainly don't have anything that is even remotely like a Mardi Gras parade. Nearest thing we do at home that has a similar organisational theme is the ANZAC Day parades every April 25th, and those are a tribute to veterans, fallen soldiers and our fighting forces, often marked by solemnity, thankfulness and recognition of sacrifice… not exactly the stuff huge city wide parties are made of.
Tonight, watching the Perseus and Orpheus parades, we saw some amazing floats, very impressively designed and full of lights and gold leaf and glitter and people in more amazing costumes, and yes… you guessed it – MORE marching bands!
Did I mention that every one of these umpteen marching bands is also accompanied by a handful of baton twirlers, some standard bearers, a gaggle of dancers and a team of cheerleaders? Every single one of them. Even the primary school age kids. And it's so easy to tell the public schools from the Catholic schools… the band kids look the same, the standard bears looks the same, but the baton twirlers, dancers and cheerleaders couldn't look more different if you tried. The Catholic school girls are in modest skirts and often long sleeves, whereas the public school girls are in sequins, fringed 'skirts' (and I use the term loosely!) fishnet stockings and bare midriffs and have dance moves that convince you that they are training to be strippers in the future. It's no wonder they all need so many chaperones walkign alongside when they're all underage and getting their sexy on! O_o
Something else we noticed were that the participants on the floats are throwing so many beads and trying to get them to the back of the crowd, that sometimes I don't think they realise just how hard they are pegging these things at the people. Beads are coming at you so hard and fast, a lady sitting behind us had her crystal sapphire Longines watchface smashed by some by some beads that she was trying to catch. Whoops! Hope she had good travel insurance.
One thing I noticed tonight compared to last night is that the drop in temperature made it even harder to catch the beads. Not because we were all rugged up in jackets and beanies, not because the guys on the floats were cold and throwing poorly… but because when something moving that fast hits your freezing cold hands you've been waving in the air, holy shit, it stings like a bitch! Reminded me of my Dad telling us stories of how the Christian Brothers used to give them the cane on the hands on a cold Toowoomba winters morning… but I digress.
Mr K had downloaded some apps onto the iPhone that allowed us to see where the parades were at. They had a lead car that was basically the GPS track car and you could tell how far away the parade was. I thought it sounded rather twee, but what it actually did was allow you to plan your waiting time. If you knew how many blocks away the beginning of the parade was, then you knew if you had time to pop away from your seats for some snacks (like the awesome Southern friend Chicken-On-A-Stick that we had yesterday), or go grab a monster sized beer, or even if you have tim to go out and find a not too feral portaloo.
Time turns into quite a big factor in this gig, they tell you that the parade starts at 5:30pm or 11:00am and many people are out well before this to stake out a good vantage point, but what you don't realise is that even though you might only be a mile and a half from the beginning of the parade, it might take nearly two hours for them to make it past where you are sitting if you are where we were in the reserved seating where we were. No one tells you how many stoppage there are in the parade route, you find yourself frequently waiting for the next lot to come past. According to some Californians we met, 'The parades is so much quicker on teevee than in real life!' Which pretty much sums it up really. 🙂
These things are bloody weird – there is a rental company that hires out these huge sky effects things. They light up the sky like huge searchlights and rotate around all over the place, and there are many of them attached to the back of various floats and some like this one which is just attached to the back of a pick up truck… both Mr K and I saw this one go past, and simultaneously wondered out loud 'just how much demand is there for a mobile Bat signal round these parts that you can make a whole business out of hiring them out???'
One thing I didn't know about (because my research on this element of our trip was a bit haphazard to say the least – I was busy focusing on accommodation, Mr K was researching the 'what's on' element for New Orleans), is the toasts that the various Kings, Queens and Captains of each parade make. The King of the Bacchus Parade last night was Hugh Lawrie and he made his toast, various other Queens and Captains had stopped out front of City Hall and made toasts too. Tonight, the King of the Orpheus Parade was none other than Quentin Tarrantino, who said that 'this was the most exciting night of his life, and he's 'had some pretty exciting nights in his life before!' He's quite the local down here and considers New Orleans a 'home away from home' after months of filming Django here, he has spent a lot of time here. Another thing I didn't know they did was, after making their toasts, they each smash their glasses from the top of their floats down onto the pavement out front of City Hall… and right at the feet of representatives of local law enforcement officers from the local Sheriff's Department and eveyone cheers! It's just that kinda town! 🙂
After reporting on last night's mess, we were wondering how on earth they get the steets so clean after such an unholy debacle night after night for the duration of the holiday. Mr K went out for a walk late tonight and saw the clean up crew in action. Just after the parade passes through a section of town, he said there are about half a dozen Mexicans (his words, not mine!!) going along the street with rakes scraping all the plastic, food containers and wasted beads into the centre of the street from the gutters, roadwave and footpaths. Then about three guys driving bobcats come along and scrape it all up and throw it into the back of a dump truck until it is full and it is all whisked away. Sounds pretty efficient and explains how they manage to cover the entire parade routes by morning, because things looked pretty clean when we went out this morning compared to last night's war zone. 🙂
Should be tired, but it's quite hard to wind down and get ready to sleep after such huge exciting nights. 🙂 AND, we have two more parades we want to see tomorrow and then it's onto things like French Markets and Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras World!Also as a huge bonus of having spent quite a bit of the last two days at the Mardi Gras parades – I am now completely cured of the unfortunate Miley Cyrus/Robin Thicke, Blurred Lines association! Yay!
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