Thankfully managed a good night sleep last night (thanks to a few Valium), and was quasi compis mentis this morning. Decided to skip breakfast and head down to town in search of a cuppa and get ready for a big day o' parades. Weather looked promising (about 23 and cloudy), and we had ticekts booked for the reserve bleacher seating which turned out to be an awesome plan. Here's a few shots I took of the detrius left over from the previous nights parades…
Lots of people make these bright coloured step ladder seats to put their kids in, the kids can see the parades and the parents get to know exactly where the kids are – win/win if you ask me. These lined nearly the entire 5 miles or so of parade route.
There was three parades on today called, Okeanus, Krewe of Mid-City and Krewe of Thoth. In all honesty these largely ran into each other, so I was having trouble figuring out where one ended and the next one began. A few initial observations… the atmostphere in this place is amazing! Everyone is in a party mood, people are dressed up in crazy purple, gold and green outfits and by half eleven – most people were on the turps. I couldn't get over the open containers… everywere people drinking in the streets and no one being carded (though the drinking age is 21, clearly many of the drinkers weren't), even glass containers were all good.
It's hard to describe the atmosphere of the place, everyone from grandpas to babies are dressed up and ready for a huge day. It feels like New Years Eve, Christmas, Big Day Out, the Ekka and Disneyland all rolled into one! It's absolutely crazy… everyone is beyond excited and you can see if in their faces and feel it in the air.
At first, it felt really odd to be jumping up and down and screaming at the people on the floats to throw you some beads – it feels a bit like begging – but after a while, everyone is jumping and waving for beads, and you're swapping with your neighbours to help everyone get a good collection. Sometimes the beads are coming at the crowd so thick and fast that you end up dishing around under the bleachers to try to collect some of the ones that got away (Mr K said if felt like he was 'dumpster diving' down there… so many empty beer cans etc, so I left him to it), and sometime the guys on the floats are throwing entire bags of beads all in one go. Some of the floats were incredible you could see that a lot of time, effort and no doubt money goes into preparing them. They are pretty creative and range from holiday themed and hunting themes to some themes I just couldn't make out! 🙂 Every now and again an un-manned fload would come past and we could throw some of the broken beads back which was fun.
In between all the floats was what surely is every single marching band known to man. Seriously? Louisianna, how many marching bands can you have? There were marching bands for the local elementary schools and local high schools… and all I could think was, who is paying for all their spandexed sparkly uniforms and funny hats? That shit must cost a fortune. Felt like every kid and his dog was in a marching band today. And it's such a long slog – approximate 5 and a bit miles – by about 4pm, you could see even the poor kids in the bands were totally over it by the time they reached the centre of things where we were at Lafayette Square.
We had a break from parading just in the nick of time, left about ten minutes before the last floats went by and found a nice restaurant on St Charles to have a quick bite to eat before the night parades were due to start. Great plan! Stumbled onto some awesome catfish served with slaw and potato salad (literally the BEST potato salad I have ever tried) and BBQ pulled pork sandwiche… full of win on the tasty nosh front.
After that we went back for the Bacchus Parade which this year had a theme of hunting. I took heaps of photos of this with my proper camera, so I'll have to update those later. Saw Hugh Lawrie, who is the King of this year's Bacchus Parade, make a toast and say a few nice things. Then he chucked some beads and the night time parade rolled on… and on… and on! So many marching bands, this time from the US Marines, the US navy, the US Coast Guard, and every university in the state (and possibly from out of the state too!). This parade had the coolest floats – there were big whales, shrimps, bears, you name it. There was a two story tall King Kong and a T-Rex and all sorts of cool stuff. So much fun. Soooo many more beads. We had offloaded all the morning beads into a bag because them things get pretty hot and heavy around your neck after a while, but after about half an hour at Bacchus, we were weighed down again! They had huge double decker floats with about 20 guys on them just hurling out beads for hours… I can't figure out where the hell they were storing all those beads on the floats. There was just beads hanging from every light fixure, hook and post on them.
After nearly 10 hours of parades, we were both shattered. We had met some lovely people, a local named Mary who spent the morning with us explaining what all the parades were and which band was from where… and telling us who was on the floats and what groups they represented. We also found ourselves in Commonwealth Corner during the Bacchus Parade, surrounded by two poms, a Canadian, a Welsh guy and ourselves… all we needed was some Aussies (can't believe I came all this way and had to endure a conversation about the cricket!). Have to say, we have had an absolute blast. Found ourselves weighed down with even more beads! Final haul from just the parades today, looked something like this (there's no way we can take all this home!):
The way back was a little special. Late at night, drunk people everywhere and not a cab to be found and no buses or trolley cars running up and down St Charles. Decided we were going to have to walk… and I could not get over the mess. We walked about a mile and a half (thankfully New Orleans is largely very flat and well laid out for tourist who are likely to get themeslves lost) through what looked like the biggest dump you've ever seen. I could not believe the amount of rubbish in the streets – empty cans, broken bottles, plastic bags (from the beads), food trash, litter, broken cups and crap… and beads. Broken beads, smashed beads, beads the floats had run over, just littering the ground. I estimate about half of what gets thrown off the floats ends up in the trash looking at how much crap was laying around the ground.
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