Mardi Gras Millennial Madness

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New Orleans and Las Vegas are amongst the few places in the USA where you can drink alcohol openly in the streets. Glass bottles are however a no-no, because they make a terrible mess every time they break, which you hear about every ten seconds during Mardi Gras. Floats throw plastic cups into the crowd, who drain liquor out of various plastic containers, and everyone is looking for a place to pee, which is impossible to find. All shapes, colors and sizes of beads line the neck of every person walking the street. The beads have both a social and aesthetic value, so you don’t want to catch just any bead thrown your way. After one day, the streets sparkled with thousands of beads stuck in trees, power lines, and passed out revelers.

The haunting grounds of vampires, ghouls and men in tight dresses, the beautiful architecture and history of the French Quarter makes it the tourist mecca of New Orleans. The parades do not actually enter the Quarter until the last day, but it is always packed with overexcited lunatics, and those are just the celebrities. Decatur and Royal Street fret buzz with authentic jazz. The Quarter is guaranteed to smell funky, a jambalaya of rotting vegetables and decomposing seafood. Speaking of which, the judge plowed us with gumbo, jambalaya (last week’s leftovers mixed with last month’s leftovers), turtle soup, alligator, oysters, binyets, and that lovable mudbug of the Mississippi - the crawfish. Turtle tastes like chicken, but than again, doesn’t everything?

I made my way slowly through the crowds to Jackson Square, where the riverboats on the Mississippi were blowing their horns and the sun was beating down…New Orleans, where even the weather feels the music. I found locals both lovable and scary, like someone else’s pet rotweiller. Later that day I took a boat trip to the bayou, where the words “deliverance” and “banjo” came to mind. Someone asked the captain if its true locals eat beavers. “Them beavers, I don’t stop eating ‘em till them eyes cave in,” he replied, seriously. Then he pointed out a gator, and the German tourists were happy.

The next morning, I heard the loud drum beats of Fat Tuesday in bed, nursing a Hurricane hangover. It was early, and the streets outside were jammed with crafty locals who brought tents, air mattresses and even porta-loos on the back of pick-up trucks. The house was abuzz with activity, as friends and acquaintances of the judge found their HQ. Zulu and Rex concluded the parades; the granddaddies for the city’s elite. Famous for its corruption, New Orleans is known as the Big Easy, but the Judge didn’t like that kind of speak. Although there were cops everywhere, they stood back during Mardi Gras until exactly midnight on Fat Tuesday, when they moved in with riot gear to begin an intense 48 hour clean-up. By Friday, the only evidence of the week’s excess were a few beads, glittering atop the highest trees. The edgy history of the south makes Mardi Gras more than just a carnival. Anywhere else in America they would call it a riot; here it’s just one heck of a party.

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