Travels with Snowbirds 2015 February 12 to 17, Mardi Gras

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Travels with Snowbirds 2015 February 12 to 17, Mardi Gras

The one all about Mardi Gras parades

The festival of Mardi Gras starts about 2 weeks before Fat Tuesday. Festival is the operative word. There are parade, concerts, masked balls and other pomp and circumstance you might expect at a 2-week long party.

There are many social clubs called Krewes. To be a member of a Krewe involves a financial contribution as well as a time and work commitment. Plans for the next year’s events start 2 weeks after the current years activities end. Annual dues can be as little as $100 to up to multi thousands. The dues pay for floats and throwaways – beads and other trinkets. The higher the financial contribution and the larger the krewe memberhip, the more elaborate the float and the higher the value of throwaways. If a krewe member wants to ride on the float, they are responsible for purchasing their own costume. This includes the kings and queens, the knights and maids and other people on the float. Krewe membership is mostly either men or women. So, krewe members do not participate in a parade every year, as there are only a limited number of places on a float. BUT, the larger krewes have many floats and many members can ride. The parades that take place earlier in the week are small, with small floats, cheaper throwaways and less glittery costumes and are not as elaborate as the larger parades closer to Fat Tuesday. The bands that provide the music are local high schools and music clubs.

I need to take a break here to talk about the bands. The earlier parades had ONLY hih school and prep school bands, with a very occasional middle school band. EVERY band I saw had brand new costumes. BRAND SPANKING NEW! The uniforms were typical band uniforms, 3 colors, with the school name emblazoned on everything. Most of the schools seemed to be African American schools, both student body and staff. There were only a few all white schools, and even fewer mixed race. The post popular head gear was a gladiator looking thing with plumage of one type or another. A ‘typical’ band consisted of a drum major (I saw one with 5!) followed by flag and/or baton twirlers. The band had about 100 marchers with the usual assortment of brass instruments, but with one exception – 10 many of each instrument. There were 9 brand new white tubas in most bands. In addition to this 100 instruments, there was the drum line, or should I say drum lines!!! Small ones, mid sized ones, large ones. Then the cymbal players!! Following the band was the dance line, usually about 30 girls of all shapes and sizes with very skimpy glittery costumes. If this is the size of the band, what can the size of the football team be? Check out my photo blog (which might or might not be published by the time this one hits the internet, for more pictures. As the days progressed to Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, the bands changed to prep schools and colleges. Their uniforms, while wonderful, were a little older, but I did see one college band with 21 (yes, 21) tubas. An interesting fact – these bands are PAID for their participation. No wonder they have beautiful uniforms!!! I tried to find out what the going rate was, but no one had any idea.

One of our tour activities was visiting Kern’s Mardi Gras World, the studio where many of the float parade are designed and built. Once the krewe has decided on their theme, they contract with a place like Kern to build the float according to the theme, and pull it in the parade with their army of large tractors. As a matter of fact, every now and then I saw a tractor pulling nothing, and it occurred to me that this was so in case a tractor broke down there was a spare available to take over. The warehouse was empty, all the floats were in their staging area for their respective parades. This company is a big deal. They also make figures for Disney and other high visibility parades.

The Bacchus parade on Sunday night was one of the biggest of the week, but because it was Sunday it was less attended. We have reserved seats in a grandstand on St. Charles. This consists of about 10 sections of bleachers, enclosed on the back, sides, and front with plywood. There is a small entrance where you must give your ticket and there are two absolutely disgusting porta potties. We are driven by school bus to about 5 long blocks from our parade post. We are not the only people with tickets to this reviewing area. By the time we arrive, at least an hour before a parade passes, the only seats left are at the end of the area and we have to climb over everyone. It’s all about where you sit. You want to be in the front row if you want to catch beads and other trinkets. Generally these seats are already taken by tall fat men with very long arms, and little of the good stuff gets beyond them. But, I did ok and got some prized stuff, mostly when it hit me directly in the hand. My good trophies include a poster from The Endymion krewe, a few stuffed animals, a few beads with blinking light, and many, many beads. The best thing I got was an oyster set of beads. The beads have opened oysters spread throughout with a big ugly blinker thing hanging down, really cute and tacky and tasteless. Sometimes the tossers want to get rid of a large amount of beads and will throw the whole bag. This is pretty dangerous for me as I lose sight of things in my transitional lenses. I got hit in the head twice by full bags, which I didn’t even end up getting. While recovering from the blow someone else would reach down and pick the bag up. GROWL. Only one night did I sit entirely next to people in our tour group and they were eager and ready to share all beads. I plan to take all my beads home and decorate my apple tree in my garden, similar to what they do here in New Orleans.

One of our bus drivers has told us that she is going to put a bag in the front of her bus for any unwanted beads we have. She will take them to the group home her special needs twin sister lives in. They will wash the beads, sort them by color and sell them to the krewes. Ingenious.

The Baccchus parade was the most elaborate. Some of the floats were 5 or 6 floats long. One was an alligator 5 floats long. It was amazing, and I think I got some good video of it. I will get it onto the photo blog.

Most of the parades take place during the day, but on Fat Tuesday they happen all day long and end by sundown. Our bus will pick us up at 7:30 am. Ouch.

There are 3 buses attached to our group. After an hour or so of viewing, one of the tour guide helpers waves their long blinking red light and if we want to go to the bus and go back to the campground we can. It’s just a long walk…..I am averaging just under 10,000 steps a day, and once had 11,000.

Time for bed, enough for tonight. I hope this has given you an overall look at the parades.



Kat out

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