earlgreytea68 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
earlgreytea68) wrote2012-03-04 06:12 pm
earlgreytea68) wrote2012-03-04 06:12 pm
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A New Englander Moves to New Orleans, Chapter Sixteen: Mardi Gras Recap
The primary reaction of a New Englander to the experience of Mardi Gras in New Orleans is befuddlement. Because there are so many things going on all at once that would never happen in New England that it's basically sensory overload. The nearest approximation Boston has to Mardi Gras is the Boston Marathon, and that is, of course, nothing at all like Mardi Gras. It is, however, a special holiday granted in favor of a large outdoor event, so it's similar enough for base comparison's sake. For many years I lived on the Marathon route, and I watched cops go around breaking up parties in which people were drinking alcohol on the sidewalk by the race, because Boston has strict open container laws and you cannot drink alcohol on the sidewalk like that.
Suffice it to say, New Orleans has no such rules. In fact, I watched a group of high school girls play flipcup with a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of them, and cops walked by and didn't even bat an eyelash. We didn't drink much over Mardi Gras weekend, because we are boring New Englanders, but I did, on Monday afternoon, pour some wine into cups and bring it out to sit on the neutral ground, enjoying the decadent rebellion of sitting on a public street drinking alcohol.
The other thing that happens during Mardi Gras, that I did not realize because I didn't live Uptown last time I lived here, is that people basically camp out on the neutral ground ("neutral ground" is New Orleans for "median," fyi). They literally set up tents and, like, live out on the street for four straight days. On the Thursday before Mardi Gras, I left my house at 10 a.m. to go to work, and there were already people staking out land on the neutral ground for a parade that wasn't going to start until 6 p.m.
Living Uptown and teaching a night class on the Thursday before Mardi Gras are not two things that go together. It took me 45 minutes to get around a block on Thursday night when I was trying to get home. The streets were not closed, but they were jampacked with people, so you couldn't drive on them. It would have made my life easier if New Orleans had just closed the streets, instead of pretending they were open, because I would never have attempted to drive if I'd realized that. (Of course, what else was I going to do? It isn't safe to walk at night alone, and the streetcars weren't running because people were temporarily living on their tracks. So, the lesson learned is: Why was I a loser with a job on the Thursday before Mardi Gras?) I came upon police on horseback, languidly surveying the madhouse in front of them, and shouted to them from my car. Meanwhile, drunk people kept walking by and thumping on various bits of my car and shouting about how I was their friend from the North (my car still has Massachusetts plates). Finally, the policemen noticed me trying to communicate with them, and I asked them when they thought the road would open back up, and they said that the road was open. I looked pointedly at the crowd of people swarming around my car, and then one of the cops turned and stampeded into the crowd, scattering them enough that I could get my car down the next block. Crude, possibly, but effective. I gave up on the idea of getting home and drove to the West Bank and sat at a sketchy, deserted Starbucks and made![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arctacuda talk to me for an hour about Sherlock fanfiction so that I wouldn't get kidnapped and killed. Then I decided to try to get back home again. The parties were still going on, but at least the streets were occupied by roving mobs of people instead of solid walls of people, and I finally managed to get into my parking lot. The gay couple bedecked in beads on the elevator with me took one look at my business casual attire and said, "Aww, you poor thing, you're just getting home from work, aren't you?" I wanted to say that no, actually, I'd gotten home from work hours earlier but couldn't actually get home and so, yes, I was just now straggling in, but then I reminded myself that that would be a Puritan New England thing to say and not a laissez-faire New Orleans thing to say and I had wanted to live on the parade route, so I settled for giving them a wan smile.
The other thing that happens in the camps that crop up on neutral grounds is that they frequently have barbecues. Barbecues with open flames that sometimes leap out of them. I am not exaggerating. Keep in mind that a barbecue is considered too dangerous for me to have on my balcony, but they are apparently perfectly okay in the middle of a sea of drunk people surrounded by highly flammable tarps and tents. I tried to envision Boston permitting its residents to do what New Orleanians are permitted to do at Mardi Gras, and for the first time I began to see the point of this smaller government I hear people talk about. (However, there was a local news story during Mardi Gras about how there was talk about outlawing the barbecues because they pose safety hazards. This story was relayed with confusion, as if the dangerous nature of these barbecues had never occurred to anyone before, and the people interviewed for the story were indignant about the possibility of being denied their open flames.)
Speaking of things that made me feel unsafe: Parents bring ladders with seats up at the top and settle their children into them so that they can better catch the beads being flung into the crowds. My New England family was astonished by this. "But...does that seem safe?" they kept asking me, and I was like, "Here, that is something they consider safe, yes."
So, anyway, my family flew in on Saturday night, and we got up on Sunday and immediately went to the parades, and we were there for a few hours, and we caught a bunch of things, and we learned that my grandmother will literally run down a street at great danger to her personal safety in order to get some silly throw (old people are worse than toddlers in their attachment to Mardi Gras beads), and then we were too exhausted to do anymore. We had to go home and take a break. The New Orleanians on my street were on their third day of partying and settling in for two more; we'd had a few hours and had had enough. (Indeed, my mother, when it was all over, said she was very glad she'd been to Mardi Gras, but she had no interest in ever doing it again).
The best day of Mardi Gras really is Mardi Gras itself. The parade routes are mostly clear of drunk college students, and everything seems more manageable. People walked up and down St. Charles in truly amazing costumes, and my sister sat next to me and we admired the show and eventually she gestured to the display and said, "Can you imagine anyone we know at home ever doing anything like this?" And I laughed hysterically at the thought. Because I couldn't. This entire year for me has been all about the radical differences between New England and New Orleans, and I think, at heart, they all come down to this: The percentage of New England adults who will parade down a city street in an outrageous costume just because is much lower than the percentage of New Orleans adults who will parade down a city street in an outrageous costume just because. All conclusions can be drawn from that.
A few photos:
Bags, boxes, and vases full of Mardi Gras beads. This is just what was left over after my family carried a bunch home in their suitcases. I am meant to be sending these to them. What, I want to know, are they going to do with all these Mardi Gras beads? Under any other circumstances, my mother would call all of this stuff "garbage," but, because someone on a float threw it to her, she is going to store it in a shed somewhere for years. This is what Mardi Gras does to your head.
Cardboard!David "enjoying" the catch of the Mardi Gras:
Beads with a TARDIS on them!
Suffice it to say, New Orleans has no such rules. In fact, I watched a group of high school girls play flipcup with a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of them, and cops walked by and didn't even bat an eyelash. We didn't drink much over Mardi Gras weekend, because we are boring New Englanders, but I did, on Monday afternoon, pour some wine into cups and bring it out to sit on the neutral ground, enjoying the decadent rebellion of sitting on a public street drinking alcohol.
The other thing that happens during Mardi Gras, that I did not realize because I didn't live Uptown last time I lived here, is that people basically camp out on the neutral ground ("neutral ground" is New Orleans for "median," fyi). They literally set up tents and, like, live out on the street for four straight days. On the Thursday before Mardi Gras, I left my house at 10 a.m. to go to work, and there were already people staking out land on the neutral ground for a parade that wasn't going to start until 6 p.m.
Living Uptown and teaching a night class on the Thursday before Mardi Gras are not two things that go together. It took me 45 minutes to get around a block on Thursday night when I was trying to get home. The streets were not closed, but they were jampacked with people, so you couldn't drive on them. It would have made my life easier if New Orleans had just closed the streets, instead of pretending they were open, because I would never have attempted to drive if I'd realized that. (Of course, what else was I going to do? It isn't safe to walk at night alone, and the streetcars weren't running because people were temporarily living on their tracks. So, the lesson learned is: Why was I a loser with a job on the Thursday before Mardi Gras?) I came upon police on horseback, languidly surveying the madhouse in front of them, and shouted to them from my car. Meanwhile, drunk people kept walking by and thumping on various bits of my car and shouting about how I was their friend from the North (my car still has Massachusetts plates). Finally, the policemen noticed me trying to communicate with them, and I asked them when they thought the road would open back up, and they said that the road was open. I looked pointedly at the crowd of people swarming around my car, and then one of the cops turned and stampeded into the crowd, scattering them enough that I could get my car down the next block. Crude, possibly, but effective. I gave up on the idea of getting home and drove to the West Bank and sat at a sketchy, deserted Starbucks and made
arctacuda talk to me for an hour about Sherlock fanfiction so that I wouldn't get kidnapped and killed. Then I decided to try to get back home again. The parties were still going on, but at least the streets were occupied by roving mobs of people instead of solid walls of people, and I finally managed to get into my parking lot. The gay couple bedecked in beads on the elevator with me took one look at my business casual attire and said, "Aww, you poor thing, you're just getting home from work, aren't you?" I wanted to say that no, actually, I'd gotten home from work hours earlier but couldn't actually get home and so, yes, I was just now straggling in, but then I reminded myself that that would be a Puritan New England thing to say and not a laissez-faire New Orleans thing to say and I had wanted to live on the parade route, so I settled for giving them a wan smile. The other thing that happens in the camps that crop up on neutral grounds is that they frequently have barbecues. Barbecues with open flames that sometimes leap out of them. I am not exaggerating. Keep in mind that a barbecue is considered too dangerous for me to have on my balcony, but they are apparently perfectly okay in the middle of a sea of drunk people surrounded by highly flammable tarps and tents. I tried to envision Boston permitting its residents to do what New Orleanians are permitted to do at Mardi Gras, and for the first time I began to see the point of this smaller government I hear people talk about. (However, there was a local news story during Mardi Gras about how there was talk about outlawing the barbecues because they pose safety hazards. This story was relayed with confusion, as if the dangerous nature of these barbecues had never occurred to anyone before, and the people interviewed for the story were indignant about the possibility of being denied their open flames.)
Speaking of things that made me feel unsafe: Parents bring ladders with seats up at the top and settle their children into them so that they can better catch the beads being flung into the crowds. My New England family was astonished by this. "But...does that seem safe?" they kept asking me, and I was like, "Here, that is something they consider safe, yes."
So, anyway, my family flew in on Saturday night, and we got up on Sunday and immediately went to the parades, and we were there for a few hours, and we caught a bunch of things, and we learned that my grandmother will literally run down a street at great danger to her personal safety in order to get some silly throw (old people are worse than toddlers in their attachment to Mardi Gras beads), and then we were too exhausted to do anymore. We had to go home and take a break. The New Orleanians on my street were on their third day of partying and settling in for two more; we'd had a few hours and had had enough. (Indeed, my mother, when it was all over, said she was very glad she'd been to Mardi Gras, but she had no interest in ever doing it again).
The best day of Mardi Gras really is Mardi Gras itself. The parade routes are mostly clear of drunk college students, and everything seems more manageable. People walked up and down St. Charles in truly amazing costumes, and my sister sat next to me and we admired the show and eventually she gestured to the display and said, "Can you imagine anyone we know at home ever doing anything like this?" And I laughed hysterically at the thought. Because I couldn't. This entire year for me has been all about the radical differences between New England and New Orleans, and I think, at heart, they all come down to this: The percentage of New England adults who will parade down a city street in an outrageous costume just because is much lower than the percentage of New Orleans adults who will parade down a city street in an outrageous costume just because. All conclusions can be drawn from that.
A few photos:
Bags, boxes, and vases full of Mardi Gras beads. This is just what was left over after my family carried a bunch home in their suitcases. I am meant to be sending these to them. What, I want to know, are they going to do with all these Mardi Gras beads? Under any other circumstances, my mother would call all of this stuff "garbage," but, because someone on a float threw it to her, she is going to store it in a shed somewhere for years. This is what Mardi Gras does to your head.
Cardboard!David "enjoying" the catch of the Mardi Gras:
Beads with a TARDIS on them!
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(And your grandmother and I are spiritual kindred. I had NO IDEA what I would do for plastic beads until I lived through Mardi Gras.)
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And yeah, Mardi Gras definitely makes people turn a little bit crazy!
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Yeah, it looked like there needed to be some kind of counterweight? Of course, the counterweights were frequently drunk, so that didn't seem so safe, either...
Huh. I guess they are plastic? I didn't really think about it. What did they used to be?
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THROW ME SOMETHING, MISTER!
*runs down street insanely chasing TARDIS beads*
(Can't wait to see you next weekend! The get-together drama is continuing to escalate - our meet-up may be be the only drop of sanity I'll have all weekend - which is a very scary thought!)
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Very excited for our meet-up!!!
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This is because eventually, you can distract the toddler. Old people have better long-term/short-term memory.
That said, TARDIS BEADS! I wonder if they can be purchased on the internet?
p.s. the first photo is showing up obnoxiously large, for some reason.....
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Hmm. I bet the TARDIS beads can be purchased on the Internet. EVERYTHING can be purchased on the Internet.
Thanks for letting me know about the photo! I'll go and fix it!
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I think the ladder seats are a bit safer, because the other option is having the child on the shoulders of a (possibly) intoxicated adult, who may or may not try to make a running dash after a dubloon. So, ladders are slightly safer?
And yes, I LOVE the seeming lack of all rules in N.O. :) I came down here once in college, and when I got back to school I was so completely befuddled by the fact that I couldn't just bring my drink from one bar to the next. And I love freaking people out with the existence of "Drive-Thru Daiquiri" places. It completely confuses them :D
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You have a good point that the shoulders of drunk adults would be less safe...
Heh. I am one of the people confused by the lack of rules! I'm like, "What *is* this free-for-all place?!"
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My god those are a LOT of beads. No wonder the box you sent weighed so much.
I LOVE the TARDIS beads. That's definitely your best catch this year!!! (Did you only see the one string of them or were there more?)
ETA: After reading the rest of the comments I have to ask - What is a doubloon?
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I only saw that TARDIS bead. It was a seriously good catch.
A doubloon resembles a coin, like the ancient doubloons from pirate times.
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Wow even more impressed by your TArDIS bead now. One of a kind!
Ahh okay so aside from the beads thats what people throw off the floats?
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