Everybody dance like there’s ass in your pants
2019 Flora and Fauna Krewe
It’s the end of an era! I’m moving back to Tucson to spend more time with my family. I’m excited to get back to the desert with the smell of creosote, the endless sky and the unbearable, relentless sunshine. And while I pack up, I want to honor the almost 21 years I’ve spent in the most infuriating and incredible city of New Orleans. I woke up at 2:00am on Mardi Gras morning and wrote down my entire parading history, which I think is probably the best representation of my life in New Orleans. I can’t tell my New Orleans parading story without talking about Andrea and Molly, who are the reason I’ve had the most fun, crazy, life-changing experience here. When we evacuated for Katrina, Molly wore a t-shirt that said “Everyone dance like there’s ass in your pants” and I think it’s probably the best slogan for parading and life. Molly, Andrea, Paul, and Steve, the five of us shared many group costumes together and started and quit multiple parades through my 21 years. This is a paltry snapshot of my parading/costuming experiences.
In the beginning…
2005 was my first Mardi Gras and it blew my fucking mind. It was not at all what I thought MG was. I had a shitty mask and costume, the type that float riders wear, that I got at a yard sale. I walked out of my house in the Bywater, early and full of a hangover and stumbled into St Ann, which I followed to the Quarter. There was a giant pirate ship float that rolled with St Ann and shot a confetti cannon every several blocks. I took shots of rum from a pirate’s flask and stared at everyone, totally mesmerized. I ended up under the Claiborne bridge with Andrea. My eyes were filled with the most magical creativity and depravity I’d ever seen. Halloween 2005 was completely different. Post Katrina, we were back in the city, mold everywhere. Boats, National Guard and Blackwater still in the streets. We did a group costume of New Orleans Super Villians- Andrea was an overzealous animal rescuer, Molly was black mold, Paul a toxic refrigerator and I dressed up with two other friends as maggots. We partied at Vaughan’s, which is still one of my favorite bars and was the neighborhood epicenter in the Katrina recovery. I felt shocked at how everything was so fucked up but here we were, partying in the streets. That was an early lesson in how this city greets tragedy, time and again. With humor and grit.
2006 Mardi Gras was wild and emotional. I bought a semi-decent mask at the French Market and wore feathers and some lame dress. I wore horrible strappy platform sandals and ended up with the worst blisters I’ve ever had. Molly and Paul were dressed as their champagne Cadillac. Andrea’s costume is probably one of the funniest that will always stick in my brain- she put on every belt she owned as a body suit and ran around town yelling “Tighten Up! Tighten Up Y’'All! We ended up under the bridge that year, too, and I thought, “I ain’t going nowhere. This is home now”.
2007 Mardi Gras was a major lesson in costuming. We made large paper mache planet heads, each of us a different planet. We only had a hole cut out for the eyes, no ear holes. So all day we just screamed at ourselves and had our voices echo around our ridiculous planet heads. We all got super fucked up that year, which, combined with the planet heads that were completely disorienting, turned into a real disaster. I was dating Doug at the time, who smartly wore a t-shirt that said, “I’m Pluto; I’m not a planet; I’m just a dwarf.” He was the only one with some semblance of sobriety/sanity and probably the only reason we got home safely. Halloween 2007, we had one of the most comfortable costumes we’d ever worn. We were Swing Voters from Florida, and we put baby powder in our hair to make it grey and wore neon tracksuits. I put on that tracksuit and thought, wow, this is why old people wear these! So comfy!
2008 I moved in with Doug’s family and was sick that Mardi Gras. We stayed in Metairie and watched Argus on Veterans Blvd and the truck parade, which I didn’t know existed. On MG day and throughout carnival, most folks in New Orleans and Metairie wear regular clothes, maybe with Mardi Gras colors, bring out their coolers and watch the parades. That year Argus started with Al Copeland’s flashy cars and multiple military tribute floats. I thought, “Well this is completely different”. I vowed never to spend MG day in Metairie again. And I kept my word.
The Turning Point…
2010 was a turning point for my parade/costuming. I was learning how to make better costumes and building street sense from running around the Quarter/Treme for multiple years. That was the year our fivesome created ZooLu, the Animal Crackers gang. We had an appreciation for the Skull and Bones gangs that wake up Treme on Mardi Gras morning and as a homage, we started a little krewe of animal bones. For six years, we dressed as animal bones every MG. The first year we walked from the Tree of Life in Audubon park to the French Quarter. That was the only MG I ever spent uptown. The best part was we stumbled on a fleet of limos that were stopping part of Zulu to cut through the parade. We were told it was Comus, which is a krewe steeped in the racist, classist history of New Orleans. Molly whipped her alligator tail at the limos and blew her loud plastic trumpet/Vuvuzela(?) at the cars and smacked her washboard. It was fucking hilarious. As animal bones, Morgan, Corrina and Magnus were born and we rolled wagons and strollers through the streets. We had picnics on Basin St, watching Zulu roll by and keeping the babies in the shade. We went to the Backstreet Museum and danced with Mardi Gras Indians, Skull and Bones and Baby Dolls. Backstreet Cultural Museum was founded by Slyvester Francis and he greeted us every MG, welcoming us to the porch.
2011 was my first Box of Wine, which will always be the pinnacle of Mardi Gras for me. BoW rolls on St Charles between Thoth and Bacchus, which requires timing, luck and tolerance from the NOPD. The krewe pours wine through the streets to embrace the spirit of Dinoysus and anoint the streets for Bacchus. People talk about skydiving or getting lost in a foreign country as a way to “release the beast” and just abandon the shackles of daily life. For me, that has been Box of Wine. I look forward to BoW every year as a catharsis. It is a practice I want to continue through the rest of my life. Our krewe of five has had some of the wildest, most fun experiences in that parade. What makes it so special are the interactions with the crowd and the random encounters with the other BoW wild things. There is nothing like BoW and never will be.
The Next Level…
2016 was the year my parading went to the next level. I joined Krewe du Krakatoa, a tiki-themed walking parade that rolled with Krewe Delusion. As I understand it, Krewe Delusion was partly a salty, disagreement-fueled spin-off from Krewe du Vieux and partly a response to the post-Katrina landscape. Krakatoa appealed to me because it involved wearing mumus, drinking in the streets and handing out hand-made throws.
Walking parade context: If you are not familiar with New Orleans parading culture, carnival time is the season between the Feast of the Epiphany/12th night (January 6th) and whenever Mardi Gras is, as determined when Easter is, which is determined by the first full moon after the spring equinox . At the beginning of the season there are several walking clubs that roll through the French Quarter and other neighborhoods. These walking clubs exploded post Katrina as the transplants that came in waves during the immediate rebuilding phase were eager to be part of carnival. There is an entire skill set that comes with parading- how drunk to get at the start of the parade, when you hit the bathrooms before the roll, how to pace yourself in the parade, and how you give out throws/candy. There’s skill to how to handle the crowd and how to interact with the brass band. There is a rhythm to it that I learned from Andrea and these early parades.
A moment to talk about hand-made throws: I have had very fulfilling artistic expression through creating throws for parades. My parade philosophy is that you are not just there to party in the street, although that is a big part of the appeal. You are there to put on a resplendent spectacle for the spectators. You should interact and enjoy the crowd and hand out tchotchkes. It is core to what parading is. Many folks neglect that, and I have nothing but stink face for them. Parading shouldn’t be a selfish activity. But lots of white people enjoying a thing always inherently makes it selfish. RANT OVER.
Rolling with Krakatoa was the start of my years helping to start, plan and lead several walking parades. There was a massive scandal with Krewe Delusion in 2017 and several of the krewes split off to form a new parade, Krewe Boheme. We decided to follow and Andrea and I represented Krakatoa in the early days of Boheme.
A note about parade drama- One of my favorite things about carnival in New Orleans is the ridiculous amount of human drama and shit-talking that happens in carnival culture. Parading is serious business to us, and we get extremely passionate about something entirely inconsequential. When I attempt to describe the bitch fests, petty jealousies, scandals and general mayhem that happens in parade organizations, people who don’t live here are understandably confused and bemused. Another part of my memoir will be shit-talking some of the caucasity and audacity of these parade leaders, of which I was totally part of.
2019 was my most triumphant parade year; that year, we started Flora and Fauna, leaving behind the tiki theme from our cultural appropriation reckoning. The concept of Flora and Fauna is to pick a new biome each year and everyone in the krewe chooses a plant or animal to emobdy. Our biome the first year was the arctic tundra and I loved my costume (tundra lichen) and everything about our new parade. For BoW that year I was the Patron Saint of Italian Widows and wore all black with an enormous veil and blood red roses trailing down my body with my Grandfather’s rosary handing off my hand. It poured rain that year and BoW never felt so wild and free for me. 2019 was also the year that I officially joined the Krewe of Muses.
A note about my Muses story- Back in 2007, my friend Beth encouraged me to join Muses along with several other Tulane friends. She told me they planned to close the rolls, but I was broke that year and couldn’t justify the membership fee. Muses closed the rolls and did not open them for a DECADE. During that time, I learned to make shoes with my friends who were smart enough to join, and I became friends with other women on the float they rode. So when the rolls opened, my friends on the float nominated me for a spot and I was accepted to Muses. When you ride on a float in a Mardi Gras parade, you feel like a fucking rockstar. Especially for Muses. You have hundreds of people screaming in your face for a shoe, their faces lit up from the lights on the floats, little children in their ladders or on their parents shoulders with their hands in the air. People dress up and make signs and offer you jello shots for a shoe. The whole Muses experience, from lunch in the French Quarter to the pre-parade to the float loading to the ride is one of the greatest joys I’ve had in this life.
2020 Mardi Gras we had no idea we were probably spreading Covid. I rode in Muses that year; the parade theme was something like Muses Predicts the Future. If I went back to that Muses ride and told myself that in next five years, my life would completely change, I would not have believed it. Well, maybe the divorce part.
I was captain of Flora and Fauna for 2021 and we did a treasure hunt along Esplanade, leaving our hand-made throws for people to find. In 2022, our biome was a bioluminescent tidal pool; parading was something that helped me keep my sanity during the pandemic. But I fell into a deep depression in those years and lost all of my stamina and physical ability to parade. I made modifications for myself in 2022 and 2023 to participate. I’m in a much better place now, physically and emotionally, having crawled out of my dark hole.
I enjoyed this carnival season as my final year as a NOLA resident. As I pack up my glitter and feathers, I’m carrying with me years of building my artistic skills and parading knowledge. I'm not sure how this will translate in Tucson. One thing I am sure of is that these New Orleans streets don’t owe me nothing.
