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Mardi Gras isn’t just about missing a good time. It’s layers of good times—sometimes years/decades. Family, friends, music, parades, great food and drink, chance encounters. Joy. For as long as you’ve celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans, think of all the layers. Here’s mine.
First memory: being a kid in a costume mom made. My dad and the other dads going to St Charles to set up ladders and blankets. Spending the entire day out there eating junk and playing on the neutral ground. Dad standing in the ladder behind me yelling HEY MISTER!
High school: being old enough to ‘go walking.’ Me and my friends dressed cute, walking down the middle of the street before the parade started. College: tbh those Mardi Gras were a blur. Sofas and the sidewalk and ice chests full of beer. So much beer.
Spending the entire day stopping at friends’ houses on endymion’s route, having cocktails, eating crawfish, coming home bone tired but content. Having a kid who was obsessed with parades. He’d get the Arthur Hardy guide and circle every parade he wanted to see. And we did.
There are too many great spots to discuss. But a couple would be the Avenue Pub balcony for bacchus or out front for Zulu. St Stephen’s on Napoleon where we’d go with all the kids who’d eat a ridiculous amount of brownies and chips, tossing the football in the streets bt parades.
Taxiing my kid when he was a little older and his friends to parades. Escorting mom around town to see her favorite ones. She’d be out there with the kids and dancing when the bands go by. Out of town family coming in—those were always fun times.
More recent years, meeting up with friends for St Anne early Mardi Gras morning. Our family tradition of crepes at my brothers Mardi Gras night when everything’s done.
And these are just the ones that come to mind. There are lots of chance encounters and those are probably the best part of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. And the layering. The years of good times with family and friends. And strangers too. I’m old and have lived here all my life.
So that’s around a half a century (!) of Mardi Gras for me. Some years I’m not as into as others and didn’t think it would bother me that much to not have it this year. But it does a little. Not only bc it’s a blast but bc it’s such a part of my life.
I’m happy we’ve still found ways to celebrate this year. And we have! House floats, small celebrations, ridiculous amounts of kingcake being eaten. If we’re still here and it’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, we’ll find a way. Happy Mardi Gras y’all.
