Mayhem

How does one even do Carnival on COVID? It's a citywide party people come to from all over town... all over the world, really.  They all stand in the street talking, eating, drinking, sharing with friends, family and strangers. If you're doing it right, you will see every single person you know at least once by the end of the season. Carnival is a social binder. But you're supposed to be isolating; "socially distancing" as we say now. You can't really make plans to see anyone. You can't have anybody over. You should probably just stay home.  Is Mardi Gras a marathon or a sprint?  How can one do either if you can't even catch your breath?

But what if your quarantine quarters just happen to sit a block or so off of the parade route?  Are you really going to just lay there all night when you can hear the drums outside? Wouldn't you be just a little bit tempted to bundle up, put on a mask, and oh so carefully creep up to St. Charles to take in a few moments from the other side of the street?

No, of course you should not do that.  You should stay your sick ass in bed until you get better. 

I did try and do that on Friday, though. Here's what it looked like. 

Yeah okay so you really can't see that well from back there. At least not when the marching units are going by. The floats came out okay, though.  Even the Oshun floats, although all I really saw of Oshun was the king and court stuff.  After that I had to go back in and take a break.

So here's something about having COVID, you might not have heard.  It really sucks. Even when the fever is gone, and even when your cough is mostly under control, the fatigue is still very freaking real. My only plan this evening was to walk a block and kind of stand around for a while.  But I couldn't even do that without going back in to rest and get warm.  Oh also it rained during Oshun (it always seems to rain on Oshun) and I wasn't going back out until that stopped. 

By the time it stopped, Cleopatra was already rolling. Looked like they had some kind of gem theme going. This float was Diamonds.

And this one was Turquoise

Oh and Lapis Lazuli

By the way, I don't think I'd noticed before now how much nicer my float pictures come out when I take them from this distance. Maybe not great for detail, but there's a sense of scale and balance to them this way. And you can see the crowd well.  Also I can still zoom in when I want and... oh my that doesn't look very safe!

Don't worry. Nobody fell off a float.  Not on Friday night, anyway. 

Here's what did happen. 

Entergy New Orleans blames a car striking a utility pole for the electricity failure during Friday night's Uptown Carnival parades.

Spokesperson Lee Sabatini said the car hit a pole on St. Charles Avenue at Terpsichore Street at about 9 p.m., darkening the river side of St. Charles as far as Prtania Street between Felicity Street and Andrew Higgins Boulevard. Almost 1,500 Entergy customers were powerless until 10 p.m.

Wait. Is that what actually what happened?  Witnesses differ.

Bc there was no car that hit a pole. After that report, I walked Terpsichore over to Prytania and then back across St. Charles to Carondelet. Everything was business as usual. Asked people on both sides if they’d heard a car hit a pole & no one heard anything like that.

— Candice, right? (@YesICandice) February 11, 2023

Ok, fine, then, people from the internet. Please tell us about whatever crazy conspiracy y'all are on about now before Elon shadowbans you or something. If it wasn't a car, then what?

Confetti cannon at erato appears to have hit a transformer. Saw it blow. We have no power now. Parade halted.

— @Sharney@mastodon.social (@sharney) February 11, 2023

Knocking out the power by shooting confetti from a parade float sounds like something out of a 60s TV Batman episode. It's plausible, though. Jefferson Parish has already banned metal confetti specifically because of this problem having come up in the past. Still, Entergy is out here saying it was a car accident that nobody saw. Why would they make something like that up? I mean, sure, we know they're super defensive about the fragility of their infrastructure and all but they wouldn't just lie about it, right?  I mean what if somebody had it on video?

Hi, I have footage of confetti cannon blowing transformer. pic.twitter.com/YFmKJaKP1Y

— ⚜️A. Ruffins⚜️ (@lifethrufiction) February 11, 2023

What if there were more than one video, even?  What would this story look like then?

A video shared with The Times-Picayune, by a person who asked to remain anonymous, shows what presumably is a float-mounted confetti cannon blasting toward utility lines on St. Charles Avenue during the Krewe of Cleopatra parade. The blast results in sparks flying and darkness descending on the area.

How much would that change Entergy's position on the matter?

Sabatini said a confetti cannon might have contributed to the power outage, because confetti made of Mylar can act as a conductor on power lines.

Oh okay the cannon "might have contributed." That's good. I might have contributed to paying my light bill this month. I'll have to check back on that too. I sure hope they don't cut me off in the meantime. (You know.. on purpose for once.) Maybe I should say something to my Congressman about this problem.  You think I can get his attention?  I mean I'm all the way in the back of the crowd and he's up there on that float. 

Troy's a West Bank guy so it figures he'd show up in the Alla (Algiers, la) parade. I'm an Uptown guy and even though this West Bank parade comes through my neighborhood now, I barely had the energy to stay out and watch it.  It looked like they were doing a festivals theme. But it was cold and I was already overspent. So I let the rest of it go and went back inside to collapse. 

On Saturday, I was even more determined not to overdo it. I found an oak tree root I could sit down on, conserve energy, and people watch. I can't really drink. And it gets lonely when you can't go into the crowd or really even talk to anybody. But I like to take in the scene, and listen to the music, and watch some of my favorite totems roll down the street.  

But first I had to watch this cop parade. Troy Carter was also in that. 

So was Susan Hutson.  At least her float was better than the one in Krewe du Vieux. 

Oliver Thomas was there too. He was on the Army float.  This made me think of Elvis Costello. 

Also, in the cop parade, the cops. 

Don't know how this affected their delicate deployment issues. Maybe this is why nobody could substantiate Entergy's "car accident" theory about the power outage. The cops who would have taken that report were getting ready to ride on the float?  Sad, if true. 

Anyway, I was low on energy again Saturday afternoon so I hung around just long enough to see the big catfish before I went back inside. Ordinarily I like to watch Pontchartrain and play the little fill-in-the-blank game with their float titles. I just couldn't do it this time. 

Like I said earlier, though, I don't feel like I'm participating in the ritual unless I am able to bear witness to certain of the idols presented for admiration by the throng. The catfish is one. The Sparta helmet is another. So I had to go back out.

Sparta.. or.. The Spartan Society, now, I guess.. was, like Oshun doing a kind of global festivals theme. 

But theirs was a little more esoteric. These floats depicted Carnival celebrations around the world and the music associated with them. So we got float titles like, "Maslenitsa - Hopak" and "Carnival-Danzon" or  "Ostatki-Polonaise" Also if you are wondering what the big reflective jacket looking aura is in these photos, it is a ghost. When you have to step back from the crowd to photograph Mardi Gras floats, it turns out that you can see ghosts. 

Anyway, shortly after this, I ghosted.  It was too cold and starting to get wet and, um, I had COVID so.. time to go in and rest.  Besides, it would be a while before Pygmalion showed up, anyway. Why was that?

After taking too wide of a turn at Jefferson Avenue and Magazine Street, the Pygmalion parade stopped for at least 30 minutes before resuming on Saturday night.

The krewe's seventh float, titled "Jester," hit a tree. The float then appeared to disconnect from its tractor trailer.

Killer trees! Here's what that looked like. 

Jester float hits tree. Everyone is okay. @wdsu #mardigras pic.twitter.com/ynW5k3QaDt

— Jake Kleinmahon, MD (@jakekleinmahon) February 12, 2023

It's absolute mayhem. 

@wdsu Rider falls off Pygmalion Jester float after it hits tree. pic.twitter.com/GnAIKxjHZj

— Jake Kleinmahon, MD (@jakekleinmahon) February 12, 2023

You could call the police but they all went by in a float earlier that afternoon. The trees must have known they had free rein too because it just kept happening. 

On Sunday afternoon, a somewhat similar incident took place, when the 43rd float in the King Arthur parade plowed into what apparently was the same oak branch.

A NOLA.com editor riding in the parade said the Big Bird head on the float hit the limb. She said a second tractor driver arrived and tried to complete the turn, but hit the limb again.

Noooo not Big Bird too!

How did this happen?  Don't they inspect the routes anymore?  Of course they do. I can vouch for this because I saw it with my own eyes too but many people reported observing crews on the street taking measurements. This guy from the city confirms that's, at least, what they were supposed to be doing. 

A city spokesperson, John F. Lawson II, said via email Monday said that the route had been “previously inspected leading up to parade start dates” and that floats had routinely made the turn in the past.

Lawson said that after Pygmalion, members of the Department of Parks and Parkways' Forestry Division “confirmed that the branch was outside of the clearance zone.” The branch, Lawson said, “was roughly 10 feet from the curb, leaving approximately 18 feet of roadway for the turns to be made.”

Obviously everybody did their job.  Only one explanation at this point. The tree did it on purpose. Time to face the consequences.

A twisting branch jutting from an age-old oak tree was rammed by two parade floats over the weekend, causing considerable damage to the floats — in one case, decapitating a large jester — and frustrating delays to the parades.

By Monday afternoon the fern-covered limb at Jefferson Avenue and Magazine Street had been cleanly removed by the city’s Parks and Parkways Department. The 25-foot-long, 9-inch-diameter branch was a safe distance from where floats were supposed to pass, according to City Hall, and shouldn’t have interfered with the turn in the first place.

Sorry, tree. But let this be a lesson. 

And for me too. Let it be a lesson to not go to Mardi Gras if you are sick with COVID.  I was so beat from just sitting outside for 45 minutes on Saturday that I couldn't make it out for Sunday at all.  I'd better be over this by Thursday at the latest. Otherwise, we might have to take it out on that tree I was resting on.

A little bit of fun's never been an insurrection

 

We are parking according to our own individual levels of risk aversion this year

These signs were eventually explained by the mayor, btw. Good luck figuring out what she means

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of rituals lately.  Actually let's call "lately" the last couple of years. Beginning around the time of 2020's Carnival of bad vibes and portents, and then throughout everything that followed that time, I think we've probably all become a bit more introspective spiritually.  Early on during that season, probably the first Sunday, (I have foggy memories) I received a talisman.

Surely the appearance of the jaguar, our city's adopted avatar of defiance in the face of oppression, was a sign.  Our spirit animal had come to give us strength in trying times. As it turned out we would need it. Carnival 2020 was a difficult tumult of bad scenes and bad vibes that played out under the shadow of a crumbled Hard Rock hotel, the husk of which still held the remains of victims trapped by its collapse. Throughout the season, the universe seemed to be signaling its disapproval.  The chaotic weather caused controversial cancellations and reschedulings of some of the season's main events. Not one but two parade goers were shockingly crushed to death by floats. The city was headed for a major reckoning over these events before the pandemic drew everyone's attention to even worse problems. 

I kept the jaguar around my neck through all of that.  Did it help?  Maybe. Valerio didn't stop the bad things from happening.  But that isn't how talismans work. Their magic is not so profane. We keep them close and observe their rituals for a higher purpose. They are objects of contemplation, inspiration or humiliation if necessary. The fable of Valerio is about our will to freedom and a warning of what happens when we are unprepared to win it. It also tells us that tragedies and ecstasies travel in each other's wake.  On Thoth Sunday, 2020, my bike ride back uptown after getting off the float took me through the Quarter. I go the long way around so that I don't have to cross over the parade route during Bacchus. As I passed near the Hard Rock sarcophagus, I stopped, clasped the jaguar figure around my neck and gave it a kiss.  The bad vibes Carnival 2020 was about wind down.  A few days later we would close it out watching a Rex parade titled "Omens and Auguries." 

Whatever it was we may have done wrong in 2020, the pandemic has forced us to wait a full two years before we've had a chance to break the spell. I have decided to treat this Carnival as more of a sacrament than a party. If we do it correctly, there will no doubt be some room for joy. But the fundamental focus is on performing the rituals. For me, thus far, this has meant paying homage to parade season's iconic totems as they roll down the street. I have dutifully visited and genuflected before the following:

 

 The Phunny Phorty Phellows streetcar

 

 

 

The fabulous Krewe Du Vieux

 

 

 

The enigmatic AllaGator 

 

 

 

The majestic Sparta helmet

 

 

 

And the mighty Pygmammoth

 

 

I have heard the rapturous sounds of the Southern University Marching Band leading the Krewe of Femme Fatale on a Sunday morning. I have been greeted by King Arthur.  I have taken communion a few times over in the form of consecrated moonpies handed down from the deacon riders.  I've met Elvis.

I even made my own king cake. 

 

 

A little bit, uh.. rustic looking, I guess. But home baking is more about the meditative process than it is about style. I'd never done this before and this seemed like the year to try. It's a simple recipe I can post it later. [Update: There it is!] The result wasn't as light and fluffy as your Gambino's or Randazzo's or what have you. But it also wasn't as dense and bready as Rouses so I think that's a success. And if we happened to exorcise any demons in the process, well, that's all the better.  There are still plenty more to face.  

 

The pall cast over 2020 still hasn't been satisfactorily vanquished. We never got to have the promised citywide discussion about parade safety. Instead the mayor and the police have made the summary decision to shorten most of the routes. The new routes emphasize only the most tourist-intensive parts of town and have been described as "ruinous for locals."

Many krewe members and parade goers said they have emailed and continue to email City Hall to request that their neighborhood parade continue without change.

“This whole plan is ruinous regarding Carnival for local residents and families,” said Richard Parisi, who has watched Thoth line up near his house for over 40 years. “Thoth is for locals more than for visitors — and this arrangement is going to ruin that.”

The Krewe of Thoth originally did not parade to Canal Street, Larson said. It was solely an Uptown parade until the early 1960s, when Mayor Chep Morrison requested the krewe extend its route to pass in front of his newly built City Hall.

Now, Larson said, the krewe is willing to go back to its roots and give up the downtown part of the route to keep Thoth on Henry Clay.

The city didn't take Thoth's offer to trade the downtown part of its route in order to keep its traditional pass in front of Children's Hospital and other uptown homes for "shut-ins."  No explanation was given.  Nor was it explained why similar favors were granted to Zulu and to Endymion each of which was allowed to maintain the unique traditional portions of their routes with minimal changes near downtown. Although, one could argue, in Endymion's case, that cutting out the Howard Avenue portion just makes sense given that it would take the parade by the troubled Plaza Tower. Why take the chance of anyone even having to think about a collapsing building during Mardi Gras this time around.  

It has been suggested by apologists for Cantrell and NOPD that the route changes are temporary. But there is little evidence for that in the actual statements made by either of them.

Officials stressed that these changes are temporary but did not say how much additional manpower the city would need to go back to the original routes.  

“If that traditional spot that you’re used to being on … has changed this year, just know that we will consider that again coming for 2023 and future parade years to come,” Police Chief Shaun Ferguson said. “But we must be real with what we have right now and work with the capacity in which we can to make sure that the city is safe.”

Meanwhile, the fix for 2020's other lingering issue could hardly feel any more temporary, or at least thrown together for the sake of expedience. The plan for avoiding a repeat of the horrific accidents that killed two parade goers last time out is to simply slap a little piece of netting along the gaps between tandem floats. 

In an interview earlier Wednesday, float builder Barry Kern said a City Hall representative asked him several months ago to design something to make tandem Mardi Gras floats safer. Kern, CEO and president of Mardi Gras World and Kern Studios, said he’s conceived a device that is “basically like a cargo net” strung between float segments on “heavy duty bungee cords.” The device, which is still being designed, will be translucent, flexible and “not super complicated,” he said.

Look, I really hope Kern's "not super complicated" solution is the right fit. I wasn't too happy with some of the more draconian ideas floated earlier such as barricading the entire route or having escorts walk along the floats to shoo people away. This idea preserves the experience much better. But is it actually any safer?  I saw a few of these over the weekend and I can see why some might doubt it. 

Probably the bright orange netting seen here during Cleopatra on Friday night...

 

 ...is a little bit better than the all black netting seen here during Sparta on Saturday night. 

At least at night, anyway.  Day or night, the thought also occurred to me that the netting might actually make the floats into more of a hazard if someone happened to get caught up in it.  Maybe that's unlikely.  I don't know. Just don't go tugging on it or trying to climb around like Spiderman while you're out there. I'll sleep better knowing you didn't. 

Anyway, that only covers matters of bad vibes left over from early 2020.  Since that time, new disturbances have arisen.  For example, one question on everyone's mind now: is there even such a thing as an ex-superkrewe? Or maybe the term is ex-so-called superkrewe.  We need a new word for this, whatever it is. 

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - This year will look different for the Mystic Krewe of NYX.

“We are rebuilding our sisterhood. We’re very excited about having a smaller group to just rebuild and restart and reconnect with each other,” said Julie Lea, Captain of NYX.

The dramatic decline in membership came after a controversial social media post by Lea at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. Some NYX members even staged a protest, calling for her to resign.

In 2021, former riders sued Lea in civil district court claiming a list of accusations including improper use of krewe funds. Her attorney denied those allegations.

Take a spin through our archives following the NYXcapades over the years and ask us if we could possibly have seen anything like this coming.  NYX always struck us as some kind of scam. The overt racism is really just the last straw. Of course, one of the things you do learn in the multi-level marketing game is that, sometimes losing 3,000 of your nearest and dearest suckers is really the best thing that could happen to you.  At least that's what Julie says. 

In 2020, NYX staged its largest parade ever with 82 floats and 3,400 riders.

For 2022, the krewe will present 17 floats with 240 riders.

“It is a big change,” said Lea. “And I think what we’re finding just moving forward is, again, those personal connections. When you’re over 3,000... 3,400, it’s very hard to make the personal connections.”

“Even though we did it, and everyone was very friendly with each other, it was hard to get to know folks on a one-on-one.”

Really looking forward to making a few one-on-one connections with the NYX rump this Wednesday.  They're rolling with 7 percent of the folks they brought along on their last parade but the odds that any one of them might throw you a confederate flag have skyrocketed. 

As the newly self-appointed spiritual adviser to Carnival 2022, my guidance to you, in case this does happen, is to just let it drop.  Kick it away if you have to, like the woman at Gallier Hall says she did in this story. But if you happen to catch any confederate flags or "Lee Circle" beads or anything like that what you should not do is post them. Do not put them on Instagram and tag the mayor in for comment. Do not call Doug MacCash to manufacture some cheap NOLAdotcom content out of it. These are evil talismans. They are anti-Valerio. Cycling them up through the media only gives power to them and to the trolls who choose to wield them.  Just look at the curses already conjured by their cult.

Co-chair James Reiss III, a representative of the Rex organization, warned against the tossing of "illegal/political” throws, perhaps heading off incidents of recent years such as distributing Confederate flag beads or beads advocating the preservation of the Robert E. Lee monument in New Orleans.

Reiss cautioned against the overly enthusiastic tossing of throws at the Gallier Hall reviewing stand, where visiting VIPs gather. And he said bands should pause to perform at Gallier Hall for only 30 seconds.

Have we ever seen anything like this before?  In over a hundred years of these style of parades have we ever had an official warning from the city government (well, it's James Reiss so it's from the shadow government but close enough) that the "VIP"s are worried about being beaned by "overly enthusiastic" float riders? This is bad vibes all around.  The antagonists on either side of it feed off of each other. 

Again, my advice, don't look at it, Marion. The only revelation to be found is destruction.  I mean, I don't think anyone ought to throw confederate flag beads either. But "political" can mean a lot of things. You see a lot of political commentary at Mardi Gras. There is political satire from the left (well, center-left anyway) in Krewe du Vieux or from the right in Chaos and Krewe D'etat. Muses is often politically themed although played straight down the conventional center for the most part.  You can agree or disagree with or be amused or offended by any of that. But what you really do not want is the likes of James Reiss deciding for you what kind of political is and isn't acceptable. 

There is an inherent politics in Carnival. But its appeal is more universalist than partisan.  Carnival rituals, most of the time, end up reinforcing existing hierarchies through the absurdist pantomime of their inversion. But they also serve to stoke the imagination and maintain the idea that subversion is achievable. In an early chapter of the recently published The Dawn of Everything the late anthropologist David  Graeber and his co-author the archaeologist David Wengrow have this to say about Carnivalistic traditions.

What's really important about such festivals is that they kept the old spark of political self-consciousness alive. They allowed people to imagine that other arrangements are feasible, even for society as a whole, since it was always possible to fantasize about carnival bursting its seams and becoming the new reality. In the popular Babylonian story of Semiramis, the eponymous servant girl convinces the Assyrian king to let her be "Queen for a Day" during some annual festival, promptly has him arrested, declares herself empress, and leads her new armies to conquer the world. May Day came to be chosen as the date for the international workers' holiday largely because so many British peasant revolts had historically begun on that riotous festival. Villagers who played at "turning the world upside" would periodically decide they actually preferred the world upside down, and took measures to keep it that way.

Carnival offers people a dream of a different world. These are rituals of hope. There is something political buried in them but it is politics of a deep spiritual nature. The city's attempts to restrain it, over-police it, and reduce it to a wholly commercial product are an act of sacrilegious political repression. They're a strike at the civic soul. 

How do we defend ourselves from this kind of spiritual warfare?  Well we have our mantra supplied by the (occasionally lapsed) priest Arthur Hardy. Every year his Mardi Gras bible publishes the same Mardi Gras FAQ. Our favorite call and response verse:

Q: Is Mardi Gras staged for visitors?

A: Not really. While the "greatest free show on earth" draws hundreds of thousands of visitors, that is not its purpose. Mardi Gras is a party the city throws for itself.

We have our Sentinel supplied this year by the artist Simone Leigh. This is her Prospect 5 installation at the circle we once named after Robert E Lee.

The text below the sculpture reads:
 

Simone Leigh’s bronze sculpture Sentinel (Mami Wata) is sited at the base of the pedestal that once held a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The title of this work means “guard” or “watchman,” and it honors the work done by activists, citizens, and New Orleans city officials to remove symbols of white supremacy from public view, while also suggesting the possibility for a new protective spirit at this central downtown location. Sentinel (Mami Wata) takes the diversity of African cultures in New Orleans as a starting point, evoking African folklore and spiritualities. Mami Wata, a water spirit or deity, is known under many names across the African diaspora, including Yemaya, Yemoja, and Iemanja. Leigh’s sculpture holds forms of knowledge that have been passed down through spiritual and masking traditions in the city and beyond, wherein masking signifies transformation, not simply concealment.

Celebrating rituals and practices throughout the African diaspora that includes New Orleans, Sentinel (Mami Wata) marks a new chapter in the history of the renamed Egalité Circle, wherein the site represents one point in a larger constellation of public art, conversation, and historical memory. This constellation decenters whiteness and the legacies of colonialism, renewing access to knowledge and culture that has been suppressed by the falsehoods of white supremacy. Rather than perched atop the imposing multistory column that served as the pedestal for the Lee monument, this new work of art sits at ground level, not looming over people but emerging from among us. Leigh's sculpture is a temporary proposal for what could stand in the place of the previous monument—Sentinel (Mami Wata) will remain at Egalité Circle for a brief period before making space for other histories and narratives.

And, of course, we have our patron St. Valerio. Ready as ever to guide us through another ordeal as we solemnly seek to purge the demons of past seasons of misrule.

Putting St. Valerio out in the kitchen to protect our home from bad vibes this Carnival season pic.twitter.com/sPvLexCUPL

— skooks (@skooks) February 18, 2022

 It's Carnival time again. Meet me on the other side, another direction.

Dance like the cops are always watching

It's the first weekend of parade season. And so now is the time when we perform the ritual of the Carnival Ordinances Reminder Press Conference. This year, we've got an exciting new venue in the NOPD Real Time Crime Center surveillance camera batcave. As you can see, it is a fantastic space for comfortably arranging a dozen or so public officials behind one podium as is in keeping with local tradition.

#FBI New Orleans SAC Eric Rommal participates in a #MardiGras press conference with Mayor Landrieu and city officials to discuss safety and security during the upcoming Mardi Gras season. SAC Rommal also encouraged all visitors that if you #SeeSomethingSaySomething. pic.twitter.com/atmjCHDvUO

— FBI New Orleans (@FBINewOrleans) January 30, 2018

Tuesday's event featured performances by the heads of NOPD, NOFD, Parks and Parkways, Homeland Security, as well as BOTH MAYORS.   Take it away, kids. And I mean, literally, they are taking stuff away. 

During a news conference about Mardi Gras safety preparations Tuesday, city officials said ladders already set up before Friday's parades will be removed during sweeps. Crews will begin sweeps Tuesday and continue them into next week.

Officials said ladders and setups on public green spaces -- like the neutral ground or the sidewalks -- will be disposed of during the sweeps. Items cannot be placed on the parade route more than 24 hours ahead of a parade.

In addition to the sweeps, officials said people will not be able to claim their items if they are removed. City officials said they plan to only dispose of the items that are collected.

Sure enough, within an hour of the end of today's presser, crews were spotted out on St. Charles ripping down ladders and hauling them away. Probably the highlight of the press conference was Parks and Parkways Director Ann Macdonald delivering the shot heard round the Krewe Of Chad.

“You’re creating a barrier. We have bolt cutters,” she said. “You can’t reserve a piece of public green space. That paint means absolutely nothing.”

We have bolt cutters and we know how to use them. I can't tell you how gratifying that was to hear. If you've followed this blog for any length of time you'll probably be aware that we've been on the Carnival ladder beat for pretty much ever. I contributed some comments for a Gambit story in 2013. The year before that I wrote this article for NOLA Defender. I've watched the problem become worse in little steps each year. But I've also watched the city's response slowly become better and better.  This year it looks as though they are finally taking it seriously.

They're also following a smart game plan.  Start the season off by making a big show of it. We all know that once the parades start rolling, there isn't going to be time to focus solely on enforcing this stuff.   But on the first day, when everyone is paying attention and there aren't a million things happening at once, that's when you go out, find some ladders and make an example of them.  

City sanitation and parks crews had commenced "constant sweeps" to remove any ladders placed on public spaces such as neutral grounds more than 24 hours prior to the start of the first parade on Friday, Macdonald said. The sweeps would continue through next week, she continued, and any property taken away would not be returned.

"All items will be disposed of," Macdonald said. "We will not be cataloguing any ladders or personal items."

If I had to guess, I'd say the sweeps probably aren't as "constant" as they are claiming there. But that's fine, actually. Pretty soon we'll be at a point where we're always 24 hours away from one parade or another anyway.  The point was to get on TV early so that people see that this is an issue.  Maybe they'll be watching Channel 4 where, for some reason, they've decided to frame the whole story as thought the space-hogging ladder people were the real victims. But it doesn't matter. As long as the message gets across that there are rules in place and the city might actually enforce those rules, I think people might start to police their own behavior a bit better.

While it's nice to see the city start to do something, it's concerning to see the rationale they provide for stepping in. 

The city code appears to allow tents along parade routes, requiring only that "ladders, tents, grills and other personal effects" must be set back 6 feet from the curb.

But Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration has decided that tents with walls, as opposed to open-sided canopies, constitute a "barricade" that might "obstruct passage along public property," something that's prohibited.

“This is a homeland security threat,” Landrieu said. “We need to be able to see. There can be tarps, but there can be no tents.”

Umm.... no.  A tent is not a "homeland security threat."  I agree they can be a threat to a good fun shared experience when they needlessly appropriate large chunks of the neutral ground. They impinge on the communal experience of the street festival that Carnival is at its best.  And preserving that experience is really where the city officials should be focused. Obviously, they have other priorities this year.

We've already seen the emphasis on security manifest in the plan to "streamline" the parade route and format. We're also seeing it up on street corners up and down the parade route.



We're told the "Real Time Monitoring Center" where these cameras all feed into is fully staffed now. We're also told FBI will be monitoring your social media feeds. So if you are going out to the parades this week, remember to be on your best behavior and dance like the cops are always watching.

I haven't had a chance to FOIA the tapes yet but if my hangover is any indication, they will show that we went a little too hard for the first Friday night.  I should know by now that's way too early to get out the whiskey.  This is Miller Lite time only.  Not that there wasn't any Miller Lite. The Green Thing was full of those.  But I ended up using it to trade with a street vendor for peanuts.



I'm interested in seeing how krewes adjust to the new restrictions on the number of bands and marching clubs that can appear between floats.  Oshun's solution appears to have been to just start the parade with nine or ten dance teams in a row.  The Dancin' Divas here were one of many.



You never expect Oshun to do anything elaborate anyway. But line of dance troops followed by the several court floats of "Goddesses" kind of made it feel like the parade was taking a while to actually start.  Eventually the emotional support peacocks showed up and everything was fine.



Oshun's floats were themed around Louisiana festivals. There are enough of those these days to make a parade that spans the globe. Certainly, the streamlined route would never fit it anyway. So they had to pick just a few.  Here's a Seafood Festival.



And a Po-Boy Festival



And, well, you get the idea.  There was one float I didn't get a photo of but couldn't figure out.  The signage said, "Louis Armstrong Festival" but the figure on the float was definitely Michael Jackson.

I think Cleopatra might be hungover this morning too.  If I was taking swigs off the whiskey too early in the season, this krewe was going for the big guns earlier in the year than we are used to seeing them. Here is St. Aug leading the parade.



Maybe this is the new normal now that all of the West Bank parades roll Uptown.  Cleopatra is a bigger event than what we've been used to. Bigger floats, bigger throws, just bigger in general.  The themeing is still very first weekend. That's okay.



No peacocks in this one. But there were other kinds of birds; roosters and ravens and turkeys.



What was surprising, though, was the appearance of so many marching clubs. Fancy ones too. Elvi, Sirens, Muff-A-Lottas, and others not pictured here.







And, well, yeah. That was Friday. I gotta shake off the.. uh.. shakes and go see Pontchartrain before the ladder people get all the good spots.  I trust the real time monitors will let me know when they get here.

Rainy Day Fun(d)

Cameron Henry isn't having any fun.  

House Appropriations Chair Cameron Henry said that he was eager to get the budget bill out of the House and on to the Senate. A final plan will be hashed out between the two chambers once they have their own versions in place. The legislation had to start in Henry's committee though, under the legislative rules.

"There's a bigger picture here and I can appreciate no one wants to make cuts," Henry said. "It is a miserable experience. It's not fun."

It's hard to blame him.  The governor did call everybody up to Baton Rouge during Mardi Gras to work on  all this stupid budget stuff. On the other hand, he did try to make it as easy as possible.  Seems kind of spiteful of them not to take advantage of that.

Disagreements are almost exclusively between the governor and the House Republicans. Edwards wants to use $119.6 million worth of reserve funding, called rainy day money, and avoid cuts to elementary and secondary education, prisons and others areas. The rest of his plan reduces spending by about $60 million and moves money around in the budget.

House GOP leaders are less inclined to use rainy day money. They say that's a short-term fix that doesn't address Louisiana's continuing financial turmoil. They want larger and more permanent spending cuts, for long-term change. 

Problem there is "long term change" in their minds just means deeper and more permanent cuts to vital services. Hospitals, higher ed, K-12 funding are all (again) on the chopping block.

The House GOP plan that was approved Friday would make use of $75 million of rainy day money. It includes $55 million more in cuts than the governor's plan, for a total of $115 million worth of cuts overall.

"What we must do is attempt to stop spending more money than we have," Henry said. 

Funny thing about that, though. Henry's plan isn't to stop spending the money we don't have. It's more about pretending we have more money than we do... in order to cut that too.  

Proponents of the plan to use the money from vacant positions discussed on the floor some 1,750 state government jobs that they say are funded but not filled.

Democrats questioned whether the money actually exists in those agencies budgets after an earlier round of cuts.

"That money's not real," said Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin. "There's not $8 million lying over here or lying over there. That's fake money."

The House being the House, though, went ahead and passed the "fake money" budget. Every Republican (plus Neil Abramson, of course) voted for it.  Today, the Senate will try to fix whatever it can of the mess. We'll see how that goes.

As for us, we're going back out to the parades.  Last night while the legislators were arguing over rainy day funds, were standing out in the actual rain watching Oshun and Cleopatra. 



St. Mary's here is the only picture I managed to get during Oshun. It was raining a lot. Kind of a shame as it looked like this could have been one of the better Oshun parades. Not that that's saying a whole lot. In Oshun's case, it just means it looked like there were more large floats.  They do lose points for these corporate branded throws.



Oshun looked like it could have been a pretty good Oshun. Cleopatra looked like it could have been huge. In years previous, you weren't likely to see the Elvi on the first night, for example.



Also Disco Amigos. Sorry about the blurry photos. It was raining a lot.



Not so long ago, these specialized variety acts didn't show up until much later in the week.  Lately they've become more of a standard element. They fit Cleopatra's Vegas-type theme, though.



As for the cold and rain, maybe that fit the occasion as well.

Sen. @ReginaBarrow says lawmakers should use full rainy day fund: "We're not in a rain. We're in a hurricane." #lalege

— Melinda Deslatte (@MelindaDeslatte) February 18, 2017

How to win at Carnival

Parade win list
Weather: good
Beer: lots
Hang out with friends and family: yes
Meet new people: yes
Help children catch lots of stuff: yep

— skooks (@skooks) January 30, 2016

Maybe Mardi Gras is a marathon. Maybe it's a sprint. Or maybe it's a triple jump or a sack race or a game of horseshoes where no horseshoes are actually thrown because that would be too expensive to insure. During the last two episodes of our fake radio show we've examined the possibility that it might even be a metaphorical football season. If that's the case, then our team is doing pretty well after the first weekend.

First, a quick note about what we didn't see.  We're based Uptown very near the parade route which makes getting across town to see 'tit Rex or Chewbacchus a tall order logistically speaking.  In past years we've gotten to see a few Barkuses but the Sunday schedule has become so overloaded on St. Charles, that even that doesn't happen anymore.

But, as much as I'd like to see the downtown parades, I think the full schedule is actually a good thing.  Chewbacchus Saturday, in particular, proves the city can, despite official protestations, handle simultaneous parades following different routes. This, in turn, takes some of the pressure off of either route from overcrowding or #KreweOfChad encroachment. I'm sure one of these years, we'll ditch on our neighborhood stuff and make a plan to be down there.  But, in the meantime, we're still catching all the uptown parades.  Here's how that went.



In some ways, it's easy to be Oshun.  Oshun is the opening act. It doesn't have to blow anyone's mind. It just has to show up and get things started.



People know what to expect from Oshun.  Its floats are very simple. It has only a few bands and marching clubs. Nothing fancy. For the most part, the crowd is just happy to see the parades have begun.  On the other hand, it's not so easy to be Oshun.  This is a parade, now in its 20th year, known mostly for its own modesty.  So, even though there are less impressive parades than Oshun on the schedule, Oshun is the parade people are most likely to attend expecting to be unimpressed. So what we have is either a case of managed expectations that are easily overcome, or a bad reputation that pre-ordains the response.



2016 Oshun, as it turns out, was a perfectly nice parade. The modest floats looked good. The riders seemed to be having a good time. I don't even remember what the theme of this parade was but it doesn't seem like that should matter very much.  What mattered was that it started to feel and look like Carnival season again.



Oshun was followed by Cleopatra.



This was also appropriate for a Friday night. Cleopatra is one of the displace West Bank parades that we've only seen a few of uptown now and we aren't entirely sure how to feel about them.  It's almost like what happens when a new sports team moves to your city.  You feel a little like you've stolen something from someone. Do you even want to enjoy that? Shouldn't they be "rocking" the neighborhood they came from?





Well we managed to make do under the circumstances. Remember if you bring a young child with you as well as at least one serviceable set of shoulders you can come away from even the opening night parades with a pretty impressive haul. 



Like so many other annoying people on social media this weekend, I tried to Periscope a little bit from the parade route.  The result was a 10 second grainy video of a band walking way with a pan over to a child yelling at the camera that a float was coming and she would need lifting. We won't try that again.  By the end of the night we were feeling our age.

That is, by the way, the same age as Captain Sam here.



I can't believe I was almost too hungover and tired to run out and photograph this fish Saturday morning for only the ka-jillionth time in history.   But that's fine. It's worth seeing an old friend. Besides, who ever wants to miss the Krewe of Pontchartrain's ridiculously easy fill in the blank puzzle floats?

These were all based on state nicknames. Such as...



Here is "The _ _ P _ R _ State"



The Treasure State



And, of course, The Prostitution State



Menckles wasn't even out of bed yet so I was out by myself with the camera during Pontchartrain. I took a walk up and down the route just to check stuff out. Here's a quick little report on that.

The #KreweOfChad infrastructure really starts to get heavy as you move uptown above Washington Avenue.  All this was up around Sixth and Seventh streets, I think.



This guy was selling Icees from what looked like a pretty innovative little rig.  He said they are non-alcoholic, unfortunately.



I ran into another guy selling beers out of a big aluminum tub he had set out on a portable table in a driveway.  On the ground in front of the table was a pool cue as well as a "whole set" of billiard balls in a plastic grocery bag I could have had for $60.  For $150, I could have had a framed sepia toned photo of what looked to be some nuns sitting in a room.  "It's an antique," was all the guy said when asked to explain  it.

Even more ridiculous, though, nine dollar sandwiches.



The retrograde social commentary just down the street from there was free.



Speaking of retrograde...





Seemed like the appropriate guy to ride with Choctaw (another West Bank transplant krewe) and its increasingly uncomfortable redface theme-ing.



Still, in all, the award for worst parade of the weekend has to go to Freret, enthusiasm of its King-For-Life City Councilman Jason Williams notwithstanding.



Freret looks like it may be having trouble filling out its membership. Several of its floats were half-empty to mostly empty.



According to the Arthur Hardy guide, Freret has 250 members. That makes them about the same size as Oshun. But Oshun fits its riders on smaller floats whereas Freret rents a set from Blaine Kern. You can read on the sides of the floats a list of which parades each is designated to appear in this year.



And there's nothing wrong with that. As you can see, several krewes do it like this.  Unfortunately, this particular set of floats are too big for Freret's membership.  For viewers, the experience is kind of like opening this "Party Size" bag of Zapp's  and finding out the "Party" only fills about a third of the package.





Anyway, if you're looking to join a parading organization next year. Consider Freret. They could use the help.

That's probably enough for one post.  We'll look at the Saturday night and Sunday parades in a subsequent entry.