Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where should I start?  As a New Orleans native, I know Mardi Gras has many traditions associated with it and what it means varies from person to person. The celebration has religious roots, with religious elements that are observed to this day, but when the words “Mardi Gras” and “New Orleans” are mentioned in the same sentence, what most people think about is about as far away from religion as you can get.  But many people think of the parades, so here’s my insider perspective on them.
Mardi Gras parades are held in many locations in southern Louisiana, including celebrations spilling into parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and it has been my experience that the parades and the parade atmosphere gets bigger and more intense the closer you get to downtown New Orleans.  You may think of parades as something that you watch, but you don’t watch a Mardi Gras parade, you are a part of a Mardi Gras parade.  As floats roll by, young children, college students, adults, and even the elderly all get into the action.

Believe it or not, the vast majority of Mardi Gras parades are good clean family fun.  The children stand along the street with family and friends to catch beads and trinkets thrown from lavishly-decorated floats rolling down the street.  Kids run around catching “throws” (that’s what the locals call everything the riders throw or hand off from the float) while adults participate and watch over them with a loose eye.  The value of a 20-cent string of beads multiplies a hundredfold, and the closer you get to New Orleans the more rowdy the crowds get.  Competition for beads will also be more apparent the closer you get to the city, requiring a loud voice and showmanship (to get the attention of the riders) along with a somewhat feisty demeanor in order to snag that gold pair of beads with the fleur-de-lis you had been coveting since the first float had rolled by. 

The downtown New Orleans parades run a couple of routes.  Most come from uptown running down at least parts of St. Charles Avenue, starting about 3 to 5 miles from the French Quarter and ending somewhere near it.  At the start of the parade route, you will find mostly the families that I described earlier, only you find ten times as many of them. This is not a place for people who are uncomfortable in crowds. The atmosphere is intense, people are stacked 10 deep, pushing right up to the floats, with spectators needing to push back as marching bands come down the street interspersed with the floats.  

In this atmosphere, children need to be closely supervised and protected by parents.  Taking children down to the larger parades requires vigilance and experienced families know to stake and block off their area, with the children at the center or sitting atop a specially modified ladder. When the parades finally roll into the downtown area, the idea that this is a family event disappears completely.  This is where the media coverage and the sights and sounds most people from out of town have come to associate with Mardi Gras happen. 

From my experience, most of the uninhibited behavior that is associated with the celebration is not homegrown, but rather exhibited by visitors who take advantage of the event’s tolerance of behavior that would be inappropriate anywhere else and usually is here, too.  That’s not to say that the locals resent or even try to dissuade the antics (it’s more likely to be encouraged), but in this area the crowd is largely tourist. 

Binge drinking, public displays of nudity and crowds so thick that at times a person is forced to move at the whim of others surrounding them is the norm downtown.  It is an experience like no other and I have had some amazing times there, but I think it’s an experience best left to college students and one-time, so-you-can-say-you’ve-been-there travelers.

There’s a lot of Mardi Gras planning information online, including parade schedules and routes and frequently-asked questions.  Remember, you will need to arrive at least 2 hours before a parade starts and be prepared for a slow process leaving the area

I’ll be getting my taste of Mardi Gras this year as a member of the krewe in a mid-city parade, Endymion, on February 13 and I’ll write about my experiences (and share some pictures) here afterwards.  In the meantime, if you have questions, post your comment below.