Halloween: Costume Your Face Off...In New Orleans!!

By:  Amy Thomas

In a town that thrives on masks, parties, mischief, and mayhem, Halloween is just the kind of holiday for New Orleans--and the nerve center of all this mayhem culminated in an exploding atom on Frenchmen Street.

 I work on Frenchmen so Halloween weekend meant a lot of work and long days and nights watching others on debaucherous jaunt in the street.  It also meant I had an excuse to wear ridiculous costumes at work, one night I was an overdosed disco chick and the other I went Tori Spelling in her Saved by the Bell Years. 

The payoff to all this work and no play was that I somehow had Halloween off. This was going to be trouble.  My costume for the big night was a murderous bad-ass Mayan forecasting the end of the world.  It took my a hot minute to get this costume together. I had chicken feet hanging from this giant neck piece/top I had, along with fake ears, cryptic writing, and blacked out eyes.  Like I said, costumes are taken very seriously in these parts.

I started out at R Bar, which is always nice, and conveniently is at the end of my street. People were spilling out of the bar in any and every type of costume.  The streets were starting to fill and cars were starting to be completely blocked from passing through.

 I didn't know what to expect at this point walking around the corner off Royal to Frenchmen and getting slapped in the face by thousands of people packing the streets for blocks and blocks.  It was a leviathan sea of enunciated inebriation.  There were unfortunate cars being danced on, DJ's in the street, bearded women, jello shots, kegs, a lot of men dressed as women, Tobias in blue men phase, glow sticks, elicit drug exchanges, trumpets and saxophones dancing into the streets from every bar, and Jersey vampires giving it to you with attitude.  It was a completely beautiful party. 

See you on the Halloween flip side, as Elvis says goodbye to the Leprechaun.