My First Mardi Gras

By: Amy Thomas

The day after Mardi Gras is filled with trash, glass, puke, possibly regrets, and, if you really open your senses, the traces of an ancient esoteric magic. 

I, Amy Thomas, have just experienced my first Mardi Gras as a New Orleans citizen.

I feel like this statement should stand alone.  It is just as important a saying as I have conquered Mount Kilimanjaro, or I have reached complete happiness, because experiencing Mardi Gras, as a local, was one of the most incredible moments in my life. 

What was so great about Mardi Gras was that it was absolutely nothing like what the rest of the world thinks it is.  It is not about showing boobs, which I never once heard, its not about vomit and one night stands and potential alcohol poisoning, or shootings on Bourbon Street, in which some of our citizens so graciously displayed the complete breakdown in our social system in New Orleans with many young African American males and gun violence, it is about joy.  It's that simple.  It is about being completely unabated, unabashed, and beautiful, it is fireworks and orgasms, it is Christmas and your birthday and all your best friends, and pure joy. 

My day started with a three Mardi Gras Indian showdown a block down my street in the Seventh Ward.  I am not going to describe this scene because it is something you can only witness to truly comprehend, but I can tell you it is steeped and bound with an intense and honorable sense of heritage, strife, and cherished ceremony.  The Chief's feathers are absolutely incredible. It was everything I imagined it would be and I am honored to have been a witness to it.

We had watched the docking of royalty for Zulu and Rex the night before on Lundi Gras.  It is basically the King and Queen of the most esteemed black and white organizations in the city.  The pomp and circumstance is a great counter to the partying idea of Bourbon Street, and an excellent representation of the preservation of history this town breathes and bleeds.

The parades that we've been witnessing have been such an incredible array.  I've seen Babylon, Chaos, Muses, and Endymion where huge tractor pulled floats were stocked with enthusiastic masked throwers of beads, cups, doubloons, coconuts, or whatever, these people are all members of the krewe.  I've seen Marigny parades like Krewe du Vieux and Chewbacchanal which were flagrant and geeky and homemade, so much more my style. I thoroughly enjoyed the Marigny parades out of them all.  Which is why when I was making my walk to the Quarter on Mardi Gras, walking down Esplanade toward Royal, I was stopped by the St. Ann parade in the Marigny and changed course for my sister neighborhood's version of Mardi Gras.

I never made it to Bourbon Street and I don't really care. I will probably take it in one year--for a block or so. But I learned Mardi Gras has nothing to do with Bourbon Street, that is just where you filter out all the tourists. Mardi Gras is about being great, it is about getting it all out before lent in the most lavish, fantastic, and hedonistic way, the last hurrah. And to be honest I have taken it seriously for the first time since middle school, I have actually given up fast food for lent. I am not a Christian, so I really have no religious reason to do this, but the fat of the last two weeks of Mardi Gras, the mouthwatering Cream Cheese King Cake (I got mine from Alois J. Binder Bakery at Frenchmen and Rampart), the alcohol, the food, it is so much after a while that you are ready to give something up by this point. It just feels more worth it.

The costumes, oh my god the costumes.  I started to cry walking around thinking to myself among the throngs of umpa lumpas, panda bears, french royalty, nymphs, and bunnies, that I live here, and that is something special.  That is something incredibly special.  I spent my day taking in the parade, eventually walking in it just so we could get through the streets, made it to the Quarter to catch beads from sweet old lady tourists on balconies, and got to sit on a porch at Frenchmen and take in the crowd.  It was a long day of steadily and carefully drinking, I had to work for a while, made a crapload of money and free booze and more beads, and finished my night following a drum line of eastern Europeans towards my home.