Mark Megahan
After a Covid induced hiatus, Mardi Gras is back. March 1, 2022 officially marked the return of Fat Tuesday. This year, the parade routes are shorter because there aren’t enough police to go around. The ones they have are working 12-hour shifts to make sure everyone stays safe. The good news is that boobs are still all over the place.
Fat Tuesday Festivities
Once again, Mardi Gras revelers broke out the purple, green and gold silk, sequins and brocade. Time to get the party on like nobody but New Orleans can manage. This year’s March 1 Fat Tuesday is the “first full-dress Mardi Gras since 2020.”
The liquored up adult fun got into full swing with “back-to-back parades across the city and marches through the French Quarter and beyond.” The only place masks are required is indoor public spaces.
Anyone who ever ventures to the planet of New Orleans quickly learns two things. Alcohol is mandatory and everything gets served on a stick, from barbecued alligator to Jello shots.
Nobody seems to mind the shorter parades because they can get to the French Quarter clubs for some serious drinking a whole lot quicker that way. Fat Tuesday kicks off the yearly Mardi Gras festival but the party goes on day and night all year round.
“I love Mardi Gras,” Todd Hebert declares, “dressed in a purple jacket with sequined lapels, a pale blue tutu with pink stripes, and a black hat with small horns on the top and a fringe of pink feathers.”
He was on the ferry crossing the Mississippi to take part in the extravaganza. Costumes are everywhere on Fat Tuesday. “It’s the best time of the year. Last year was sad,” he laments.
Let the good times roll
As the Cajuns love to say, “laissez les bons temps rouler” which means “let the good times roll.” You can’t make it along Bourbon street without coming home speaking some Cajun. Magical words like “etouffee” are thrown around with careless abandon. Whatever it really means, the locals say it translates to “damn good eatin’”
On Fat Tuesday, costumed party goers let the good times roll with the the North Side Skull & Bone Gang. Dressed as skeletons, they “wake up the city’s Treme neighborhood, reminding everyone of their mortality.”
This year, the Fat Tuesday celebrations were back in full swing on “just about every corner of the city, leading up to a ceremonial clearing of Bourbon Street at midnight.” That’s when the police pry the last of the naked drunken party-goers down from the lamp posts.
Locals liked up along Jackson Avenue in the city’s Central City neighborhood, bundled in blankets “as they waited for the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s parade, which started decades ago as a mockery of white festivities, with Black float riders in blackface and grass skirts.” That’s the answer to racism. Don’t protest it, throw a counter-party and laugh together about it. “People wore sequined jackets, kids played football with throws they’d caught at previous parades and speakers on the back of a truck boomed with the sound of ‘Mardi Gras Mambo.’”
A man calling himself Bo Ski Love celebrates Fat Tuesday seriously. “This is Christmas to me. I’d rather miss Christmas than Mardi Gras.” Santa Claus doesn’t bring Hurricanes – the kind you can drink. Last year was “disappointing.”
The family drove around looking at houses decked out as floats “but it wasn’t the same.” There is nothing in the world to compare with the annual street festival. “It’s the biggest party in the world.“
