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.

Open ended entitlement

Lee Zurik looks at the ongoing Hollywood South debacle.

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - When Miley Cyrus made the move from music to movies, one of her first releases was shot in Louisiana, back in 2011. "So Undercover" had a budget of nearly $14 million.

“It received a straight-to-DVD release in 2013,” says media critic Matt Brennan. ”It barely made a splash and I hadn't heard of it until I looked at it for this interview.”
But Louisiana taxpayers helped plug the movie's budget gap by writing a $3 million check - taxpayer money, handed over directly to this flop, as part of the state's film incentive program.

“It's an unaffordable program,” says Jan Moller, who leads the nonprofit Louisiana Budget Project in Baton Rouge.

I wonder how many people actually understand that the state just writes out checks to these movies studios and receives only about 23 cents on the dollar return on investment.

Moller says the Motion Picture Investor Tax Credit program is sucking money from higher education and healthcare. “This is an open-ended entitlement program that is costing the state more than $200 million a year,” Moller says, “at a time when we have a $1.4 billion shortfall.”

  If people did understand this better, then maybe this dumb Druids float would look a bit different.

So how is it so far?

WWLTV:

And as the parades begin, so does the city’s new Carnival rules. 

Some of the biggest changes: ladders, chairs and grills have to be six feet from the street, private port-a-lets cannot be on public property, and no one can cordon off an area.

But with a shrinking police force, some wondered whether they would actually be enforced.

“I'm going to push it as far as a I can until they tell me I can't, and then I'll do whatever they enforce,” said Uptown resident Nick Moncure as he set up his tent.

But Friday night, police did enforce the rules. They told groups to move their chairs six feet from the curb, but Dale Fortner said that made it possible for others to stand in front of him and block his view.

“It kind of takes away some of the pleasure of watching the parade, because I’m not a young man anymore and I don't like standing up for a couple hours,” said Fortner.

Poor Mr. Fortner. It's just not the same if he can't sit just five feet over there for some reason.  Speaking as someone who is grappling with the early signs of age-induced not wanting to stand so much, (man my back is stiff after just two days of parades)  I still don't understand what is the matter with keeping your chairs to the back.  If the chairs and other obstructions are placed away from the curb, there's more room for everyone to move about.  This way, if you feel like being in the front, you can get up and walk there for a while and then come back and sit some more.  The chairs and ladders in front are what keep the crowd from sharing space easily.

Anyway, I'm glad WWL found signs of rules being enforced because I didn't notice much of anything different out there Saturday.



Does the ordinance say anything about tents specifically?  They're probably the worst thing you can put out there.  Here we see a tent set up with some chairs and ladders and other items roped together to form a barricade around a huge piece of neutral ground where people would otherwise be able to stand or pass through.



One or two of these isn't a problem on the first weekend but, come next Sunday, they'll be lined up one after another effectively canceling anyone's access to the neutral ground.

No one on Orleans Avenue seems to have gotten the memo either.

But people are already making preparations. NOPD already has the barricades out, and Orleans Avenue is already being marked off by Endymiongoers— and has been since Wednesday night. No sign of tents, stakes, port-a-potties or the Krewe of Chad yet, but these folks have already made their reservations:

Follow the link to see Gambit's photography of the marked territory.

There's a bit of rain today so the crowds will probably be too thin get a good feel for how jammed up the route might get next weekend.  On Friday and Saturday, though, with moderate crowds, it was pretty comfortable out there.

Friday, Menckles and I had to split early so we didn't catch much of Oshun or any of Cleopatra.  I did manage to get a couple minutes of video from the St. Mary's Academy Marching Band.



After that we went to see a rock show.  And then we broke a carnvial rule by hitting the town a little too hard on the first night.  I still don't know how I managed to rally in time to catch any parades on Saturday... or even if it was a good idea to try... but the 39th Krewe of Pontchartrain was coming down that road one way or another.  And, for some reason, we were there.



See the look on the tractor driver's face?  That's pretty much how I felt.

Anyway, Pontchartrain's theme was "What's Eating New Orleans?"  And that could have been really clever if they wanted it to be.  But sarcasm isn't really for Pontchartrain's matinee audience.  So, instead, they just themed their floats after "iconic" New Orleans foods.



The Pontchartrain float titles are always little fill-in-the-blank puzzles.  They are very easy.





Did you get them? Please remember to return your pencil at the desk when you are finished. It was fun and all, but when a badly hungover person stands and watches a parade of giant foods roll by, that person's stomach begins to do funny things.  So as soon as Pontchartrain ended, we went in search of remedies.

Luckily we didn't have to search very long before we came upon just the thing.



Pho Orchid is the latest in a string of ventures to open in the space next to Igor's on St. Charles.  None of its predecessors has had much staying power, though.  Hence the blank space on this sign.



If they keep making soul restorative bahn-mi like this, though, maybe they'll stick around a bit.



Feeling a bit better with  full bellies, we spent Choctaw just trying to walk it off a bit. Choctaw is one of the krewes recently sucked over to the Uptown route from the Westbank.  Of these immigrant krewes, this year, I've managed to miss Cleopatra entirely and catch only glimpses of this one from across the street.



I can't keep up with this. Are teepee floats something you might find listed on Airpnp?   I'm still having a hard time coping with the fact that Airpnp is apparently not satire so who knows?

Choctaw's theme was... something about travel, I think.  I don't know, I was in recovery. Anyway, here's a picture of a pumpkin float.


The most anticipated event... okay, well, the biggest curiosity of the day was the first voyage of the new Krewe of Freret.... not to be confused with the old Krewe of Freret which stopped happening back in the 90s long before most of the organizers of the new Krewe even lived in New Orleans much less knew how to work a Mardi Gras.  They're starting to figure it out, though.  Kind of.  Here's what they did Saturday.

First, they put a candidate for city council on their king float featuring a giant sign with his name on it.



I'm still not sure if this technically violates the prohibition against carnival krewes making political endorsements in their parades but it clearly breaks that rule in spirit, at least.

Their theme was, "There's a first time for everything" although it wasn't really very clear how the floats fit the theme.  This one says, "Have we lost our head?" and features the headless horseman.



According to Uptown Messenger, Freret was going with a (sort of) horror theme because they were "lampooning their own return from the grave."  But this is kind of weak since the new Freret doesn't really have any connection to the old Freret so it's not appropriate to describe this as a "return."

But the keen observer will have recognized these as the floats from this past October's Krewe of Boo.

Here's Krewe of Boo's "Brides of Dracula" float at the French Market.



And this is the same float in Freret as... well.. something.



This is completely normal, by the way.  Floats are often shared and recycled among krewes every year.  If you look closely at these, you can see precisely where they will appear this season.



Of course, if you're going to do this, the trick is to theme a little more creatively than Freret did.  Also it's a good idea to have all the floats at least 50 percent filled with riders.  Too many Freret floats were largely empty.

Despite all this, it's important to remember this is the group's first ride.  They'll figure it out.   Anyway, they seemed to have a good time out there.



They also featured a couple of marching clubs.  This is Dames de Perlages. They make little beadwork costumes.



This was.. some sort of Mexican wrestler inspired thing. I didn't catch the name.



Here is the first ever doubloon printed by the (new) Krewe of Freret.



The WCBS, I am told, stands for "We Can't Be Stopped." Ok.

We didn't catch much else from Freret.  I was interested in seeing some of these "locally produced" greener throws they kept telling us about. As far as I could tell, though, they were still throwing plastic beads... if fewer of them.

They did get these folks from ARC to follow the parade with bead recycling bins, though. So that's pretty cool.



All in all not a bad day, nasty hangover not withstanding.  So we went back out to see the night stuff too.



Sparta's theme was "Isn't it Romantic" They were throwing these plush champagne bottles. Sorry about the blurry photo.



Their floats depicted famous couples and bad puns.



Sparta puts on pretty parade that mixes some traditional elements like these kerosene flambeaux carriers,



with some creative variety including some of the more popular marching clubs and dance teams.  Here were some folks playing bagpipes.



And this here is a source of gathering frustration for me.  These mini-horses show up every year.



But every year they are maddeningly difficult to photograph.  What few pictures of these things I haven't deleted over the years all look pretty much like this one.   It's like they have some magic that defies photography. Adrastos suggests they are in the unicorn family.  I'm starting to believe that.

Pygmalion followed Sparta and also put on a pretty nice parade for a first Saturday night. Their theme was, "Some of our favorite songs."  None of these first weekend parades takes many risks with their theming. There was a "Monster Mash" float, a "They All Asked For You" float, and such. 

In recent years, Pygmalion has also introduced some signature floats including The Jester, which looks like a big rolling daiquiri shop.



Here's the "Pygmammoth" I don't think the pterodactyls were part of this float last year.



Meanwhile, on the other side of town, two of the more innovative events to come about in recent years appear to have really come into their own.  I won't be surprised  if the schedule stays the way it was this weekend,  people come to know this as "t'it Rex/Chewbacchus Saturday"  NOLADef got some great photos of these parades here.

What's really gratifying about the growing popularity of these little DIY krewes is that we've arrived at a point where we're starting to be confident in our ability to have two separate but comparably popular carnival events happening in different parts of the city at the same time. Moreso than any ordinance, this is the best way to keep the crowds manageable at any one event. Of course this also means that it's impossible for a person to see everything but that's hardly new.

Another way to keep the crowds under control, of course, is shitty weather. But we'll do Sunday in the next one of these posts.