Fever dreams

So the first thing we have to note about Carnival 2023 is that I got COVID. Finally, almost three years after it stopped being cool or notable or... well at least since it stopped being considered news, I'm getting in on some of this action. Even though COVID is still causing serious health and safety problems all over the country, and even though this still has significant impacts on people's lives, their ability to work, go to school or maybe buy eggs sometimes, "as a nation" we've decided it's time to move on.  We've definitely decided it's time to stop helping people, anyway.  Good luck out there!

Because I have been a very good boy and dutifully taken all of my shots in accordance with the directives of our Satanic Lord Fauci Gates Avegno? (I can't keep up with the liturgy anymore. Just tell me which way to genuflect) I am pretty much fine after a few nights' fever and mild coughing.  Still, since I'm sitting here writing this on Friday afternoon, which is technically day 4 of the standard 5 day quarantine, I'm probably going to end up observing the first Uptown parades of the season masked and at a distance from the crowd. But if we've learned anything about the Carnival ritual in our many years of observance it is that we don't control the shape of our experience. Rather, we must learn to appreciate it as it comes. There is a subtle art to this.  And whatever wisdom or spiritual gratification we might gain, often happens by accident.

Take the new shape of the early, um, pre-parade-season parade season, for example.  We'll explore some of the circumstances in a bit but here is something that has happened mostly by accident over the past couple of years. Chewbacchus and the groups that make up a walking parade called Les Fous have been pushed up in the calendar to a weekend they share with the Krewe of Nefertiti now in its second year. This effectively ended up adding a whole new fourth weekend of public parading events to our calendar.  Following upon that, the addition of Boheme on Friday, the shifting of 'tit-Rex and Krewe Delusion to that Sunday have greatly expanded Krewe du Vieux weekend. That's pretty cool.  Of course the reasons some of it has happened are not necessarily good. But, in spite of the problems, we are getting, in these early weeks, a little taste of what a more diverse, geographically distributed, and locally driven Carnival season can look like. It's the sort of thing we should be consciously striving to make happen.  

For now, it seems the only thing we're consciously striving for is more money for police.  The approach of Carnival has occasioned a mad scramble by political leaders to appease the latest police shakedown over parade routes. As of this writing we're told there's a plan in place to staff everything using very expensive fill-ins from police and sheriff's departments all over the state. How is that going so far?   I don't really know what sort of metrics Chief Woodfork intends to use to determine this. She said it would go perfectly fine. 

At a press conference this week announcing the new strategy, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city and the NOPD would “ensure that everyone is on the same page relative to policy, procedures.”

Woodfork said at the same press conference the arrangement was reviewed by the city Law Department, the mayor’s chief administrative officer and she expected it would also be reviewed by the consent decree monitors.

“I think it’s going to be perfectly fine,” she said. 

Hmm.. maybe.

Remember that time some Louisiana sheriffs bros hauled in by New Orleans drove their bikes, lights AND sirens blaring, through a walking parade with little kids and shoebox floats underfoot for no reason other than they wanted to? Safe choices, cool. #MardiGras2023 pic.twitter.com/3rc2I7T9vF

— Kimberly Kaye (@Kimberly_Kaye) February 6, 2023

I'm told those are actually Orleans Sheriff's deputies rolling their motorcycles over the shoebox parade. But wherever they're from, there's already concern that they aren't going to be up on the brief. We don't hear so much about this now that we're supposed to focus on their staffing crisis. But for many years, the standard bit of propaganda we were fed about New Orleans police at Carnival time was that they were the world's undisputed "masters of crowd control." What does it take to attain such a lofty designation?  Not much, apparently. 

According to the cooperative endeavor agreement crafted by the OPSO, all supplemental deputies and officers must have an up-to-date Level 1 LAPOST Basic Training certification, which is completed in Louisiana, and two years of job experience. There will be no special training.

Notice also that because this says visiting police are "independent contractors" under the supervision of the Sheriff and not the NOPD, there's really no argument to say they fall under the directives of the federal consent decree governing that agency. 

Deputies and officers in this capacity are being viewed as “independent contractors” of the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office. They will be assigned by that agency, but will wear the equipment, badge, uniforms, and weapons issued by their home parish. At all times, the officers will be considered employees of their home department and subject to the laws and regulations of those departments.

Of course Woodfork thinks it will be perfectly fine.  She's barely got anything to do with any of it anyway. From the looks of things, all she's responsible for is checking the vibes. Just like us, actually!

And how is that going, anyway?  So far... it's been a mixed bag.  We took our first real sampling in the Marigny on KDV night under a portentous full moon.

Now first of all before we say anything else, from a pure vibes aspect, it is difficult to beat the sound and feel of being at this parade. 

However, sound and feel aren't the only reasons people go to see Krewe du Vieux. They also go for the jokes. KDV isn't the only parade known for topical satire by any stretch. But it does have a reputation for cleverness and sophistication (even in spite of its scatological enthusiasms) that sets an often emulated standard. Does KDV itself always live up that standard?  Not really.  This year's reviews were not only mixed. In some regards they were downright polarizing.

The primary complaint had to do with representations of Mayor Cantrell and Sheriff Hutson by several sub-krewes. The mayor of New Orleans and the elected Sheriff, being the low down good for nothing politicians that they are, are obviously fair game for pointed satire.  But when your japes are informed by right wing memes and racist stereotypes, as was the case with at least two of the floats I saw, then you're less likely to score any points against your intended quarry than you are to just make a lot of people mad.  Peter Athas explains this here in a re-cap post following his march in the KDV sub-krewe SPANK. 

While we did an anti-racism theme there was controversy over floats depicting two Black elected officials: Sheriff Susan Hutson and Mayor Cantrell. They’re both fair game, but it’s possible to kick down when mocking public figures. That’s what two sub-krewes did with a highly sexualized image of the Sheriff and a blackened caricature of the Mayor. These floats were overtly misogynistic and verged on minstrelsy. I’m not posting pictures but the floats came from LEWD and Seeds of Decline if you want to google them. And yes, the sub-krewes have silly names.

I don't mind posting the pictures. This is LEWD's float. 

The inspiration for this one apparently comes from this story about the newly elected sheriff learning to ride a horse for the first time.  So to begin with, it's a deep cut reference to something few people watching will have even seen. Secondly, there's really nothing there to make fun of per se. Person who is new to a job is learning to do this one small ceremonial aspect of it. Nothing wrong with that. Meanwhile, there's been plenty to criticize about Hutson's actual performance in office so far if you really want to go after her. This horse thing is just trivial. So even if we wanted to argue that the.. um.. undignified representation of her person is merited by the force of a pointed political attack, well, it isn't. It's just transgression for its own sake which, as Athas also points out here, is just trolling. 

He also mentions the Seeds float going after the mayor's much publicized trips out of town.  I actually think that's a fair topic insofar as the conferences and junkets she's jetting around to are often lobbying events for the privatizing leeches who end up making questionable business deals with her administration.  Of course, nobody makes that point about it. Rather we get facile tedious complaints about "first class travel at taxpayer expense." Still, even Seeds' less than great handling of the issue did lead to this "for mayoral induced nausea" barf bag coming into my possession. And I can't say I won't need to use it at some point. 

On the other hand, this float from the sub-krewe of Space Age Love was basically a rolling advertisement for the mayoral recall plastered with references and epithets pulled right out of right wing Facebook comments. "LaToylet," "LaToya The Destroya" etc. They're playing all the hits.

Bad taste, unfunny, and promoting a reactionary political agenda funded by an ultra-wealthy owner of a shitty restaurant franchise. It really doesn't get much worse than that.  I found out later that Rick Farrell (the shitty restaurant owner in question) paid to reserve some party space near where the parade lines up and had recall canvassers set up to collect signatures. There's probably not much he krewe could have done to keep that from happening. But they could have chosen not to roll this advertisement for an active political campaign in their parade. 

Anyway, you can see why people are upset. But it's not all bad news. Because Krewe du Vieux is a federated amalgamation of the sub-krewes that make it up, there are going to be wild inconsistencies in its presentation.  You can see the worst of its worst elements right alongside some of its best giving their very best.  Here is Krewe of Underwear's float about the growing censorship of reading materials.  It put a bunch of books on a BBQ pit. 

 This was C.R.A.P.S. float criticizing the Dobbs decision. They made a big uterine monster puppet.

The aforementioned SPANK did a riff on famous right wing crank and Rock 'N Bowl owner John Blancher being a "Rock 'n A' Hole" which was also clever. I didn't get decent enough photo of their float but here they are.

Maybe the problem here, then, is that people need to be more specific about what it is they're mad at? Or maybe that's also missing the point. 

The following is a passage from a 2016 general history of Medieval Europe by Chris Wickham Here he is describing the late medieval emergence of civic ritual in urban places (such as carnival celebrations, for example.) 

Rituals are polyvalent, for a start: they regularly take on different meanings for participants from those intended by organizers, often several different meanings at once. One general meaning of all these processions and other events was a celebration of the civic identity of the participants, which was frequently fully explicit, and also marked by dances and jousting in the days before and after the more formal religious ceremonials. They were also, of course, intended to support local power structures and social hierarchies, as with the Pope's Easter Monday procession in Rome, which represented (among other things) his local sovereignty, or the particular festivities at Carnival and on St. John's day which Lorenzo de Medici developed around 1490 in Florence to showcase his charismatic authority. Conversely such rituals were also the foci for contestation, as, earlier in Florence, the opposition between urban aristocratic jousting and guild processions. Any procession could be disrupted, indeed, to make a political point: that was how internal civic crises often started.

"Celebrations of civic identity," are complicated things. They can be elitist and subversive at once. They can express a political point of view and its opposite at the same time. They can reify existing hierarchies while suggesting the possibility of their overthrow.  Carnival is a public exhibition and participatory social catharsis that is as much felt as it is spoken. It's no surprise that it will touch on social and political issues that concern us as a collective. But it is not, nor can it ever be, a logical linear argument about anything. Instead the experience is better understood as a dream or a vision. And even the visions we share together can take on widely varied shades of meaning.  For the most part, we can only let them happen and draw from them what we can.

So what can we draw from KDV 2023? Well for one thing, if you want to do local political satire, you should be a little more plugged in to local politics than, say, the average casual fan of the Newell Normand show. But I think what's happening in some of these sub-krewes is more of their membership  live out of town or even out of state these days than when they were a younger and truly "alternative" local art event. So it's no surprise they aren't getting too far into the local news beyond what's most loudly and salaciously broadcast via the laziest media. Heck, even most of the better content in this year's parade was mostly ripped from the headlines of the national culture wars. Obviously this doesn't apply evenly to all the sub-krewes or their individual members, but it does seem like KDV, as an institution is aging away from its counter-cultural roots toward its cable-news brained dotage.

There's still some things they can do about that. Given the growth of the pre-season and the proliferation of new groups born more or less in KDV's image, maybe it's time for KDV to think more consciously about its responsibiliy as the elder statesman here. At the very least, the main "mothership" krewe could take more interest in ensuring the overall quality of the content.  The structure of their organization makes that complicated.  And, of course, nobody in the DIY art krewe wants to be the art police. But maybe having someone around to say, "Ok but do we need four different floats this year all making the same, 'LaToya sure flies on planes a lot' joke?" would help smooth things over a bit. Because the whole parade's reputation takes a hit every time stuff like this happens.

We've already said, there's only so much control anyone can exert over the fever dream of our civic celebration and the chaotic visions it produces. That doesn't mean we can't have rules and laws that ensure its continuance. That's not really a contradiction. But it can be a fine line to walk.  Is J.P. Morrell walking it? 

New Orleans City Council President JP Morrell is preparing significant new reforms for the way the city permits and treats Mardi Gras krewes in the future, ranging from forcing out some old-line parade krewes to giving walking krewes like Chewbacchus and krewedelusion the same sort of protections and rights that “traditional” parading groups like Rex and Zulu now enjoy.

“You can't really regulate Mardi Gras,” Morrell said in an interview with Gambit. “We're just trying to make sure the city gets a good return on Mardi Gras.”

Morrell said he’s already introduced legislation requiring the mayor's Mardi Gras Advisory Committee to determine which krewes will be permitted by June 15 each year.

"You can't really regulate Mardi Gras," he said while literally proposing a new set of Mardi Gras regulations. If that's not a perfect encapsulation of the spirit of Carnival, I don't know what is.  But what is J.P. actually on about here? 

For “traditional” parades — primarily krewes that feature floats with riders and that roll the final two weekends of Carnival, Lundi Gras and Fat Tuesday — perhaps the biggest change Morrell hopes to see is the advisory committee to weed out underperforming parades. Traditional parades are the primary subject of the city’s Mardi Gras ordinances

“We've heard rumors for years that there are krewes that are not financially solvent, that are kind of leasing their space to other krewes who are on the waiting list or simply don't want to go through the process,” Morrell said. Others have simply not provided the sort of spectacle and artistry residents expect from Mardi Gras parades.

Such a process could also allow for the city to handle other types of bad actors. For instance, it could create a mechanism to oust Nyx, which has been plagued by controversies, including members throwing racist beads in 2019, their krewe captain posting racist comments on social media, a lawsuit from five members alleging fraud and abuse and the decision to hold a ball in Biloxi in 2021 as a protest of sorts against the city’s COVID-19 restrictions. Similarly, Druids have come under criticism in recent years for crossing well over the line of satire into racist tropes and other insensitive themes for their floats.

“There needs to be a mechanism where there's some curation on behalf of the mayor's Mardi Gras advisory committee to go through the krewes post-Mardi Gras and go, well, how was the parade this year? Did it live up to expectations? Does their roster actually match up with the amount of riders they say they have? Are they financially solvent? All these things are things that they should be doing,” Morrell said.

I see some good thoughts expressed in that article as well as some things that sound questionable. We'll need to learn more about what he wants. I'm not excited about the idea of the city getting too heavily involved in reviewing the content of a parade, for example.

Are going to end up with something like this?

Interesting. So let’s say a bunch of people decide they don’t like NOMTOC. They can just have their permit taken away now. I wish we prioritized more important things. https://t.co/NjopAse6Ui

— 🦋💙🌎☮️🫶🏾 (@Ollie_Pat3) February 2, 2023

 

Last weekend's KDV discourse demonstrates that parade content moderation can be a dicey proposition. You want to believe J.P. when he says he's sticking up for the little guys and the independents. But it's less comforting to see him prominently uphold the highly problematic and Disney IP heavy Chewbacchus as his standard bearer.  We know J.P. loves him some Disney-owned cultural products. Is that what we want out of Mardi Gras, though? Whose tastes and preferences would this review board enforce? 

In this MacCash story, J.P. also asks if there are too many parades. 

“Do we need a cap?” asked City Council president JP Morrell rhetorically during an interview last Friday. If not, he said, maybe we should approve other krewes. 

As first reported by The Gambit, Morrell hopes to rewrite the city’s Carnival playbook. In addition to allowing for more parades, he’s considering the possibility of retiring a few. Since the city pays most of the cost to present the parades, Morrell argues, there should be certain standards.

How the expansion and contraction of Carnival will be managed is still in the research and development mode. Morrell said the real work will begin in the spring, with an eye toward future Mardi Gras seasons.

The article goes on to point out, though, that despite the fact that the number or Orleans Parish parades is already capped at 30, two new parades have been added to the calendar in recent years.  How did that happen?  Well, let's see, one of them is the Legion of Mars which takes the morning Saturday slot this year. Who are they?

Despite the cap, sometimes new krewes do manage to cut in line. This year, the Legion of Mars, a krewe composed of veterans, first responders, police officers and their families, was permitted to lead off the parades on Feb. 11.

The other is the Krewe of Nefriti which began parading in New Orleans East last year and is now a fixture of that new "accidental" fourth week of parades we talked about at the top of this post. What's going on there? 

When her fellow NOPD sergeant Zenia Smith, who was also a former Nyx member and who also lives in the East, founded the all-female Krewe of Nefertiti in 2020, Turner joined immediately.

Nefertiti is the East’s only parade. It’s for the neighborhood folks who maybe can’t easily get to the Uptown parades, or maybe don’t want to.

It’s the kind of parade where people watch from their own front yards, kids run along with the 13 floats, and the high school bands come from the neighborhood. Nefertiti is devoted to public service. It’s exactly the kind of parade that wants a detective sergeant as queen.

Ah ok so you get a permit above the cap if you are a cop parade. Got it.

So it looks like we'll be discussing all this stuff at City Council after Mardi Gras this year.  It doesn't necessarily have to go poorly. But I remember the time Councilmember Cantrell convened a Mardi Gras review task force and the only thing that came out of that was they tried to ban Tucks from throwing T-P rolls.

I do think we need to have some serious talks about how to promote a more accessible and local focused Carnival season.  Rather than capping the number of parades or overly scrutinizing their format and content, why not let's talk about breaking up the Uptown mono-route and put more diverse styles of parade into the city's neighborhoods.  If J.P. really does want to recognize groups like Boheme and Chewbacchus as the equals of Carrollton or Muses, then doesn't that mean it's okay for the "big" parades to loosen their style up a bit if they want to?  Do we really need to jam them all down St. Charles three and four at a time? Who does that benefit?

Too often the way our newspaper writes about Carnival and the way our politicians seek to regulate it begins and ends from the perspective of what's best for police and for tourism ownership.  But, according to the Arthur Hardy guide, "Mardi Gras is a party the city throws for itself."* That's the thing we need to protect. Regular people rarely have a voice in that.

For several years pre-covid I was doing this bit where I pretended to rank the uptown parades each year based on a tongue in cheek matrix of highly subjective categories of experience. The real point of that exercise, though, was all parades are fun and each one does something different. We can't and shouldn't hold them all to the same standard.  They each represent a different aesthetic and set out to do something particular to their idiom. Stacking them up every year was nonetheless fun because it demonstrates the varied and textured experience of Mardi Gras. I'd hate to see that crushed by too much standardization.  J.P. should call me and I will show him my spreadsheet.

Obviously there were no rankings in 2021 because there were no parades. And last year I didn't do them because last year was all more about feeling the vibes after a year off.  I might bring the rankings back this year since this is going to be an issue.  I'm not sure how inclusive they will be, though, because, well, I've got the COVID. Whatever I get of this weekend's parades will be short bits seen from a distance. I'll have to make do with the actual fever dreams in the meantime.

* My favorite line from the book. It's in the Q&A every year. It appears on page 20 of this year's guide.

Carnival re-mystification

The above is, of course,  the Phorty Phunny Phellows streetcar rolling down St. Charles Avenue last Friday. We've long made a little ritual of walking out to wave at them and this year was no different. In recent years, also, a person may stand right there and I'm sure they'll see the Funky Uptown Krewe following close behind. 

One small thing I've continued to enjoy about walking out for PPP is that, unlike every parade that goes through town, the Phellows' streetcar ride is un-tracked. 

The previous decade brought us the convenience of parade tracker apps. Their use has expanded to the point where one can follow the progress even of parades rolling outside of Carnival like the Halloween Krewe of Boo, the St. Patrick's Day weekend parades, or even parades organized for corporate events like the Sugar Bowl and Bayou Classic. Of course, that's all been a great benefit.  But there's something refreshing about having to just... use The Force.. and guess when the Phellows are coming. It's a little bit of nostalgia for a long lost divining skill we used to apply to every parade.

Perhaps it is in this spirit that our famously chaotic mayor has offered us a new guessing game to play this year. Where and when is your parade rolling in 2023? Well, that depends, doesn't it. 

NEW ORLEANS —The New Orleans mayor has set a deadline for Mardi Gras krewes to submit their security plans.

According to New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, krewes have until January 23rd to submit their plans for security in order to return to their original routes. 

Last week, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said krewes could return to their routes so long as there is additional security staffing in place.

The plan laid out here is the city is offering to pay additional police from out of town to work the parades. They'll even house them during their stay. But for some reason it is up to each individual parading organization to ensure the route is adequately staffed? Anyway they've got until January 23 to let somebody know.  But who knows how solid that is. According to some reports, Thoth and Cleopatra have already secured their traditional routes.  But the mayor didn't confirm that today.  I'd say just keep checking the apps but will they even know by the time this is settled? 

One thing we do know is that Endymion is going back onto Orleans Avenue. Although, when they go there they won't have the full complement of participants originally announced. 

NEW ORLEANS — Controversial Hollywood actor Mel Gibson will not participate in the Krewe of Endymion parade the krewe announced Sunday afternoon, less than 24 hours after it had made the announcement that he would participate as a co-Grand Marshal.

The krewe cited threats as the reason, though they did not provide any specifics or examples of threats.

“The Krewe of Endymion has received significant feedback about our grand marshall announcement yesterday evening. Some of this commentary included threats that cause us great concern," said a statement from Dan Kelly of the Krewe of Endymion.

“In the best interest of the safety of our riders, special guests and everyone that welcomes us on the streets, Mel Gibson will not ride as a Co-Grand Marshal for our 2023 parade.”

Don't ask Kelly for any details about these "threats."  Very likely he only means that people reacted negatively to the krewe's deliberately provocative selection of Gibson as Grand Marshall. Last year, Endymion was criticized for featuring genocidal racist Raymond Arroyo but clearly did not learn from that experience. Rather, they took it as a signal to double down with an even higher profile figure known more for his anti-Semitic, racist and misogynist virulence than for any of his recent work in show business. So, after a year to think about it, and after inviting Gibson on purpose, anyway, here they are pretending to have been blindsided by cancel culture. The powerful and the bigoted are always the victims. Because that's the game we play now.

We now have their promise to "do better" although what they might mean by that is anybody's guess. Maybe next year we'll have an app that explains these mysteries as well. 

Careful what you catch out there

Hope everyone is staying safe out there.  Happy to see that the COVID numbers are at their lowest point since the start of the Omicron wave.  Hopefully the closest you will come to catching COVID out there is if you get it in bead form like the above photo.  We've been doing our best to stay safe but we have been gathering in large crowds because how can you not.  That's still relatively low risk, or so we are given to understand. But just in case, maybe someone will throw us a few rapid tests in order to be sure. 

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - We all know that Carnival is known for catching unique throws and trinkets, but one crew has decided to make this year even more unique.

The New Orleans Health Department plans to hand out at-home rapid COVID-19 this Thursday at the Krewe of Muses parade. The at-home test will give you results in 15 minutes.

“We are excited to be part of the Krewe of Muses because we knew this would allow us to put more tests in the hands of our community,” said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, Director of NOHD. “If we want to participate in the activities we love at Carnival, we can’t let our guard down. COVID is not over yet, and we need to use every tool at our disposal to prevent a repeat of the tragedies of Mardi Gras 2020. Masking slows the spread, testing identifies cases and pandemic trends, and vaccines with boosters prevent hospitalizations and deaths.”

I didn't catch any rapid tests at Muses. I did get a krewe branded neck gaiter so, you know, every little bit helps.  

Anyway we're getting into the part of the year where I fall behind on getting my camera photos uploaded. But I did get a few with the phone last night.

Babylon was gorgeous. They did a fairy tales type theme. Here is their Golidlocks float. Kind of creepy, this one, actually.

 

Chaos is back... in more ways than one.

 

And, of course, the sight of this lantern after two years (actually three if you recall that Muses had to roll in the daytime because of the 2020 postponement) elicited a few goosebumps. 

As for the vibe check, it was mostly very good.  I'm trying to get an app on my phone that can detect vibes but until that gets invented, I just have video.

 

Also bonus video. This is the L.B. Landry band. 

 

Unfortunately, it wasn't perfect. There was a shooting along the route a few blocks down from us.  That hasn't happened at Muses since 2014. Previously there have been shootings during the Thursday parades in 2012 and 2004. In 2009 there was a shooting on Fat Tuesday so near to our place that we had to stay inside on a police-imposed "lockdown" for about an hour.  When these things happen it's ugly and horrifying and a reminder that real life is still going on around us and violence is a part of that. 

Anyway, once I get more photos uploaded (and tagged and described because yes that is still a thing I care about) I will try to post more stuff in between all the parading and doomscrolling which the times do in fact require one to do simultaneously. 

The bad vibes Carnival

 Everyone is talking about this today. 

There’s been a great disturbance in The Force, you might say. Since the NOPD can’t muster enough officers to patrol Saturday’s Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus parade, the route of the sci-fi foot procession has been substantially pruned. A krewe official said they got word of the change on Thursday evening.

Instead of starting at St. Claude Avenue and Homer Plessy Way, the 1800-person procession, named after a "Star Wars" character and the Roman god of wine, will begin at Royal Street and Elysian Fields Avenue, then continue into the French Quarter, organizers said.

This comes after we had already learned KDV's route was forcibly shortened and that most of the Uptown parades would also be required to follow a truncated route. That includes, even, Thoth whose unique "Krewe of Shut-Ins" route is designed to pass by Childrens' Hospital and a number of institutijons for the old and infirm. 

Obviously things are headed in an unsettling direction.  Of course there's much more to say about this. But, since I haven't been terrific about finishing the long posts lately, here is a link back to something I wrote in early March 2020. This was during the brief period between the start of the pandemic shut downs and the end of what was itself an ominous Carnival season of tragedies and bad vibes.  Before COVID interrupted everything, the city was getting started on a political dialog about the future of Carnival.  A lot of things were at stake in that fight. But we never got to have it. And now it looks like the city's ruling class is imposing the worst possible version of what might have come out of that process. 

Anyway, I tried to address a lot of my concerns at the time.  So check that out.  I'll try to build on it soon.

Let the people make the Carnival rules

All the very important people who we are required to trust have all of our best interests at heart had a closed door meeting last Thursday night to start talking about how they're going to fix Mardi Gras. As far as we on the other side of that closed door know, nothing was decided there but "nothing is off the table."

No specific proposals were put forward. They will be worked out by a subcommittee of the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Committee over the next two months.

Specific recommendations for next year are expected by May 1.

“Nothing is off the table. We want to review every recommendation that the Carnival krewes and our public safety team have to offer,” Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said at a short press briefing after the meeting. “We have received so many ideas already, but I want to review everything and determine what is the best path forward.”

"We have received so many ideas already." Unfortunately, according to this WWLTV report, it looks like most of those ideas are terrible.

A number of ideas are being talked about, including: increasing the number of barricades used, having security walk with the floats to dissuade over-aggressive spectators, changing the routes to only include the largest of streets, having all krewes take exactly the same routes and placing some type of barrier that would prevent people on the streets from getting in between the multi-part floats.

This is all so shockingly out of touch with the more open and public discussions taking place around town and on social media over the past week. There is a broad consensus against barricades, for example.  In fact most people seem to be asking for measures that offer greater crowd flexibility. They want to see continued progress in cutting back the territorial use of ladders and tents to wall of space. Many are asking for less obstructive routes in general with easier and safer ways for people to cross the street if they are attending the parade or just passing through on their way to work.

But the number one thing you hear from most New Orleanians is they would like to see more diverse parade routes and more parades dispersed among various neighborhoods in order to reduce the intensity of nightly megacrowds from all over the city and beyond gathering in one space.  This isn't a radical idea. It is a call to return the celebration to its local roots after a period when it has tilted a little too far in the direction of becoming a tourism-first event.  This isn't to say it needs to be exclusively one or the other of those things.  It's just that a lot of people feel the balance is off.

One doesn't have to go back very far to remember when the footprint of Mardi Gras better reflected its deep ties to the city's diverse communities.

We finally altered the parade routes by addition instead of subtraction! I'm going to have to update the map for Nefertiti, but we're still a long way from Mardi Gras 1977: pic.twitter.com/V0SP2effBB

— Jon Frosch (@jonfrosch) February 3, 2020

As the tweet accompanying that map points out, in fact, the Krewe of Nefertiti made a deliberate push in the local direction this year.  By all accounts, this was a great success.  Why would we want to abandon it now? Often locals trying to explain the breadth and complexity of Carnival to first-timers will emphasize the diversity of experiences. "There are many different kinds of Mardi Gras" or something like that.   Why, then, should there be only one parade route?

Clearly there need to be more perspectives in the discussion than those of city officials and krewe captains. The question of whether or not to barricade the route is much bigger than just how it affects Zulu's ability to distribute coconuts. But it doesn't seem from this as though they can imagine much beyond that.

Bacchus Captain Clark Brennan said he would like to see barricades all along the route, though he realizes it will be expensive and could affect some krewe’s traditions.

“Let’s make some good judgement decisions and think about the decisions we make, because they do have a ripple effect,” Brennan said.

Elroy James, president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure club, noted that his krewe would be affected if barricades line the route.

“Sometimes barricades create issues with respect to the coconuts,” he said. “We can't throw (them).”

Not every krewe captain will share this perspective, probably. Brennan, in particular, appears to be an extreme example of a plutocrat's view of Carnival as a tourism driven spectacle. But, again, whatever decisions end up being made need to take into account the views of the entire community and not just those of a select few the Mayor has designated as "stakeholders."

The police are in that room too. It will be interesting to learn if they have any thoughts on the barricade issue.  NOPD are proud of their reputation for crowd control proficiency developed over many years of Mardi Gras experience. The techniques they're so famous for, though, are based more in flexibility and discretion than they are in rigidly penning people in behind barriers.  It's a task that requires  patience and soft skills and, most importantly, a lot of overtime pay.



Unfortunately we've seen a retreat from these principles over the years as NOPD leadership's incentive has been to do everything in its power to cut back on personnel costs. Pretty much every bad decision having to do with parade routes and schedules over the past 20 or 30 years has come at the request of NOPD brass claiming it just doesn't have the "manpower" to do the job.  In the post-9/11 era we have added layer after layer of "anti-terrorism" paranoia as well and so now federal security state agencies have a role in the planning process too.  At the beginning of this season it was reported that Mardi Gras 2020 had been designated a DHS "Level 2 event." Whatever that means isn't exactly clear. But we do know the overriding objective of NOPD and DHS leadership for a long time now has been to get parades over with and crowds dispersed as quickly as possible. Anecdotal reports from dance teams and marching clubs suggest that police were driving them harder than ever this year.  During the Rex Ball, Shaun Ferguson bragged to Errol Laborde that "our times this year were faster than last year."

But Carnival isn't just about getting the parade through on time.  Often, it's not really even about the parade itself so much as it is just about getting people out in the streets.  People go out to see the parade, sure, but what they're going out to experience is the temporary disruption of order. The quiet of a neighborhood, or the regular business of a city street is overturned by a sprawling party.



There random entrepreneurial improvisations.



Spontaneous art.



Lots and lots of debris





Various absurdities occur in the crowd that build as the parade passes until



It begins to dial back and the crowd slowly disperses in time for the street cleaners to put everything back in order.



This is also a healthy fit of abandon.  While we act out in the streets, we also retain the basis of the social contract. New Orleanians are especially good knowing how to do this. The whole thing is a bit of an illusion. But it's a cathartic illusion. And one that needs space to breathe.  In order for the illusion to work, it requires more of the old style NOPD tactics of low and slow crowd control.  Clamping down on it with rigid barricades and time restrictions violates the illusion and it ultimately causes Carnival to fail.


We need a free, fun and open Carnival culture. And we can have that if we remember that every one of us is a "culture bearer."As such, we should all have a say in how the city's signature celebration is managed in the future.  Mainly our purpose in this discussion should be reasserting the fact that Carnival is, as the Arthur Hardy Guide puts it, "a party the city throws for itself" and not just some big tourist-driven cash-in. But accomplishing that likely extends to reclaiming everyday life in New Orleans as well.  Which means we should have a lot to talk about over the coming months.

I'm really not sure the people in charge get it. 

Cantrell also called for officials to look at the consumption of alcohol during Carnival celebrations and suggested the need for a public awareness campaign to promote safety.

Mardi Gras Guide Vol 1: State of Unreadiness

Temporary netting protects freshly painted trees along the recently landscaped Napoleon Avenue neutral ground ahead of this weekend's parades

I'm not ready. I mean, I am basically prepared in that I've been going through usual motions of getting things in order around here. I've done some mild house cleaning. Sunday we did what we figure will be the last big laundry load until Ash Wednesday. We've taken household inventory and made trips to Wal-Mart and Rouses to stock up on the basics. We've made sure there are enough paper plates, towels and cleaning supplies. Then there are the staple coping drugs like coffee, aspirin, and pepto... fresh eggs to scramble on particularly hung over mornings. I think we've got what we need there. That much of the punch list is complete today but I'm still not ready.

Carnival is moving into high gear this weekend but many of us are having a hard time catching the spirit. Tripping the light fantastic and such is no easy trick when there is so much dark energy out there to contend with. The city is in a rotten mood.  There are several reasons for this.  Anxiety bleeds into our day to day from the Presidential election, of course, but that's likely the case everywhere that Tuesday is just Tuesday.  It doesn't help matters here but it's nothing we couldn't handle on its own.  If all politics really is local, anyway, then you should be able to say the same thing for angst. So what is it that's clouding the mood?  Let's consider a few items.

On the first day of Carnival 2020, the Advocate ran this attention-getting feature on the growing anxiety of Lakeview residents over what they claim is a sharp rise in vehicle burglaries in recent years. The headlining number is a 57% increase in reported car break-ins from 2018 to 2019.  I think those statistics could use further scrutiny, though. I'm sure we've talked about this many times on this here Yellow Blog, but crime statistics are often as much a reflection of public perception and police recording techniques as they are an actual gauge on the rate of incidents.  Police simply deciding to focus on a particular type of crime can increase the number of recorded incidents. They may also take steps to promote public awareness of certain kinds of crimes thus encouraging people to report more frequently.  If the public, for whatever reason, be it police activity, or media emphasis, just gets the feeling that it's a little more crimey out there, it can generate a feedback loop. Heightened fear of crime leads to more "awareness" leads to more police reports, leads to higher stats, leads to heightened fear of crime.  Here is a very good recent Citations Needed podcast describing the ways new technological trends in surveillance like Amazon's Ring doorbell camera and so-called "snitch" apps like Nextdoor work to supercharge the feedback loop even further.

All of these may be factors in the recent Lakeview hysteria. That came to a head just a few days after the Advocate feature on the "jump in break-ins" ran when NOPD responded to a report of teenagers pulling on car door handles by sending out a SWAT team in full tactical gear. In the resulting confrontation one cop even ended up firing his gun at the unarmed teens. The incident then led to a further crackdown at Juvenile Court where a new policy holds children arrested more than once in jail until they see a judge. The judges announced the policy change with a chilling statement saying their aim is to "rid the community of youth who pose a danger.” The Advocate's newest worst columnist, Will Sutton, capped the week off by publicly thanking the trigger happy police and the paranoid residents who called them.

Since then, matters have only gotten worse. Councilmembers have pledged to apply more "data-driven" policing. The DA is charging one of the teens as an adult. Lakeview residents gathered to yell at everyone and demand even more police and more aggressive tactics. The politics of this is only likely to get worse. I'm half-expecting a future mayoral candidate to promise a border wall at City Park Avenue. Meanwhile, researchers tell us, in order to effectively reduce violence, we would be better served to spend our time addressing our city's intolerable inequalities. But just seeing that situation described reminds us of yet another source of the general anxiety.

Sonita Singh, an associate professor of behavioral and community health at LSU School of Public Health, described New Orleans as “a landscape of inequalities,” which stem from historical and institutional practices and policies that have segregated the city by race and economics. The geography of those inequalities mirror maps showing the concentration of murders.

Transportation, education and access to jobs and training are less accessible in neighborhoods that see the most violent crime, Singh said. Employed people surviving on an inadequate wage, what Singh called “hamster wheeling,” is also common in places like the 9th Ward, 7th Ward and parts of New Orleans East.

New Orleans’ citywide average household income was $67,224 as of 2017, according to The Data Center, a local research nonprofit. In Little Woods, a neighborhood in New Orleans East that saw a large share of murders last year, the average household income was about $40,800. Nearby Plum Orchard’s average household income was $32,900. In the 7th Ward, a neighborhood that perhaps had highest concentration of murders in 2019, the average household income was $33,205.

“In New Orleans, people can work themselves to the bone and still not be outside the poverty rate,” Singh said.

Like I said, the city is in a rotten mood.  It has good reason to be. 

That extends to the city's firefighters who enter this parade season in a fight with the mayor over a whole host of labor issues but mostly centered on the hardships imposed on them by understaffing and forced overtime. The city has pushed back by cancelling vacation time and, this week, pulling fire trucks from this season's Carnival parades which seems unsafe. Also it seems self-defeating since it comes just a few days after Mayor Cantrell promised that the dispute would have no effect on Mardi Gras at all.  Earlier in the week, the mayor's communications staff released a video of her saying that Mardi Gras would be covered and the cancelled vacations and overtime would amount to a "win win" for the city. Is this what she meant? Also how does she figure?

Perhaps for these reasons, or perhaps just for the sake of growing the police state in general, the feds have designated this year's Carnival a "Level 2 Special Event."  According to this DHS document that means we can expect "some level federal interagency support," on the streets during the season. This is different from a Level 1 Special Event where we would be getting "extensive" federal interagency support. What does that means in practice?   Heck if I know. Just be careful who you sell your huckabucks to if you have an unlicensed cart this year. You never know who is watching.


The "Trashformers" collecting recyclable items from parade goers during Krewe Delusion 

For that matter, you might also want to watch where you put your plastic bags out there.

The “prohibited throws” section was updated to prohibit parade riders from thowing: “single use plastic bags meant for throw packaging or paper streamers, or paper products that do not biodegrade when wet, or empty single-use plastic bags. Any package containing bulk throws, including but not limited to doubloons, beads, cups, trinkets, or toys shall be handed to parade attendees and shall not be thrown or tossed. Bulk throws shall be removed from any plastic packaging before being thrown or tossed.” This was proposed to help battle litter along the route, as well as alleviate the possibility of parade participants slipping on the plastic.

This is... kind of stupid.  If we want to be charitable, we can say that it comes from good intentions. It's probably a good thing on balance that people have become more conscientious about the environmental impact of "single use plastic" and the like. And it's only natural that they might examine their own perceived influence on its proliferation.  In truth, though, this is not a problem that can be fixed by subjecting individual consumption habits to strict law enforcement. If the city was really interested in limiting single use plastics, they wouldn't be handing out half a million dollars in tax exemptions to a plastic bag factory. But why worry about that when you can just performatively punish individuals behaviors?  It might not solve anything but it gets you far more "credit" from a PR perspective. And that's what this is all about anyway. That and just general antipathy.  At her pre-Mardi Gras press conference the mayor said the plastic bag policy was about "showing love," which is what she always says when she is ready to hit someone with a hammer.

On the bright side, the new ordinances appear to be more serious than ever about discouraging people from crowding the neutral ground with ladders and tents and couches and such. We'll report back later on how that goes over the first weekend's parades.  I know this website has been home to the annual ladder harangue for well over a decade now. But I've also long contended that there would be far less call for official hardassery if the city would allow the parades to spread back out across the various neighborhoods and take some of the pressure off of Uptown. Which is why we were pleased last weekend to see that the new Krewe of Nefertiti parade was such a success.

West, who graduated from nearby Abramson High School, said the parade was a sort of reunion.

“This is wonderful,” he said. “We’re seeing everybody we grew up with ... and their kids. We’re still here.”

Referring to the displacement of much of the East's population after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he said, “You think everybody moved to Houston, but they’re here.

People in East New Orleans went outside and talked to their neighbors out in the street. That's what this is supposed to be all about. Good for them.  Let's keep that going.

I still don't feel like I'm ready.  We tried to get into the spirit early this year by making the trek across to town to see Chewbacchus for the first time in almost a decade.



Mainly the reason we did this was because, for the first time in a while, we could. A shuffle in the schedule moved Chewbacchus two weeks ahead in the calendar so that it no longer runs opposite any Uptown parades. The last one of these we saw was way back in 2012 when it was still an Uptown parade itself. After it moved across town we didn't see the point.  Anyway, during its time as a Bywater event, Chewbacchus has grown immensely in popularity but also in controversy. Often it has been seen as a symbol of the rapid gentrification and bland commercialized hip aesthetic associated with that neighborhood in the 2010s. (Please see Jules Bentley's "Farewell to the Flesh: Notes on a Cybernetic Carnival" for the definitive explication of this take.) I have to say, though, upon examining this phenomenon in person, it is nothing quite as interesting as that. For the most part it was just fans of various "nerd culture" type intellectual properties out doing cosplay with their children.



I suppose some people really enjoy that. And I guess I can see why some people never will. But the experience is nowhere near as impressive as its gushing fans would have you believe nor as sinister as its detractors would argue. It's really just a little nerd parade. Fine, if you like that sort of thing.  But I had gone to Chewbacchus hoping to see something really cool or something that might make me really mad. Instead I came away not feeling much of anything.  Maybe I just wasn't ready.

Meanwhile literally looming over everything is the sarcophagus of a collapsed Hard Rock hotel building that sits right in the middle of downtown. Originally the project's owners were hoping to have the hotel completed and open in time for Mardi Gras. Now the plan is to implode the structure sometime before Jazzfest. More than anything else, the air of hostility and mistrust between the city, the mayor, and the contractors responsible for the disaster is the main factor the city's rotten mood this Carnival season. Its physical presence can't be ignored as several parades have had to bend their routes in order to avoid it. It has a spiritual gravity as well so strong that it resists even the carnivalesque parody and gallows humor that might otherwise seem a perfect fit for the situation. It's a rare occasion where our own sarcasm seems to have failed us.

Krewe du Vieux gave that their best shot last week when the sub-krewe Comatose put together this impressive-looking "Soft Rock" hotel float.



From all appearances, their hearts were in the right place. But also it is hard not to cringe at this, "Rest In Peace, Amigo" message on the back. Racial problematics aside, just the tone of the thing is off.  If you are going to satirize something as serious as this, you have to lean in harder than this.  There is a way to be funny but it also has to be a little bit angry. A joke about a tragedy needs to achieve catharsis or else it will fail horribly.  This reads more as, "Sorry you died, LOL" and it just feels uncomfortable.



There was a rumor circulating last weekend that mayor tried to have the float removed or at least mellowed in some way. The city ended up forcing KDV to move its ball out of Studio Be at the last minute due to potential safety violations.  This has some people whispering that the mayor was retaliating.  It's hard to know what to believe about that. KDV members often paint themselves as politically motivated victims with little or no evidence. On the other hand, this mayor does have a habit of taking every single thing that happens as a personal affront of some kind so anything is possible. MacCash tells us here that the more mundane explanation is far more likely.  That sounds right to me but who knows.  Anyway the problem with this float is that it is already too mellow which is what makes it seem more insensitive than its intention.

Krewe Delusion was a little better with this "Hard Rock The Boat" theme.



It invokes the idea of righteous anger and there's a little pun in there. It's not overwhelmingly clever, though.  And it still doesn't feel like we're saying what needs to be said. Not that I know what that is, exactly.  But I do hope I will know it when I see it this year.  I hope I'm ready to know.

There's a car on fire*

In our excitement to identify and catalog this weekend's various unrelated disasters, we missed the flaming bus that rolled in the Jingle On The Boulevard parade.  We gather this was an unplanned bus fire despite the fact that it was there specifically to carry the "Royal Heat" dance team.  We regret having overlooked the bus fire but are happy to report it is only the second school bus immolated in New Orleans East this year that we are aware of.

Similarly this morning's flaming vehicles that caused a French Quarter block to be evacuated are not the first cars on fire to appear in 2019. Today's event is unlike the one over the summer, though, in that because it is not suspiciously coincident to any ongoing political campaigns, there is a much better chance we will actually be told how and why it happened.

Actually, we are being told that this afternoon as I am typing this.  According to WWL:

What caused a loud boom and flames to erupt from the street in the French Quarter around 5:00am?

"This morning we had a challenge in the French Quarter with the explosion and the fire," said Col. Terry Ebbert, New Orleans Director of Public Safety and Security.

He explained that officials are blaming human waste.

"It appears that we had... methane gas underground."

Where did it come from?

"That is probably is due to (the) sewage system."

One thing we have learned this year is that, whether they blast it with flames from below, disable it in a flash flood, or just suck it straight on down into the culvert, Sewerage and Water Board is coming after your vehicle one way or another.

Anyway, another day, another (literal) shitstorm.  I wonder what will explode tomorrow.

*

Are we actually trying to learn how to do Mardi Gras again?

There are some signs lately that sensible ideas are afoot.  Last week we learned that the Krewe of Alla would be moving from the overloaded first Sunday over to the first Friday after Oshun and Cleopatra.  That makes a lot of sense for a couple of reasons, the first being the fact that the long Sunday is too long. The second reason is Alla isn't all that great a parade.  I mean, it's fine and all but it probably plays better on the first night when people aren't expecting to be impressed as much.

I'd go in for the regular harangue here about Alla belong back in its own dang neighborhood on the West Bank anyway. But I don't want to ruin the vibe created by this.

More than 100 members of the Krewe of Nefertiti paraded as a subkrewe of the Krewe of Freret in 2019, but the group will present its own full Carnival parade in New Orleans East Feb. 9, 2020.

The krewe expects to have more than 200 riders on more than 15 floats, says krewe captain Zenia Smith. Its route will go from Bullard Avenue and Lake Forest Boulevard to Read Boulevard and end at Joe Brown Park.

"Lots of kids from the area have marched in parades in Uptown and on the West Bank," Smith says. "This will give a lot of families the chance to see the kids in a parade in their neighborhood."

That's pretty great. Although it says here they're rolling on Feb 9 which puts it a week early in the schedule. This would be the day after Krewe Du Vieux.  Either way it's great to get parades back out in the neighborhoods. But one of the reasons we've been asking for that is so that people who might otherwise overcrowd the Uptown route have somewhere else to go.  Putting Nefertiti on its own unique date doesn't help with that.  Maybe next time, though.

We have to do something

They delayed the Morganza again. 

Enough pussyfooting around with all the knobs and dials on the river. Time to call close enough good enough and let it all rip. I mean we have to do something, right?  What is the worst that could happen?

Scientists don't yet know what precise weather conditions could overwhelm the Old River complex, but anything stronger than the 2011 event would present a "real risk," and the risk will continue to increase as more sediment is deposited in the channel, Xu said.

“These changes diminish the river’s capacity to carry water on its current course. When sections of the river’s floor rise to a sufficient point, a sudden increase in flow — perhaps from a flood — could drive the Mississippi River to overwhelm the control structure and adopt a new path, potentially causing the Mississippi to be captured by the Atchafalaya,” his research summary states.

Okay okay but there's too much nerdy engineering in all that.  Tell us about something else bad that could happen.

NEW ORLEANS, La. (WVUE) - As hurricane season approaches, one expert said he worries what kind of impact high water in the Mississippi River will have in an active hurricane.

Though river levels will likely be lower during the peak of the season, Alex Kolker -- a coastal sciences professor at Tulane and LSU’s Marine Consortium -- said storms still pose a threat.

High river levels this year have forced an unprecedented opening of the Bonne Carre Spillway and, likely, the Morganza.

“This river is managed for river floods and it’s managed relatively well. The one thing it’s not managed for is if you were to have a hurricane and a river flood at the same time,” Kolker said. “A high river like we have now, in late August, that would be a bigger concern.”

Yeah but that's not very likely to be something we are gonna have to worry about in June, right?  Right?

Ugh! Look, fine. Everyone, let's all do our civic duty to be as pro-actively freaked out as possible because that is supposed to help for some reason. But can we also maybe try and live our lives in the meantime?   LaToya says we are too busy in the summer hunkering down and whatnot to have a parade but I would like to see the evidence for this.

The Mystic Krewe of Nyx has responded to New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell's decision to nix plans to host a summer parade.

On Monday, Cantrell rejected the proposed July parade citing "public safety resources in the middle of hurricane season."

Nyx leadership announced plans for the parade in May. The 8-year-old, all-female krewe wanted to become the first major krewe in Carnival history to have two parades in a single year. They would have rolled on July 27.

That's not a good reason to deny the permit.  A better reason to deny it would be because, even though there are plenty of parades that happen outside of Carnival season all year long, including several during the summer months, this particular organization is captained by a con artist who is constantly looking for ways to leverage her position into one ponzi scheme after another. The summer parade was probably one of those.

As of this writing, the Freret "summer strut" is apparently still on. My guess is that is because a second line style event is subtle enough to get a pass while Nyx had a big attention-getting downtown parade with Kern floats and stuff planned.  A lot of Julie Lea's problems tend to issue from her never having learned to sophisticate up the corruption.

Anyway, just saying we don't have enough cops during the summer is nonsense. The State Troopers in the Quarter are so bored, in fact, they are shooting people for minor traffic violations. And, really, what would it hurt to pull a few NOPD off of curfew enforcement duty for a day? According to almost every expert rounded up in this story, the curfew does more harm than good anyway.  They tried telling that to the Cantrell people but were defeated by logic.

A 2016 article in The Guardian also raised the problem of curfew laws increasing police interaction with youth that isn’t always positive. "It was really kind of scary to have them treat you like a hardened criminal,” a 19-year-old who was stopped for a curfew violation told the newspaper: 

New Orleans officials said they are aware of the research questioning the effectiveness of curfew laws, but Stevens said officials concluded the enforcement is in the best interest of public safety.

“Right now, it’s important that we do something, and we have to do something with a sense of saving our young people to the streets,” Stevens said. “One way is to start to let them know laws are in place. You need to abide by the law that’s in place.”

"We have to do something"

"Ok but that thing you are doing is ineffective and probably harmful."

"But we have to do something."

QED

If the Corps of Engineers had that attitude, we'd have opened Morganza weeks ago.

Raining on my parades

It is Carnival time and the weather outlook is bleak. There isn't a date left on the parade calendar where there isn't at least some doubt as to whether or not people will be sloshing about in boots and ponchos.  If you are so equipped and hardy enough, it's usually not such a bad deal.  The parades look a bit messier but the crowds are lighter. If you can stay dry enough, it's possible to have a fine time.  This still doesn't stop some of the larger krewes from getting nervous.  So nervous, in fact, that some of them are talking crazy talk.

Jefferson Parish President Mike Yenni said Wednesday that he has had queries from multiple New Orleans Mardi Gras krewes, asking if their parades could roll in Jefferson Parish if necessary. Multiple inches of rain, strong wind and thunderstorm are expected throughout the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.

After buzz about possible rescheduling on Tuesday, New Orleans police announced that all parades would roll on their scheduled days, but times could be changed.

"I've had some discussions with a couple captains candidly, just saying that … 'if we had to move, could we talk to you?' I said 'we're open to anything,' " Yenni said in a press briefing. "I'd have to get with our sheriff's department to make sure we could accommodate that. … but if we can help put on Mardi Gras, we certainly want to do so."

Or maybe it's just Yenni talking crazy.  The krewe spokesmen all sound like they're cooperating with NOPD. Although, the "candid discussions" with Yenni might also be a bit of back channel brinksamanship over rescheduling.  Or maybe they're just looking to pick up some of that sweet JP moolah. 

Wednesday, the parish council voted to give $25,000 subsidies each to Caesar and the Krewe of Centurions.

"Some council members are choosing to give money directly to krewes that will help their efforts," JP Council member Jennifer Van Vrancken said. "One of the things that I do is support the Rhythm on the Route band competition. So my office helps fund all of the winners."

JP President Mike Yenni said taxpayer money given to the krewes is well worth the price when you consider carnival has a $24 million dollar economic impact on the parish.

"So for the small amounts of money that the parish council has allocated to these krewes, to kind of help them out on those prime nights and prime weekends, we're seeing return on that investment," Yennis said. "Hotel occupancy in Jefferson Parish is up to 90 percent."

We've talked at length about the problems of route consolidation already so I don't want to go too far into that right now.  Orleans Parish parades would do well to disperse away from the St. Charles route back into the neighborhoods to spread the celebration more evenly across the city the way it was once not so long ago.  The Jefferson Parish issue is an added layer on top of this, though, having to do with the white flight origins and lingering racial divisions between New Orleans and Metairie.  That dynamic is changing again in the era of gentrification. As the city becomes more desirable to wealthier whites, the suburban lifestyle is starting to change as well.  These trends are beginning to manifest in the Carnival calendar.

Anyway, we'll have to see how that develops in the future.  Right now we're more concerned with the rain since that is definitely affecting things.  It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to ruin anybody's time entirely, though.  Often a little rain on a parade isn't all that bad. We've seen our share of it already and have come through pretty well. Here are some photos and stuff.

Saturday was touch and go for the five parades that rolled through Orleans Parish. Pontchartrain got off without a hitch.  Captain Sam is one of my favorite Carnival icons.  He and I are the same age and we both lived in New Orleans East for a time when we were younger.



Also it looks like they've done away with the pretense of titling their royalty with roman numerals.  I guess I can get behind that.



I don't have any pictures of Choctaw or Freret. That's when the quagmire began. It was bad. And I felt bad. I had to go lay down for a while, frankly.  But somehow we rallied in time for Sparta.



Because the previous night had been a little too much about straight whiskey when it should have been about Miller Lite, Saturday had to be about Diet Coke when it also should have been about Miller Lite.  (This also may have something to do with being the same age as Captain Sam but never mind that right now.)  The point is, we watched Sparta and Pygmalion without drinking any alcohol.  Yes, it is perfectly fine to do this.

Let's see what pictures look good here.  The intermittent rain didn't make it easy.  Sparta had a Shakespeare theme of some sort. It looked very good. Here is their Taming Of The Shrew float. It had a big ol' pelican on it.



Pygmalion wants to be First Weekend Endymion.  (Tit-Dymion?  End-Mini-on?) This year its captain (some Rizutto or another.. Is it Jack or Phil?) cut some TV ads promoting the parade and ball as a major event.   That's not unheard of but it is unusual. Especially for a first week parade.  I'm not sure why they feel like they have to do this.  Are they worried about being eclipsed by the growing spectacle of Chewbacchus across town?  Anyway, it's funny.

The parade is fine. It really does look like somebody tried to make an Endymion but just didn't have enough parts. Maybe some day they will pull it off. The rain made this attempt appear less successful than it could have been.  Here is what I mean by the comparison.

These maid and duke floats are modeled on the long procession that Endymion typically begins with.  The riders are supposed to have big headdresses suspended from the rigging behind them.  But the rain must have messed that up Saturday.  Anyway you see what they did there.



They've also developed a couple of gaudy, led-covered signature floats.  The Jester here is a reference to the French Quarter daiquiri shops the Rizuttos also happen to run.



They try to bring in a lot of cool marching clubs as well. The Krewe de Lune is in either its third or fourth year now.



The theme was.. sea creatures or something... I forget. Here is a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea float.  The floats in both Sparta and Pygmalion looked good despite the rain.



It's actually a pretty nice parade. The wanna-be-Endymion air of it only makes it seems smaller by comparison.  In any case, both of these parades were fine examples of how persisting through a little rain can pay off.

Wednesday was an even clearer case in point. It rained so much during Druids and  Nyx that the Pelicans even had to stop playing their indoor sport. 

You guys wanna catch a parade or something? @Pacers

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) February 8, 2018

We are hosting out of town friends this week and these were their young children's first Mardi Gras parades. So the weather wasn't ideal.  But we are pros at this and as such we had spare ponchos for everybody. The right gear really does make all the difference.  There still isn't much I can do for my camera, though. So I only got a few phone snapshots. Most of them are bad. 



I did feel obligated to get a shot of their monument joke. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. But the subject is more than tired at this point.



Druids also offered commentary on the shorter Canal route. They're correct here. Maybe a little whiny and passive aggressive in tone. But still..



There was also the traditional, but subtle, knock at Nyx which you can see in this blurry photo if you want to click on it. It's just a purse with some big bills spilling out of it. It's a reference to Nyx's iconic symbol and the ongoing controversies over the grifter in charge of the krewe.  Here she is now on her Captain's float.



As we have come to expect with regard to the "largest parading organization in all of Carnival" the problems with Nyx didn't have as much to do with the rain so much as they did with... being Nyx and doing Nyx things.

Crowds stationed around Magazine and Upperline streets got a bit more time to plead for hand-decorated purses after a float hit tree limbs on Jefferson Avenue, leading to a downed power line and a brief delay in the Krewe of Nyx parade, according to Entergy New Orleans and the city's emergency-preparedness department.

"A float came into contact with tree limbs," said Yolanda Pollard, spokeswoman for Entergy New Orleans, and the limbs fell onto a line servicing a single property on Jefferson Avenue, near the start of the parade.

Yeah yeah, it was a freak accident and could have happened to anybody. But for a self-proclamed "superkrewe" that always ends up being a little too big for its britches, not quite fitting an oversized float down an Uptown street is a little bit too on the nose as a metaphor.

We experienced the delay as an extended gap in the parade which is kind of a rare thing these days and so kind of nostalgic.  Here is the back of the parade catching up.



Due in part to the power line incident and to the weather, Nyx ended up being kind of a wreck; delays between floats followed by very large floats going way too fast through the rain to try and catch up, that sort of thing.  The typical Nyx problem of too many floats with no bands or marching units between them was in evidence again this year.  Toward the back end, it starts to feel very much like a truck parade. 

There's nothing wrong with a truck parade, of course, especially when, as is the case with Nyx, everybody seems to know one or several of the riders.  That plus the light crowd makes for a prime opportunity to catch pretty much everything.  The first-timer children in our group enjoyed the hell out of that. One can even appreciate the chaotic atmosphere of watching a parade struggle not to fall apart.  Which, really, is the most appropriate way to celebrate during a thunderstorm anyway. Nyx might not be the Prime Time event it bills itself as. But, for this year, anyway, it might be the model for pushing on through the weather for the other superkrewes to emulate.