It's getting to be that time again

Parade season is coming. With that in mind, Uptown Messenger's Jean-Paul Villere provides with a list of guidelines for parade goers. Most of them are worth heeding although I am resistant to the suggestion that night parades aren't appropriate for children. Maybe they're not for your particular children but then again maybe you're a paranoid, overbearing jerk of a parent. How should I know? Lucky for us the city has proposed to relieve us of the burden of making that decision via the new curfew law. Good for them.

Still most of what Villere has to offer is helpful. Here he reminds us of the increasing difficulty parade goers have these days with the concept of sharing the public space.

4) A ladder is not real estate. None of the neutral ground is. The median namesake has no owner, hence “neutral.” You want a spot to hang with your friends? Great. Maintain it. With your own actual physical presence. None of this roping off or placing endless empty chairs “saving” a spot. Abandon it and expect to lose it. This is the code.

Actually I don't think that makes the point precisely enough. A parade is a shared experience that takes place on a public street. Expect neighbors to flow into and out of "your spot" as the event goes on even while you "maintain" that spot with your "physical presence". It's okay. Move a little bit for them once and later they'll move a little bit for you. At least that's how it's supposed to work. Lately such movement tends to be obstructed by obstacles like the strung ladders pictured above and more and more, (and also perhaps worse) row after row of festival chairs like these.





Last year, just prior to the major parades, Mayor Landrieu issued a warning to neutral ground hogs that the city would be more vigilant about enforcing the ordinances designed to maximize everyone's enjoyment of the spectacle. After that, unfortunately, beyond some unrelated pepper spraying of revelers in the Bywater not much actual enforcement occurred.

And so we're not particularly optimistic about anything changing this year. But, as Villere's example demonstrates, it can't hurt to remind folks of the preferred etiquette.