The Beginning, Middle, and End of Mardi Gras Season

I guess I'll start by saying that I partied harder this Mardi Gras than any other time in my entire life. Maybe even combined. That's right--I'm pitting one weekend against four years of a high school party scene. New Orleans gets packed with tourists during Mardi Gras, tourists all looking for a weekend of drinking and fun. I'll do my best to write this competently, because I'm coming off of no sleep last night, so bear with me. I guess I'll just start going chronologically.

I would say that at least a good number of New Orleanians would agree that Mardi Gras day is somewhat anticlimactic, because much of the partying and celebrating happens the weekend leading up to Tuesday. By Fat Tuesday, everybody is so burned out that it's actually a tradition to see the morning parades, take a long nap in the afternoon, and then go out again at night. All of these pictures are from Mardi Gras weekend. I actually don't have any from today. Let's start by picking any day out of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday--they basically follow the same formula: Go to the morning parade in the morning, the evening parade in the evening, and then out with friends at night.




The day parades are understandably more kid friendly. Usually the floats are unicorns or cartoon characters. But it's fun to get out there early and set up during the day parades, when there's more room to create a space for yourself. The parades all run down St. Charles, so the popular thing is to watch the floats pass from the Neutral ground in the middle of the road. We got lawn chairs, two coolers, a grill, a bunch of meat, and spent the day watching the parades while having a barbeque. A very nice time.

To keep the momentum going, bands, musicians, and step teams perform. The school marching bands have an added measure of importance, because many of them were not able to perform in Mardi Gras 06', since so many kids were displaced by the storm and the schools were all closed.

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And then come the night parades. With the exception of Zulu and Rex on Mardi Gras, all of the big name parades happen at night. Usually the floats are more satirical, the people act a little wilder. Saturday night Aaron and I, in an attempt to get more beads, dressed up in our Tyvek suits and hardhats. We had signs to represent Hands-On. Before the parades started it was a little disheartening, because the majority of the crowd at Mardi Gras are drunken tourists who, apparently, all tend to assume two guys wearing matching Tyvek suits are gay lovers.

It was an entirely different story once the floats came though. Aaron would get on my shoulders for extra height, and the combination of the effort and the puffy white outfits made us bead magnets. As a sidebar, it's a little ridiculous how intense people get about positioning for and collecting beads. Almost anywhere we stood someone would yell at us because we were standing too close to "their space," and "they had been there all day." And once the bead throwing started it wasn't unusual to see people getting pushed out of the way to prevent a catch.

But anyway, back to the parade itself. The parades seem to be all about light and color. All the floats are flamboyantly colored and brightly lit. Riding between the floats are search lights, fire holders who get tipped quarters as they pass, and beautiful women in extravagant costumes.

And there's plenty of other craziness that, I feel, is given better justice in a picture than in a written description. So, I'll just give a few more pictures, and you can imagine the night for yourselves:

























































Right, so, that was the weekend. Monday was a different schedule. There weren't any morning parades on Monday. What they did have was a music festival right on the Mississippi river that's based around the Zulu and Rex kings meeting the day before Mardi Gras. Really, though, it's meant to be a nice change of pace from the constant, and it was a good opportunity to listen to some high quality free music. I met up with my friend Karin and together we headed down to the river.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was out, and the weather was warm. The weather gods seemed to bless the Mardi Gras weekend, switching from 30 degree weather to 70 degree weather in a couple of days. Our only real agenda was to see the Rebirth brass band, which I've mentioned in the Blog before, and I'll mention them again: they are one of the best brass bands in the city. And the brass bands make up some of the best music in the city. Therefore, by the transitive property, that makes Rebirth Brass band some of the best music in the city. Again, I think the pictures will do better justice than words will, but we just had a lot of fun dancing and grooving to some really funky music. While they were playing a tuba player for another brass band came out and started secondlining. It was just a wonderful, high energy day.

Rebirth!

Karin!

A very nice couple that was grooving out to Rebirth

Karin again, this time with a little extra attention. Follow the eyes.

The tuba player for...

This Brass Band...

Secondlining and greeting the audience.

Monday Night and Tips

And now we get to last night. Last night Tipitinas hosted the jazz/funk/jam outfit Galactic. They're one of the better known New Orleans artists outside of the local music scene (they were pretty popular at my high school), and every year for the past 10 years they've played an all night gig at Tipitinas the Monday leading into Mardi Gras (intelligently called Lundi Gras). The event was sold out. I had bought two tickets in advance, so my Cuvvy and I were fine. Mahi and Chandra, however, were not. They had expected to be able to purchase tickets at Tipitinas, and when we arrived there and tickets were sold out, it seemed all was lost. Enter Allen. Allen is an intern at Tipitinas. He perfectly fits the lazy stoner rocker type you see in movies. He seems like the type of guy that could quote every line of This Is Spinal Tap. We stumbled into conversation with him outside, and he took a liking to us. So much so that he suggested a way (although a way that had never been tried by anyone he knew) of sneaking the ticket-less members of our party in to Tipitinas. And, all I can say is that it worked. Thank you, Allen. You were directly responsible for making the night.

And what a night it was. To put things in to perspective, Tipitinas upped the price of a can of Red Bull to five dollars, cause they knew people were going to be buying them. Galactic's deal is that they play until the sun comes up, and not only did they accomplish this feat, they did it with incredible energy. In fact, the energy of the whole place surprised me. I expected going in to the night that around three in the morning I'd see sleepy Hipsters slumped in to dark corners of the venue. But I don't think I saw anyone asleep that night.

Galactic knows how to jam. They're the type of music that people nod their whole bodies to. It's not as good for dancing in the way the brass bands are, but it's extremely groovy. And they brought in an eclectic audience. Lundi Gras tradition encourages people to dress up, so there were men dressed as women, women dressed as Elvis, and all sorts of colorful, more Mardi Gras oriented costumes in the mix. The only thing about the audience was that it was 100 percent white, which was a little surprising considering Galactic is so funk oriented. I would have liked to of seen the audience a little more mixed up, but Galactic does have a big jam band influence, which would explain it.

So, Galactic rocked, I tried to do my best to keep up with them, and at seven in the morning the show was over and people stumbled out of Tipitinas bleary eyed, got some breakfast, and then walked to the final parades of the year, Rex and Zulu.

And I guess these parades were fun? It was a little hard to tell at that point. I remember thinking as the floats passed "okay, you need beads, you need to yell and jump and scream and maaaybe throw in the fact that you're a volunteer. Okay, do these things." But when I checked up on my body, I realized that all I was doing was staring as the float went by, my arms raised in a silent sort of desperation. I was tired. Too tired to take pictures. Too tired to yell. Too tired to celebrate. And when you can no longer celebrate during Mardi Gras, you know that's it. It was a fun Mardi Gras. But it was time to go home.

So there it was. My Mardi Gras weekend. Mardi Gras was anti climactic. I walked around the French Quarter for a good chunk of the day, taking pictures of the outrageous costumes (which, I suppose, I will show another day. I took an hour long nap. And I spent a good while working on this blog post. I'll have a new one up in a few days. I still want to talk about the glorious NCCC team that left last week. Oh, and I'm digging the whole havin a camera thing, so expect more pictures.

Peace!

Mardi Gras Time!

Life is crazy right now!

It's Mardi Gras. I've been going to at least one parade every night they've had them. Here are a few pictures. I'll have more, as well as updates, later. But for now, enjoy. I'm sorry I've been so bad about blogging. It's busy here. But a lot of stuff has been happening! I'll get to it!

As Promised, Though Considerably Late.

So, my apologies for taking so long to send out this blog post, but the wireless internet access has been down the past week or so, and I haven't had the opportunity to write any blogs. But anyway. Here I am. I'm going to resist the urge to "briefly" update you with current goings on before launching into what I really want to talk about, because every time I've tried to do that I end up investing too much time on it and don't have the energy to talk at all about my main point. So the deal is, I have a bunch of pictures of people and places, and I want to share them. This is Hands-On:

Well, I suppose we'll start with me. That's me in a Tyvek suit and full-face respirator. That is also me looking bad ass.

This is Reggie. He hails from South Africa, and came to America a couple of years ago, right after graduating high school. He wandered around the country for those two years until finding his way to Hands-On five months ago. He has completely embraced the expression "work hard, play hard." Every time I go out with him it turns crazy. But he's usually up at 6 a.m. every morning, and works as hard as anyone I've ever met.


Right. Now. This is Tyshon. I mentioned him a long time ago in a previous post, but haven't dedicated any real time to talking about hm. TyShon is a kid from the neighborhood of Hands-On. I actually don't know his story that well. He's 14, he's in 7th grade, and he got in touch with Hands-On in the spring of last year through a volunteer who was doing a program at Tyshon's school. The volunteer, Tom, ended up taking TyShon under his wing, and almost every day for a solid month dedicated time to doing something constructive with him. I've basically taken on that role indefinitely.

I think the biggest challenge with TyShon is that he's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. TyShon is 14, but he certainly doesn't act it. Usually he's rude, he talks a lot of shit, and he likes pushing people's buttons. So, people at Hands-On treat him like a kid. He gets loads of attention and rarely gets scolded, but TyShon frequently tells people that he wishes they would stop babying him. At the same time, when it comes to me taking him out in the evenings, or having conversations with him, I tend to treat him like an adult, like a peer. In these situations, TyShon says something along the lines of "Go-lly Mathias! I'm just a kid!" TyShon craves to be taken seriously without wanting any of the responsibility that comes with it. I guess this is something everybody has to go through, usually around TyShon's age, but what makes it harder in his case is his seeming unwillingness to be nice and warm to people. He's always insulting guys and flirting with girls, and this pushes some people away. This is what I've been working on with TyShon the most.

At the same time, TyShon has a good head on his shoulders. TyShon gets a lot of peer pressure from friends and neighborhood to not trust white people. Thankfully he understands that thinking this way is stupid and shallow. I think a place like Hands-On is one of the best things he could have, because it gives him a window outside of the closed-mindedness of the ghetto-street mentality. He gets a lot of support and attention at Hands-On, two things that living in a bad neighborhood and having a questionable family life don't give him.

So, I guess that's what keeps me going, knowing that his time here is necessary for him turning in to a good kid. He can certainly test my patience, because, again, it's frustrating to hear him ask constantly to be taken seriously but then object to me not babying him. The whole time with Tyshon, though, is giving me a different perspective of New Orleans. I get to hang out with a local kid at his peak period of self-consciousness and emotional development. It's an interesting scenario.



This is a shot of our bunk house (at a rather unoccupied moment). It's rows of bunks with little space in between. You have your bunk, you can put up a privacy sheet to sequester yourself in, but that's as much personal space as you get. This lack of personal space hasn't really bothered me yet, although it can be frustrating to have absolutely no place to catch your breath in solitude. But, that bunk is my neighborhood.



This is Reggie with his best friend, Amanda. Reggie just turned 21. Amanda is in her mid-thirties. They're both South African, though they met at a Westchester country club they were both working at. Since then, about a year and a half ago, they've been completely inseparable. They've lived all over the country together, and they've been here for the past six or seven months. Amanda is one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life, absolutely ridiculous and profane but a heart of gold. She makes everyone feel loved when she's talking to them. She is unique, and it's satisfying knowing that I will never meet anyone like her in my life. Thank you, Hands-On!


And speaking of unique people I'll never again meet, Chet falls comfortably in to that category. Chet is a hardened dude. He's spent 12 of his 43 years in prison, something that I'd probably be apprehensive writing here if he talk so openly about it himself. He has, for instance, a MySpace prison blog, where you can read a few of his wild and crazy tales about life in the joint. He's also battled with drug and alcohol addiction, some troubling family issues, and then, of course, his own inner demons. Since his time here, though, he's mellowed incredibly. I'm not saying he won't yell at you if you're doing something stupid. But, usually he's yelling because...well...you're doing something stupid. Yes he's the first to criticize, but he's also the first to compliment, the first to praise, and it's qualities like this he's developed at Hands-On that, in a similar way as with TyShon, make it a perfect place for him. He has a strong support group here to help him out, and on the flip-side, being in such a social environment helps his people skills.
I love Chet, even though he can be a real hard ass sometimes. And I will never, ever, ever, meet a guy like him again.

A little sample of Chet's softer side.

That's it for now. If I can get more pictures I certainly will. Again, I am soo sorry it's taken me two weeks to write this. And to the select few dedicated readers of this blog, I promise I'll be more consistent in the future.

Peace!