Archive for the 'big easy' Category

March 8, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, amigos

No, I didn’t get arrested in New Orleans. But a friend of mine did, and under bogus charges. Click here or above for his story, click here for other similar stories and/or read below for details. A brief glossary:

OPP as in Orleans Parish Prison (not as in this)
ICE as in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (not as in this)

Having a videocamera in your hand at the wrong time is not a good thing in New Orleans, particularly when you are, in fact, filming your surroundings in order to maintain a certain level of safety from the police. I filmed him telling his story on Canal street as we waited for a Mardi gras parade to reach us. The next day we all planned to meet up for some more Mardi Gras fun, but alas, he had been arrested again. Something about “interfering with a police action” when in fact, he was taping run-of the mill French Quarter Mardi Gras madness and a police car drove into the scene, presumably to break it up a bit. Except they didn’t, really. They just arrested him. Add a side of “resisting arrest” to that order, please.

March 5, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, Holiday! Celebrate!

Here’s one last Mardi Gras video for posterity–well, maybe not the last. It’s a sampler platter of characters I ran into on Mardi Gras, each one more outrageous and memorable than the last. Where else can you enjoy an “airplane” taxiing down a city street? Or Colonel Sanders surrounded by giant-sized chickens? Or a dapper older gentelman dancing with an Outer Space mermaid? A man sporting a permanently wind-blown tie? New Orleans, of course. A place where it’s possible–likely, even–for traffic to come to a dead halt due to spontaneous dancing in the streets.

What else is there to do but hop out of your car and join in?

Where else can you get away with traipsing around the city dressed as Gene Simmons when it’s months away from being Halloween? Needleess to say, The Three Genes were a big hit. People screaming everywhere we went “You wanted the best, you got the best!”. We even got called out by Peaches at her show at One Eyed Jacks. You simply haven’t lived ’till someone yells “WE GOT KISS IN THE HOUSE!!!” in referrence to you from the stage of their own concert. It rocked. Next year we plan to add spandex.

I wanted so very much to have some coherent footage of The Three Genes but, alas, it was not to be. So instead you get incoherent footage of the Three Genes. Too much wine, too much giggling and way too much of Gene #3 pushing the buttons of the ridiculous “Mayor in Your Pocket” key chain trinket he aquired on Decatur Street, duplicating his tendency to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

One last Mardi Gras highlight was not caught on film…I’ll write about it later. It’s a doozy.

March 1, 2006 | Filed under: big easy, Holiday! Celebrate!

MARDI GRAS UPDATE: RESPONSE TO COMMENTS LEFT ON PRIOR POST:

(click on the picture or here for some brief Quicktime parade silliness…note that the older woman in the video had, just seconds earlier, nearly wrestled a girl half her age to the ground for a string of cheap green beads…and won)

Interestingly, the dissenting voices re:”should there be a Mardi Gras” have been overwhelmingly non-local. Truth be told, it does leave a strange taste in one’s mouth to be so overindulgent when there has been so much tragedy. Indeed, the concept of Mardi Gras in general may seem a bit odd to some, but many cultues around the world have a pre-Lent blow out in one form or another. What people don’t understand is that Mardi Gras is as ingrained in New Orleanean culture as Carnival is to Brazilians, Carribeans and Venetians. Mardi Gras is most certainly NOT just a night of drunken frat boys and squealing co-eds flashing their boobs on Bourbon Street. It’s two solid weeks of parades, costumes, concerts, dancing in the streets and family fun all across city and the surrounding area. This is not the Superbowl, people. Nor is it the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the 4th of July or even New Year’s Eve . It’s much bigger and it’s roots are far deeper. Mardi Gras is a big, fat deal.

Tourism is one of NO’s main moneymakers. Tourism + Mardi Gras =$$$. Big $$$. Big desperately needed $$$. In the pre-Katrina days Mardi Gras generated millions for the city. This year? Who knows. This year the theme, however unofficial, seemed to be “New Orleans is Open For Business and Can Handle Tourism So Get Over Here, Already!”.

Floats and parades are organized and run by various Krewes and social clubs. Aside from the permits, the government is not particularly involved. The big government involvment comes in the form of NOPD overtime costs, and those costs are quite high. Glad (as in trash bags) donated an unspecified six-figure sum to help defray those costs, and other donations from Krewes were added to that pot. Was it enough? I have no idea. Was money diverted from assisting Katrina victims? Please. I highly doubt it.

Anyone who has any doubts about what Mardi Gras really is, or what is really means to the people of New Orleans has obviously never been there.

Or they never got off Bourbon Street to find out.