Parading

 

Two guys walking abreast (that me and my buddy in the cleavage)

It was a
dark time growing up without king cake. I grew up in a time before
Mardi Gras came to Baton Rouge. I’d heard about it as a kid and
family friends would bring me exotic, glamorous beads from a far
off place. As a child New Orleans seemed much further away than 90
miles and it was so foreign to where I lived. Even the accents of
the people from there sounded funny. That first experience didn’t
happen for me ’till I got to college. My parents remained Mardi
Gras virgins. But at some point in my young adulthood, a small
parade began in the shadow of Louisiana’s huge phallic State
Capital. Sure, it was a bunch of drag queens that
liked to dress up and parade down the streets of the town’s oldest
neighborhood, Spanish Town, but it was a parade. That little parade
grew and grew and last Saturday 100,000 came to catch the beads, or
condoms, or white bread or whatever was being thrown off the
homemade floats.

Governor Jindal was among many politicians skewered this year

It is
appropriate that a parade grew up organically in the shadow of
Louisiana politics. It’s the honoring of our corrupt and crazy
political history that makes the parade so fun. Add sexual
overtones to it all and it is a day that is so fun and hip and cool
that Baton Rouge can only sustain that level of intensity for the
day of the parade. The Spanish Town parade doesn’t try to be a big
and glitzy New Orleans parade with it’s imported celebrities.
The celebrities that are at the Spanish Town parade are likely to
be the infamous politician who just got out of  jail. The
floats look homemade because they are. Pictures are stapled to the
sides that someone downloaded and printed on their office printer
when the boss wasn’t looking. The paint is barely dry on others
because they were hastily put together with a keg and an
all-nighter.

Even the colors are
different. Instead of the traditional purple, green and gold,
flamingo pink is the color that rules the day. People dress in the
irreverence of the parade spirit and of course in pink. You can’t
be too pink or too tacky. That drag queen spirit is still present
in the deep marrow of the costumed revelers. Families are welcome,
but this is an adult parade with pink penis popsicles sold by the
same vendor selling pink cotton candy.

Click here to watch “Lawn of the
Dead”

The hightlight of the parade
is the lawnmower brigade—the Krewe of Yazoo. They parade like a
marching band, but they’re all pushing their lawn mowers. And each
year they have a choreographed performance. This year they were
zombies performing “Lawn of the Dead” to the music, Staying Alive.
My favorite past performance may always be when they were the
Mow-donnas.

The Grand
Marshall and me

The Baton Rouge Spanish Town
Mardi Gras Parade, a day of hilarity and friends and eating and
drinking. It’s all the things I love about living here, all wrapped
up with a big pink bow—just don’t ask where that bow has been!

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—Connie