Mardi Gras, First week

The first week of Mardi Gras began for us on February 9, 2007. On that day, a Friday, we were working in the condo unit until about sundown (we're living in one smaller unit, and renovating a larger unit that faces St. Charles Avenue). As we rinsed our paint brushes out and put our tools away, people started to appear out of nowhere down on St. Charles...cars began to be parked everywhere, taking any available legal or illegal parking space, and the police began to show up as well and walk up and down the Avenue. St. Charles Avenue is a broad, four-lane street divided by a large grassy median where the streetcars would be running into the Garden District (they have not run since Katrina). This general milling about went on for the next two hours, until traffic was stopped down the far side of the avenue. Then the parade began in earnest. There were two that night, parades named "Oshun" and "Pygmalion." The next day, a Saturday, had four parades (one of them is pictured above), beginning at 1 p.m. and ending after the last parade at 6 p.m. The same parking issues, police strolling, and people milling about went on every time a parade was about to begin.

It was like our corner of the Avenue was invaded and transformed into something quite different every day. We had a break of no parades at all on the Avenue on Monday and Tuesday of the following week--which we needed to finish up work in the unit until our company arrived. It was explained to us that the second week of parades right up through Mardi Gras would bring much bigger crowds and traffic and parking snarls, but we couldn't imagine it...already, it seemed like the celebrations were large enough. We were in for a shock as that did, in fact, come to pass. EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, ground to a complete halt. Right before the whole Mardi Gras parade insanity began, we finally received the kitchen cabinets via a shipping company that we had been waiting on since December 12th. We took our last guest to the airport this morning...the cabinets are still in their boxes. But I'll blog about that later.

The first week of parades was sweet--there were 12 parades from Friday through the next Thursday. We were very excited to finish our work during the day and then walk outside and be entertained right in the front yard...they were low-key and very family-oriented. Where we are on St. Charles the parades are very kid-friendly. The weather was very cold at nights, but the whole scene was warm and friendly. And at first, catching the myriad strings of plastic beads thrown from the parade floats was fun (week two brings a different take on the whole bead thing). We were looking forward to having company and to hosting folks for the big parades over the next weekend--little did we know that right outside the front of the building, it would be a mob scene that within a half-mile square would host more humans than we had been around in YEARS. And, we would be trapped in our building for almost the entire duration of the final parades, since leaving would mean we'd NEVER get a parking space again that was close.