Others will have their favorites, but for me it will always be Krewe du Vieux. It’s tonight. I wish I were there.
A few explanations. The people who organize and run the Mardi Gras parades are called a “krew.” Why not “crew?” I have no idea.
Most Mardi Gras parades do not roll—that’s the term used—on Mardi Gras day but in the week before, and even earlier. A few take place weeks earlier, like Chewbaccus, a Star Wars-themed parade and tons of fun, which took place on January 20, over three weeks before Mardi Gras itself, which this year is on February 13.
Most of the traditional parades have mammoth, unwieldy, tractor-pulled floats that need wide streets to accommodate them. These are the parades that are world-famous, or at least America-famous. I avoided them in the eleven years I lived in New Orleans. I could go into why, but that’s another story.
I adore Krewe de Vieux. It’s a parade on a human scale, one of the few allowed to enter the French Quarter. Its floats are not the humongous things that the mainstream parades have, but much smaller. The narrow French Quarter streets can accommodate them. Plus, the Krewe de Vieux is as much about the people who march as it is about the floats. Here’s a wandering video I took at the 2022 parade:
What is Krewe du Vieux? First, it’s a bawdy parade. The floats are out-and-out explicit. They’re usually very funny, these floats, but they’re not particularly subtle, not are they meant to be. One that comes to mind from the past depicted former (and deeply loathed by many) governor Bobby Jindal having gleeful intercourse with I think it was the Louisiana school system. In other words, Bobby screws the schools. The Bobby Jindal figure was mechanized to perform a continuous in-out motion in case you needed further explanation.
Everyone knows what they’ll see. If you take your kid to the parade—and many do—you do so with full knowledge of what to expect.
But the inventive ribaldry of the floats is not all that draws people—at least not the people I used to hang out with. It’s the pure, unadulterated joy. The exuberance. Something akin to what Rio Carnival is like, I imagine: the pounding of the drums. The gleeful faces. The costumed onlookers. It’s a festival. It’s people oriented. In a real neighborhood. The heart is happy!
This is a second video from that same parade:
My daughter came to visit one year around this time, and I took her to see Krewe du Vieux. Her eyes opened, and she literally jumped for joy.
This is New Orleans at its absolute best.
I’ll miss you tonight, Krewe du Vieux! Have fun everyone!
Sounds like a hoot! Sometimes the local festivities with the inside jokes are the best.