Tag Archives: mardi gras

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MG2005


It was creepy warm for Mardi-Gras this year.

Instead of parking a mile away and hiking in – we took the shuttle this year… It worked out nicely.

As usual – we hung at the two private parties we’re lucky enough to get invited to every year… It’s nice to stand in a private yard, (with your own porta-potty and food supply), as hundreds of thousands of drunk folks mill around just on the other side of the fence.

Winter sun, downtown haze and MY #$%$@#$%^#$@%^$#@#$%#!@@#Q$@#^$% camera’s persnickety, often easily forgotten WHITE BALANCE control insured that most of the photographs I took looked like they were seen through fish-tank.

Sorta cranky this morning and lacking the desire to go through and pound out the levels to correct them… but here’s ONE of Menard street… and another of Janet’s back yard, (a triple lot – UNHEARD OF in Soulard), complete with home-made picnic table / bonfire / used to be a large industrial spool of something.

I’m not blogging…. I’m running back to bed to get up on the opposite side and see if that helps.

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marty claw

beads and boobs

The week was punctuated by my PowerBook going on the the fritz again. This time quite terminally. I think Apple sold me a lemon… Nonetheless, a short conversation with the Apple-Careâ„¢ folks and I was promised a shipping box at my door on Monday and a replacement if they can’t get to the bottom of the trouble.

We slept in and had a leisurely morning before heading downtown to Soulard for Mardi Gras. Certain we’d be fucked for parking, I wore comfortable shoes. As luck would have it, we stalked a group of spontaneously vomiting college students staggering down one of the main drags and nabbed their parking spot as they left. Woopie! – only three blocks from the festivities – choice.

The key to Mardi Gras, as with any street festival – is to KNOW people who live there. We know two.. A bear couple we met through the local club and one of my sign vendors both have homes right in the thick of it.

We stick to the top of the neighborhood and stay out of the mobs of tens of thousands of people jammed into the lower section for the parade.

The pattern is simple… Go to party #1, socialize, mooch beer, take a stroll around the block, stop at party #2, go pee, mooch a beer, socialize, stroll around the block and stop by the Bear’s booth at Bastille, buy a beer, socialize…. Rinse… And repeat.

There’s something genuinely reassuring about the human condition to see so many folks from so many different walks of life all out wooping it up and getting their freak on.

Granted there’s more boob flashing going on than a Super Bowl Halftime show, but it’s o.k. – it’s nice to be reminded occasionally of what they look like.

I’d blog about all this but I still have a residual headache from the draft beer and need to chug another gallon of water.