New Orleans: vestiges of the Carnival
July 2022
Coming to New Orleans you expect to see the Carnival.
It’s like Tromsø with Aurora Borealis, Cabo San Lucas with whales or Williamsburg with hipsters and Hasidic jews.
Even if you know you are going at the wrong time, you expect these attractions be there, waiting for you, adapting to your schedule, respecting a contract they never signed.
Going to New Orleans “out of season” I expected to see the city for what it really is, behind the glitters and the beads, I expected to meet the real City in the changing room.
Now I know that that was an illusion. New Orleans doesn’t show its true nature so easily, it is a City of vestiges: the brief French past, the American present, the last Carnival, the anticipation for the new one.
A city of plenitude, always ready for the next show, for the next birthday, the next wedding, the next bachelor party.
A glimpse of Carnival emerged in front of the Jazz Museum, a parade for the NOLA River Fest, with what I later learned to be the Tchoupitoulas Indians and the N’awlins D’awlins Baby dolls.
They stepped out of vans, put on their feathers on as you would put on your boots to go mushroom-hunting, and started to parade, careless of the crowd that was gathering around them.
I followed the parade all the way from Jackson Square to the Decatur, passing by the Moonwalk Riverfront Park.
I couldn’t help but wonder what these people do on normal days, which is any day on which they don’t dress up in flamboyant feathers and sequins: am I following a teacher, a construction worker, a lawyer ?
We all need our Feathers’ Day.
Along the way more people joined, chanting and dancing along with Big Queen Mary Kay of the Tchoupitoulas.
The parade ended, a storm flooded the street like most days around mid-day and the party was over with all its pinks and reds and greens.
I went east, towards Bywater, a name that reminds you of the City dangerously close relation with water.
After all the energy of Decatur, the rest of the city felt empty, with none brave enough to defy the steamy July weather.
Later that night, in a Bar in Marigny, a man was gambling in a corner, undisturbed by the crowd celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Tales of the Cocktail drinking craft beers and Tequila shots.
