Carnival rolling in New Orleans

Road long to Mardi Gras — Feb. 25

FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2015, file photo, members of the Phunny Phorty Phellows, participate in their night of revelry aboard a streetcar in New Orleans. It's the official end of the Christmas season but just the start of the season leading up to New Orleans' biggest street party, Mardi Gras. A couple of walking parades and streetcar-riding groups touch off revelry climaxing on Fat Tuesday itself — Feb. 25 this year. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2015, file photo, members of the Phunny Phorty Phellows, participate in their night of revelry aboard a streetcar in New Orleans. It's the official end of the Christmas season but just the start of the season leading up to New Orleans' biggest street party, Mardi Gras. A couple of walking parades and streetcar-riding groups touch off revelry climaxing on Fat Tuesday itself — Feb. 25 this year. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

NEW ORLEANS -- The Christmas season is officially drawing to a close, but it's just the start of the season leading up to New Orleans' biggest street party: Mardi Gras.

Some walking parades and streetcar-riding groups touch off Carnival revelry, which climaxes on Fat Tuesday -- Feb. 25 this year. On Monday the Krewe of Joan of Arc walked through the French Quarter, where the streets are too narrow for floats to pass. And two groups -- the Phunny Phorty Phellows and the Funky Uptown Krewe -- rode streetcars along St. Charles Avenue. The Societe des Champs Elysee, which usually celebrates on a different streetcar line, was forced to walk to its party because the collapse of the under-construction Hard Rock Hotel has closed that line.

The city hasn't said whether any major parade routes must change this year because of the hotel collapse on the edge of the Quarter. The krewes of Endymion, which will roll Feb. 22, and Zulu, on Mardi Gras, might have to slightly alter their routes, said Arthur Hardy, who is putting out his 44th annual guide to the season's parades. If it happens, he said, it won't be a big deal: "People will say, 'Hey, go with the flow.'"

Carnival season always begins Jan. 6, celebrated by many as Epiphany, the day the three wise men arrived to see the baby Jesus. Mardi Gras moves with Ash Wednesday and Easter. Carnival comes from the Latin words meaning "farewell to the flesh," and Fat Tuesday was originally the day when all remaining meat and fat had to be eaten before Ash Wednesday ushered in Lenten fasts.

Between now and Ash Wednesday, dozens of parades will take place in New Orleans and about 150 more statewide, plus the Cajun-country courirs de Mardi Gras -- chases after chickens and other ingredients for a communal gumbo.

Some parade krewes have enormous floats and celebrity riders. Singer-songwriter Robin Thicke will reign in New Orleans on Feb. 23 as Bacchus, god of wine and mirth, 32 years after his father, TV personality Alan Thicke, did so for the city's first "superkrewe." This year's parade will have 33 super-floats and more than 1,600 riders.

"I rode on the King's Float with my father when I was a boy and it was one of the best experiences I ever had with him," Robin Thicke said in a statement posted on the Krewe of Bacchus Facebook page.

On Feb. 24, Bryan Cranston, best known for playing Walter White on AMC's Breaking Bad, will be among celebrities riding with the Krewe of Orpheus. Also leading the 30 floats and 1,200 krewe members will be the co-stars of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Charlie Day and Elizabeth Ellis, and country musician and Dancing with the Stars finalist Lauren Alaina.

Most parade participants toss plastic beads and other trinkets to the crowd, and a record 173 tons of them have been recycled for this season by the nonprofit Arc of Greater New Orleans, which helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The discovery in January 2018 that 46 tons of beads had clogged storm drains along five blocks of a 4.5-mile parade route helped steer more than triple that weight in beads, hats, stuffed toys, toy spears and other gew-gaws into the group's recycling bins in 2019, said spokeswoman Ann Christian.

"It's opened people's eyes," she said.

The nonprofit has sold recycled beads for decades, but always to individuals who visited its Mardi Gras Recycle Center, where scores of Arc participants work full or part time, Christian said.

This year, for the first time, parade groups are buying. The Rex Organization, which puts on Fat Tuesday's biggest and grandest parade, is a customer. The Krewe of Excalibur is buying light-up throws and other novelty items. The Krewe of Centurions ordered 700 sacks of beads, Christian said.

She said that before 2018, the Arc collected 25 to 30 tons of throws a year. That rose to about 62 tons in 2018 and more than doubled again in time for this Carnival season.

More than 4,000 volunteers donated more than 14,200 hours of work to the tedious task of preparing the throws, working alongside the group's paid disabled workers.

"Everything that comes through our doors has to be touched by a human hand," she said. "Every bead, boa, plush toy, trinket, cup, you name it, everything that you see being sold in the store has been sorted and repackaged by hand."

A Section on 01/07/2020

Upcoming Events