Bourbon Street. Mardi Gras, 2011. More photos.

If you stepped outside even for a minute yesterday in New Orleans, you ended up in a parade. I was the only person in my neighborhood without a wild costume, so I ran back home and put on my most colorful grey suit. It was the best I could do on short notice, and I wanted to keep up with the marching and dancing and the big tuba stomp, not to mention the silver zeppelin and the pirates shooting beads out of a cannon.

For weeks, I asked my neighbors, “What am I supposed to do on Mardi Gras?” They’d respond with some mystical jazz like, “Whatever you do will be exactly right.” When the morning finally came, I understood. My neighborhood was crawling with geishas, robots, bearded ladies, and gorilla ballerinas, all out of their minds and dancing together through the streets like it was the movies. That’s all Mardi Gras was, and it was plenty because it made me forget the rest of the world for a day. And that day was soundtracked by endless drumming like a citywide heartbeat, and every few blocks somebody pulled out a cowbell and some brass. A few ignorant cars got swallowed by the mob. (Just put it in park while we party a little bit.) Big queens and little old ladies leaned over iron balconies, covered in feathers and paint and throwing beads. The first thing I saw in the Quarter was a man dressed up as a hand painting a man dressed up like Magnum PI.

Sirens whooped in the distance throughout the day and choppers hovered overhead. Local news cameras flocked to a man who won an award for his giant mohawk. A skeleton pedaled around town in a coffin, clutching a rubber chicken. A group dressed up as self-loathing killjoys stalked down Bourbon Street, waving signs that said Jesus Saves and Homo Sex Is Sin and Your Party Will End in Hell. Everybody formed a wall and two silver-painted heroes blew their party whistles hard as hell, refusing to let the Jesus freaks pass until the cops broke it up.

We ended up in the corner of a dark Japanese joint on Frenchmen Street, eating udon and listening to surf rock and when I stepped outside an hour later, the streets were jammed up tighter than ever with insects, smurfs, fairies, and people dancing like crazy to a purple, gold, and green tower of sound. Everything felt extra bright and I was exhausted but it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.

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King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band – Chime’s Blues

Gennett, 1923 | buy mp3s

Eighty-eight years ago, Louis Armstrong recorded his first solo.

More Mardi Gras photographs here.