Carnival Diary Postscript

I left my post on Bourbon Street ten minutes too soon. That's a street I normally avoid like the plague. The worst thing you could say about New Orleans during the early weeks after Katrina and the Waves was that for the first time Bourbon was not the worst-smelling street in town. But every Mardi Gras ends with the police riding down Bourbon St. at midnight pulling the curtain down on horseback. This year, the cops were late, and i had an early morning. So a friend told me the rest. The police indeed came riding down the "straight" half of Bourbon Street, and when they crossed into Boys' Town, he told me, all the gay men emptied out of the bars to gather on the street and applaud the cops. In return, the police performed some fancy moves on horseback. It was, my friend said, a midnight horse show.

And what I've neglected to say about this time in this town is that these large events in New Orleans--Mardi Gras, Jazzfest--are always reunions. Friends from scattered outposts return for these events year after year, we rejoice in seeing each other again, and we celebrate those fulltimers who stay and are the keepers of the flame. This year, with the diasporation, it was a much larger reunion, and a much smaller tourist attraction, which accounted for the poignancy behind the euphoria. But when we and our friends from elsewhere gathered to watch some Mardi Gras Indians, their suits new, fine, and sewed and beaded since Katrina, dancing in the street, our gratitude for those who (like float designer Blaine Kern, who reportedly paid for many Indians to return to town) really do keep the flame burning reminded the crowd--black, white, young, old--why we keep coming back, and why, money aside, it really doesn't matter if other folks don't get it.