New Mardi Gras Krewe Member
Survives Ride On The Wild Side
I’m not what most people would describe as a party animal. Alright, no one would describe me as a party animal. So when my wife Sue came home and said we had been invited to join a Krewe for the annual Mardi Gras Parade in Soulard, I think I responded with my usual level of enthusiasm for putting myself in harms way.
Part of me, the boarder-line agoraphobia part, started asking those kind of questions that are only interrogatories because we happen to put a question mark at the end of them. We have to be there how early? We have to dress up like what? The parade is how long? It’s going to be how cold?
But beneath my usual protective layer of phobias, another part of me wanted to see first hand what being part of a large Mardi Gras Krewe was all about. St. Louis Krewes may not have the old-money aristocratic mystique of some of their New Orleans counterparts, but you are “invited” to join. As everyone knows, being asked to join any group immediately elevates the importance and prestige of that organization in your own eyes.
The first challenge for organizers is picking a theme and designing a float. This year the overall theme of the parade was television shows. A few of the standout floats were a reproduction of Fort Courage for “F Troop”, a complete Gotham City on the “Batman” float, and the silver flying-saucer like Jupiter Two from “Lost In Space” large enough to be picked up by radar at Scott Air Force Base. Also represented were floats saluting “I Love Lucy”, “ER”, “Survivor”, “American Idol”, “Super Friends”, “McHale’s Navy”, “Hee Haw”, “Green Acres”, “Love Boat” and “Saturday Night Live” complete with a John Belushi character decked out as the Samurai Chef.
The creativity, detail and size of these floats was astounding. I wondered what had happened to all the engineers and designers downsized from aerospace industries. I’m not sure that model of the Jupiter Two didn’t take off at the end of the parade.
The group we were invited to join had “Mystery Science Theater 3000”, the cult-classic where wise-cracking robots and an erstwhile astronaut are forced to watch the worst B-rated horror and science fiction movies of all time. They did a great job reproducing the techno-warehouse feel of the show’s sets.
One of the biggest individual challenges is coming up with an appropriate costume. Krewes are large (ours had seventy people) and many spent considerable time on costuming and make-up. There was a perfectly detailed “Barbarella” costume (Jane Fonda’s most memorable role), what I took to be four mini-skirted neon clad 60’s “victims”, a swamp monster, two mummies, Dracula, a brain sucking monster atop its host’s head, a bevy of silver-skinned aliens and more lab-coated “mad” scientists than you can find at a Monsanto Christmas party.
My wife put together a convincing Viking costume, which all true MST3 (Mystery Science Theater 3000) fans know is from season three, Viking Women Versus The Sea Serpent…truly a B-movie train wreck. What? You never heard of it?
I found a suitably “dignified” character from the show…one of The Observers who dressed in long purple robes with hoods and carried their brains around in bowls. It turned out to have a huge unintended advantage. I was able to keep a black windbreaker on underneath and the heavy cape cut down on the cold somewhat.
The sun tried its best to stay out, but the temperature seemed to get colder as the day progressed. Maybe we were just steadily losing body heat. We had to be in front of the Radisson at 8:40 AM to get on the float for a ride to the staging area. That’s a giant waiting area for floats. In fact, you wait there for two hours. Of course you need that time to check out the other floats, get your beads ready, have a sandwich from the tailgate party at the back of the float, refill beer cups, adjust your costume just one more time and stand in line for the porta-john built into the float.
Ours was a two-tier float with the lower throwing stations resembling the spacious accommodations of a slave galley or the lower decks of a cheaper cruise line. You have to “load” the people one at a time in the order they are going to be standing because once in place, there is no getting around the ten people to your rear. Your bead supply is hanging on hooks, your arms and in a box you have to be a contortionist to reach beneath the upper tier behind you.
Once the parade starts, that’s when the fun begins. If you have never seen a half-a-million people screaming at you for beads, it’s somewhat difficult to describe. Forget tax cuts, what people really want is beads. Americans don’t pour into the streets for trivial things like protesting cartoons of religious prophets. We jam every square inch of a parade route and rooftops yelling for people to throw us brightly colored plastic beads.
There are those who take this quest to be showered in beads to excess. Probably about two-dozen women, out of the tens of thousands there, did so on our side of the street. Those who did, tended to fall into two categories. Those who perhaps paid good money to enhance what God gave them and were anxious to get a return on the investment and those for whom wisdom hadn’t necessarily come with age. The former tended to have all-over tans, the latter missing teeth. Such women of both extremes were often in cahoots with the men around them to share a cut of the excess bead bounty that seemed to rain down in their general vicinity. The women participating in the act having their hands otherwise engaged. Mardi Gras veterans euphemistically refer to such women as “Bead Bait”.
On the other end of the spectrum are the children, especially toddlers, who become the favored recipients of more beads than they can carry. Some revelers use baskets, other umbrellas to catch beads. A few had the long mechanical extension arms people use to get things off tall shelves. It seems they work well to reach over police lines and scoop up beads that fall short of the crowds. Signs with catchy slogans and dozens of “pairs” of false female accessories (yes you are very funny now sit down) are used in hopes of attracting more of the precious plastic baubles. But the world’s worst bead attracting device had to be the guy holding aloft a head and shoulders cut-out of Donald Trump. People wanted to throw something, just not beads.
Sue and I went through approximately five gross of beads or around 720. The City of St. Louis had just planted new street trees along 7th Street, so the police barricades were behind the grass medians. That meant throwing beads a little further to reach even the front rows of the crowd. By the time you’ve thrown 360 sets of beads, as far as you can, you feel like you gave the team seven good innings and are ready for them to send in a relief pitcher.
Our gracious hosts for the day were The Bone Daddy Krewe. This popular bar and nightclub band’s members are primarily St. Charles based. They are equally popular in St. Louis if crowd reaction was any indication. Bone Dadddy has been active in the St. Louis Mardi Gras celebrations for years.
Adding a live performance by a great band to any float kicks it up several notches. They played the entire route non-stop. Their song selections were appropriate to the Mystery Science Theater theme. “Blinded Me With Science” was a crowd favorite, but “Werewolf Of London” really rocked those under an overpass as it echoed off the steel and concrete.
The hour and a half parade route went by in a flash. The ride back was longer and more circuitous as parade organizers made the entire caravan of floats drive out to Gravois at Jefferson before heading back downtown. By the time we hit the new baseball stadium, the band started up again. Workmen waved from the heights of the new Cardinal’s nest. The doorman at the Adams Mark did a great dance for everyone to “Viva Las Vegas” the band was playing at a long traffic stop. Meanwhile two men were holding up a third and dragging him down Market. I bet he woke up the next day wondering how the tops of his shoes got so scuffed.
The float pulled up to the front of The Radisson, where Bone Daddy gave a free outdoor concert for the next hour, in the cold and wind for a crowd that gathered. These are guys that just love music and like making people feel good.
The Krewe moved inside to party suites they get each year where I’m sure the fun continued to the wee hours of the morning. Sue and I started to fade around 7 PM. Then again, we haven’t been in training and the day did start rather early.
It wasn’t till the ride home that it that it all started to sink in. I had not only managed to survive the day, but I had fun. The people on The Bone Daddy Krewe made it fun. They are a creative eclectic mix of people who went out of their way to help the new kids on the block. Other floats might have been bigger or cost more to build, but our float was the crowd favorite. It took a lot of years, but for one day, hanging with the band, I came close to being cool.
