Mardi Gras 2004

Fat Tuesday falls on February 24 this year (here's the Mardi Gras Countdown page). The season starts rolling by Twelfth Night in January and builds up steam until schools and businesses are rendered ungovernable and are closed by February 23 and 24. Here's the Mayor's Mardi Gras Message. Here are some useful, general Mardi Gras FAQs.

The cloudtravel site on visiting New Orleans is getting a lot of traffic, and that's great, but the site is not Mardi Gras specific. In fact, it is in many ways anti-Mardi Gras because the usual visitation rules don't apply during that strange, strange time. What good is a hotel guide when everything is booked? (You can try this message board - or search for one like it - if you're wrangling for a place to stay.) What good is a rating of the best restaurants when the most self-respecting restauranteurs close up?

So this posting provides some Mardi-Gras-specific info to make up for the deficiency of the main page. For starters, here's Frommers Mardi Gras guide, which is a level-headed, somewhat formalized, all-purpose reference. For an event like Mardi Gras you may want something with more street credibility than Frommers. Well, here is the informal Mardi Gras guide page by Stan from Wash-U, who has updated his 1995 Mardi Gras page this month. Stan has a nice listing of all the parades to give you the kind of personal input that Frommers lacks. Stan also adds party-related tips on saftey, traffic, your car getting towed, etc.

As reading Stan's page underscores, the best tips for Mardi Gras are practical, like this Mardi Gras list. Don't get arrested, for one. It's easy to get arrested at Mardi Gras. You're having a good time and flash something you shouldn't, or you get caught up in tossing "throws" at a parade and hit a mounted policeman in the eye with a fistful of beads - who knows. If it happens you've got a problem. The NOPD will likely hold you for several days at a place like the tent city set up for Mardi Gras at Central Lockup on Tulane Avenue. There is so much arrest volume at this time of year that you probably won't have a chance for release until they get organized some days after Fat Tuesday. Above and beyond the obvious inconvenience, you don't want to tangle with the New Orleans Police Department.

But presuming you can behave yourself and stay out of jail, think expansively about your party venues. By the time of Fat Tuesday Bourbon Street will be so packed with mayhem that you may not be physically able to get there. The main parade routes, Canal Street, St. Charles Ave, have more room so more access, but expect to be standing and you'll have to figure out restroom options. Want to monitor what's going on? Here's a live cam set up in front of Fat Harry's on St. Charles Avenue uptown. Here's a live French Quarter street shot from Cat's Meow (and here's another angle of the same location). Here's an internal shot of the goings on at Cat's Meow Karaoke Bar.

Consider sideline Mardi Gras celebrations that give you a little more freedom of movement than the most obvious venues. For instance, Ernst Cafe at 600 St. Peters (near Harrah's Casino on Canal Street, and near the all-purpose riverside Hilton Hotel) is a venerable bar located in a somewhat off-trail, yet central, part of the City. You can see them preparing the parade floats nearby, but you have some releif from the craziest party strips. For the last 20 years Ernst Cafe has hosted the Baccus Bash, a street party, from noon til dusk on the Sunday before Mardi Gras (this year that would be February 22).