Here's how to celebrate Fat Tuesday like a local in New Orleans: parades, costume parties, more (2024)

Carnival time can be the best daze of the year, and Fat Tuesday is the climax in New Orleans.

From parades to costumes to general craziness, here's what to do on Mardi Gras day, and where to do it.

Treme neighborhood

5 a.m.

For early risers, the Northside Skull and Bones Gang, a group of macabre rowdies masked as terrifying skeletons, emerges onto the streets of the Treme neighborhood at 5 a.m. to pound on doors, and otherwise make a racket, ensuring nobody oversleeps on Mardi Gras morning. The tradition, which was meant in part to scare the devil out of devilish kids, began two centuries ago and was reborn in 2003.

Tip: Look for the gang to rise up from 1925 Bayou Road

Tuesday, Feb. 13, various locations

Morning

Small “tribes” or “gangs” of Mardi Gras Indians, also called Black Masking Indians, emerge on Fat Tuesday morning and set out in the city’s neighborhoods in search of other Indians. The age-old costuming tradition symbolizes the interconnection of Black and Native American cultures in New Orleans.

As the tribes travel, the maskers and their entourages sing traditional call-and-response chants that have inspired New Orleans' musical styles from rhythm and blues to funk to bounce.

When two Indian groups intersect, they compete to determine which has the prettiest “suits.” The flamboyant feathered suits, decorated with incredibly intricate bead work mosaics, are a unique New Orleans art form at the pinnacle of Mardi Gras costuming.

It’s difficult to predict exactly where wandering Mardi Gras Indians will appear, though North Claiborne Avenue near St. Bernard Avenue is a good bet.

Tip: This year The Spirit of Fi-Yi-Yi, the Big Chief of the Mandingo Warriors to emerge from the Backstreet Cultural Museum, 1531 St. Philip St., at 11 a.m. The Spirit of Fi-Yi-Yi plans to call it quits after this year, having masked 58 times!

Uptown and the St. Charles Avenue route

Morning

The area above Canal Street is the stomping ground of several renowned Mardi Gras morning marching clubs that stroll beneath the oaks early on Mardi Gras morning, before arriving on St. Charles Avenue in advance of the Rex parade. Some end up all the way in the French quarter. Expect brass bands, banners, paper flowers, and medallion beads.

• Look for the 134-year-old Jefferson City Buzzards which begin their trek at Exposition Boulevard and Laurel Street at 6:45 a.m.
• At 7 a.m., the Irish Channel Corner Club, which was originally founded in 1918, takes to the streets of, where else, the Irish Channel.
• Not far away, at 7 a.m., the 78-year-old Lyons Carnival Club begins its stroll in the 500 block of Lyons Street.
• At 7:45, Pete Fountain’s Half-Fast Walking Club, founded by the late, legendary clarinetist, hits the street, after the 200-plus, members breakfast and or imbibe at Commander’s Palace.
• Also at 7:45 a.m., the cacophonous, wildly costumed Mondo Kayo Social and Marching Club, sets out to join the throng. The group, which was founded in 1996, is the self-declared representation of the northernmost banana republic.
• Finally, at 7:50, the New Orleans Baby Doll Ladies Marching Club put in their annual appearance. Baby Dolls masking is an age-old Black Carnival tradition, in which, cigar-chomping, umbrella-twirling, baby bottle-clutching ladies, strut coquettishly in satin costumes.

Founded in 1909, Zulu has long been a touchstone of African-American culture in New Orleans. Crowds vie for a chance to catch hand-decorated Zulu coconuts, one of Carnival’s most coveted throws.

The glittering coconuts were the inspiration for other hand-decorated throws – shoes, purses, fedoras, sunglasses, etc. – that are common among other parading organizations.The parade's most renowned grand marshal remains Louis Armstrong, who reigned in 1949.

For a detailed historical overview, visit the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club website.

Each year the all-male organization selects a king, known as Rex, King of Carnival, who symbolically calls business and school to a halt across the city on Fat Tuesday in order to celebrate the holiday.

The krewe, which first paraded in 1872, is credited with introducing universal Carnival customs such as the purple, green and gold color scheme, the doubloon, and the surprisingly surrealistic song “If Ever I Cease to Love.”

The parade features a float surmounted by a giant white bull surrounded by chefs, which symbolizes the opportunity to dine on meat one last time before the start of Lent.

The theme of the 2024 Rex parade is “The Two Worlds of Lafcadio Hearn – New Orleans and Japan,” a tribute to New Orleans’ 19th-century cultural chronicler. This year’s floats are an artistic masterpiece.

Follows Rex

For decades the truck parades have been an unsung part of the Fat Tuesday tradition. After Rex passes by, a seemingly endless convoy of hand-decorated semi-trailer trucks rumble along the Uptown route, with thousands of riders tossing beads and baubles. The parades, which can include over 100 trailers ridden by families and small organizations, can go on for hours, bidding farewell to Mardi Gras.

Tip: For kids, the truck parades, which present an uninterrupted barrage of throws, are the bomb.

Bywater, Marigny, French Quarter

Morning

Find your way downriver to the Bywater and Marigny neighborhoods where hundreds of do-it-yourself costumers gather at select intersections like flocks of surrealistic peaco*cks preparing to migrate en masse into the French Quarter. You’ll see some stunningly clever political and popular culture commentary embodied in the costumes.

Perhaps the most spectacular of the many marching groups is the Societe de Sainte Anne. The half-century-old costuming club was named for a mysterious 19th-century tomb that members discovered in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and is meant to be a throwback to the informal, 19th-century foot processions that preceded regimented float parades.

Tip: To behold the spectacle, stake out a place on Royal Street at Franklin Avenue or Kerlerec Street and follow the crowd into the Vieux Carre. To distinguish St. Anne from other marching groups, look for glinting standards made from hula hoops strung with fluttering ribbons.

Corner of St. Ann and Dauphine Streets

Noon

For 60 years, the Bourbon Street Awards costume contest has been one of the highlights of Fat Tuesday. Crowds gather around a raised outdoor runway where individual costumers and groups display their annual creations, for a panel of judges. Expect everything from the breathtaking headpieces produced for New Orleans gay carnival balls, to the most brilliant DIY creations. All described by reliably catty commentators.

Yhe Bourbon Street Awards costume contest proves, year after year, that Carnival is the country’s biggest, best art festival that doesn’t call itself an art festival.

Tip: The show starts at noon, but get there plenty early for a good spot.

Argus is turning 50, having paraded in Metairie on Mardi Gras since 1974. Named for a 100-eyed giant in Greek mythology whose eyes were transferred to the peaco*ck’s tail, the krewe uses a peaco*ck as its principal symbol. A family-oriented procession, the 450 riders include men, women and children.For more information, lay your eyes on the Argus website.

Follows Argus

Established in 1974, the Carnival convoy, features as many as 50 home-decorated semis with riders representing families and social clubs. The procession brings Carnival parading to a close in Jefferson Parish.