Bernell DorroughAh, Mardi Gras. An excuse for drunken revelry at all hours of the day. A magical time when it’s happy hour from noon til night and worthless plastic beads suddenly become valid currency for a peep show. And we here at Washington University have access to one of the nation’s biggest Fat Tuesday celebrations, Soulard’s annual, ten-day Mardi Gras bonanza. This past Saturday was one of the festival’s biggest days, and Cadenza was on site to soak in the shenanigans.
The first question of a respectable Mardi Gras day is: when do I start drinking? Mardi Gras is as enjoyable sober as it is completely blitzed out of your mind. But that wouldn’t be in the true spirit of Mardi Gras, which, literally translated, means “Party Bras.” It’s gotta be either “as soon as I wake up” or “let me hook this special alcohol IV to my arm while I sleep so I can get a head start.” Most of the lords and ladies present on Saturday seemed to be in the beer-for-breakfast camp. We’d be hard pressed to name any other situation where so many people were drinking at 1:00 in the afternoon-patrons were getting their drink on with conventional plastic cups, whole pitchers, and even a full keg, which three hapless college students were seen rolling across the I-66 land bridge. Which begs the question: did they take it on the shuttle? Did the keg require a three dollar shuttle pass?
Speaking of the shuttle, transportation was a relative breeze: a quick car trip to the Delmar Metrolink station, followed by a desperate scramble for space inside a crowded train car. Present here were some prime specimens of “Homo ebrius ante meridiem”-or “man soused before noon.” Your fearless Cadenza reporters pushed their way into the sweaty, bead-bedecked throng and held on for dear life as the Metro hurtled towards downtown St. Louis. Once at the Savvis Center, a shuttle transported the now claustrophobic and belligerent masses to historic Soulard, Missouri. Here the streets surged with party-goers, pranksters hung perilously out of apartment windows, and the air was rife with cigarette smoke and Sweet Meat Stix-The Best 12 Inches in the Midwest.
Now, when attending a Mardi Gras party, there are a few timeless maxims to keep in mind at all times. Number 1: Anything in sight is a potential toilet. The sign might say “No Public Urination-$100 Fine,” but basically anything goes: the side of an apartment, a flower bed, your best friend’s shoe. After a few beers, every alleyway starts to look potentially peeworthy. Even one of the 450 porta-johns is a possibility, but who would use such a disgusting invention when a much more sanitary building facade will suffice? Number 2: People tend to get sleazier as they get older. You would think that college kids would be the ones causing all the ruckus, but it was the older crowd, particularly the Nascar hat-sporting, trashy-date-in-tow men who shouted threats and clamored to see some “boobies.”
You have to understand that Mardi Gras turns our currency system upside down: beads are thrown in exchange for bared boobs, while money (lots of it) is exchanged for ridiculously large amounts of booze. Like a scene from “Aladdin,” the streets run rampant with singing fiends and greasy-but-happy merchants. Plastic footballs, fishtanks, and pitchers are filled to the brim with your fave brew juice, so you can slosh around in the streets for hours without having to go back into a bar or beer tent.
Maybe the best part of Mardi Gras is the chance for drunkards to wander the crowded streets aimlessly for a few days and, for once, act like idiots without seeming like total losers. Partiers get drunker as the day grows on, and as they say in every “E! Wild On,” “Things really heat up once the sun goes down!” More clothes were shed as the hours passed, and the stories became crazier. Characters at this year’s Mardi Gras included the girl who stuck four fingers up her pubic in public, the angry baseball bat-wielding brick-throwing resident, and Del Taco Man: an hombre dressed up like a giant burrito, who pooped in the street while yelling “Farty Gras!” We also couldn’t forget the 2nd-story window showing of a forty-something mother baring her breasts while her pubescent daughter caught beads thrown to them.
Mardi Gras, or as we like to call it, G-Mardi, is as much about food as it is about drink. Soulard restaurants offer a wide array of cajun flavors, while street vendors cook up the finest hunks of meat that five dollars can buy.
Other highlights of Mardi Gras 2004 included impromptu drum circles in the street spun off from the midday Grand Parade, various live music tents, and the lack of policeage, because nothing ruins a party more than having to hide your drink from Smokey.
St. Louis’ Mardi Gras celebration just shows the character the city has to offer, and how much we St. Louisans like to party. With events like this and other fine area festivals, no one can argue that “there’s nothing to do in St. Louis.” If you missed it this year, be sure to check out the Soulard area for a little taste of the Mardi party, and mark your calendars for Mardi Gras 2005.