With Mardi Gras canceled, New Orleans homes are being decorated as floats: The best of Yardi Gras
Aux Features New Orleans
The coronavirus pandemic was not going to stop New Orleans from celebrating Mardi Gras this year. While the massive parade and traditional festivities have been canceled this year due to COVID-19, New Orleanians (we had to look that one up) rallied to celebrate Three Kings Day a little differently: by decorating their homes instead of floats, creating a walking art tour throughout the city.
The idea took off when New Orleans resident Megan Boudreaux tweeted an impromptu proclamation “It’s decided, we’re doing this,” wrote Boudreaux, who went on to form the Krewe of House Floats. “Turn your house into a float and throw all the beads from your attic at neighbors walking by.” Hopefully they give a warning before raining plastic down on passerby.
Traveling to New Orleans isn’t a good idea given, you know, all the death, so here are a few of our favorite house floats from what has now been deemed Yardi Gras.
(If you are a local, Krewe of House Floats has a map of all the homes.)
11 Comments
This has been so great to see.
I study NO as well as loving it personally, and was (way too briefly) a resident.
I also roll with the Krewe of Chewbacchus (the nerdy sci-fi fantasy one.)
It’s really hurt to see what this city in particular, which lives and dies (economically as well as culturally) on public performance, has gone through, but shows of spirit like these are encouraging.
A slow clap for whoever came up with the name ‘Yardi Gras’.
Also, the Bojack Horseman writers must be kicking themselves for not coming up with Ruth Gator Binsberg first.
glad I don’t live next door to that.
These are rad. The homeowners really went all out.This past Christmas, with little else to do, I took a drive around town checking out all of the decorations on the houses in the neighborhood, and it was really fun. If I lived near NOLA I’d do the same in a heartbeat!
Gotta go down for Halloween. 😉
These are really awesome. But I’m going to have to look at them only a couple slides at a time, because after the first two I have to declare this the most frustrating slideshow yet. The loading of embedded tweets within slides? Well, that’s just a new level of hell.
I’m really impressed by the kraken one. Confused by the header image, though – I didn’t see those light up gators in any of the displays
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2021/02/photos-preparing-for-yardi-gras-in-new-orleans/617978/This Atlantic page has a photo of the same house – in daylight, not as compelling, but the context is much clearer.
Please note that the Krew of House Floats is a national phenomenon. My New Orleanean diaspora wife remade our entire house in DC, as a part of it, and threw moon pies to passerby all afternoon (and there were many who came by to see). It brought her a lot of joy and introduced us to a lot of our neighbors and some other displaced Cajuns!
At least in DC, there was a map of the “floats” :). Worth checking out!
Legit y’all want me to click through a slideshow that is just a bunch text links to twit picsDang