[This is a continuation of the author's series on New Orleans lessons, to commemorate both her 10th anniversary of living in New Orleans as well as the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.]

K is for Krewe

Before I moved to New Orleans, I thought of a crew simply as a bunch of people who work together, or perhaps an adjective to describe a square haircut. As I went through my first Mardi Gras, I then thought of a Krewe as an exclusive group of people who spend gobs of money to have a parade. Each Krewe has numerous royalty and dozens of members, all able to put up the cash to buy enough beads to shower upon the masses.

The more I learned about Mardi Gras, the more my definition of Krewe expanded. There are krewes for anyone, and most krewes don't care who you are, barring the Krewe of Comus, who opted to stop parading instead of opening admission to blacks. This means that a WASP like me can join the Krewe du Jieux, white folks can become Zulus, and cats can join the dogs' Krewe of Barkus (although few do.)

The Krewe du Vieux parade gathers numerous smaller krewes with names such as Krewe of CHAOS, Krewe of Underwear, and Krewe of Space-Age Love into one parade to kick off the season with satire. And on Fat Tuesday, these smaller krewes, along with other impromtu krewes made up of fun-loving locals take to the streets - the krewe du poux, the krewe of kosmic debris, krewe du st. anne, and on and on. In the end, all you need for a krewe is a group of friends in costume that want to parade around the city with flasks in hand, dancing to portable instruments of tambourine and kazoo.