Rouses_January-February-2018_60

BATON ROUGE

T his year’s theme for the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade is “Game of Thongs.” If that choice seems questionable to you, let me remind you, it is well in keeping with this parade’s colorful history and the mantra of its thoroughly pink-flamingoed community: “Bad taste is better than no taste at all.” The parade is best known for its rowdy political commentary and off-color humor (e.g., “FEMAture Evacuation” in 2006).Where the krewes of New Orleans shape and measure the social strata of that city, Spanish Town — the largest Mardi Gras parade in Baton Rouge — bills itself as the “people’s parade,” and its krewes are more inclined to ridicule than respect those who would claim a pedestal. Spanish Town crawls annually along a skyline of shotgun homes and hipster housing, with the state capitol looming above. This year the parade rolls on Saturday, February 10 at noon, beginning on its namesake road and inch- worming across downtown before ending on Lafayette and Main. It started 38 years ago as a sort of improvised neighborhood art project and grew from there. The community’s richness and vibrancy made the parade’s success inevitable. The Spanish Town district is perhaps the loveliest illustration this side of the French Quarter of how diverse cultures can intersect and then elevate a place and its people. Those who have called the community home over the centuries include Native Americans, Spaniards, Canary Islanders, American soldiers, newly freed African Americans after the Civil War, and students from what was then the new campus of Louisiana State University. It was a safe place for homosexuals at a

reminder that the rules of society are simply agreed-upon and arbitrary. For instance, you wear a pink mankini to the office, and something is amiss. You wear it to the Spanish Town parade, and you’re overdressed. To that end, the parade is not so much risqué or titillating as it is ribald, the parade-goers less gone wild than gone odd. There most likely won’t be any flashing. This isn’t Bourbon Street filled with partying tourists, after all; most of the parade-goers are locals. There will be crowds and krewes alike dressed in their Sunday weirdest: some in feather boas, some in pink tights — some going with both because, hey, the ensemble matches his or her halter and cape. Anything less would somehow be an affront to the Baton Rouge district that inspired the celebration underway. The parade is the apotheosis, the very essence, of Spanish Town’s communal impishness.

Those attending the parade can expect to see floats decorated as though they were dreamed up and improvised the night before. (The Worst Float title is an annual award given to krewes by the parade’s organizer, the Society for the Preservation of Lagniappe in Louisiana, or SPLL. Bribery is also an official part of the judging process, and krewes vie for the Best Bribe award.) You might, on the other hand, see floats decorated lavishly with human anatomy not generally on display in public. There will be more plastic pink flamingos on floats, throws and costumes than there are living flamingos in the wild.The sky will be filled with flying beads, cups, condoms and candy, and those not caught or argued over will be left “ There will be more plastic pink flamingos on floats, throws and costumes than there are living flamingos in the wild.”

time when discrimination against them was widespread. The community has weathered such crises as the city’s economic collapse in the 1970s and the AIDS epidemic that began in the 1980s.The events of years both good and bad have made Spanish Town into the city of Baton Rouge’s élan vital : a brushstroke of color that brightens the landscape. In retrospect, the creation of a parade seems like the perfect and obvious offshoot of this unique neighborhood; a way not only to celebrate the community, but also to share its values — loving and eccentric — with surrounding areas. Why not a Mardi Gras parade, where for two hours a year, valueless throws like beads and doubloons are imbued with mystical allure and sought after desperately by rich and poor alike? This tradition of trinket chasing draws communities closer: We are not merely watching this thing together; we are doing this thing together. The first year the parade had a theme, it was “Every Man a Mardi Gras King” — and it marked a return of Mardi Gras from over- the-top spectacles with their seven-figure parade costs and aloof, imported celebrities) back to the common parade-goer in the street. The parade remains an essential

[TOP] The Prancing Babycakes marching group has been a mainstay in the Spanish Town Parade for years. [PAGE 12] Kitschy plastic pink flamingos are a common sight in quirky and colorful Spanish Town.

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