Krewe Me?..Krewe You...

..So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I am all in for Mardi Gras and will be riding as a member of a New Orleans Mardi Gras Krewe. Anyway- a little bit of a back story is in order to explain how this came to be....Anybody that knows me knows I am a bit nuts about New Orleans and Louisiana- the food, music, culture-doesn’t matter. If it's New Orleans or Louisiana related, I'm gonna be there-NYC, Philly or even New Jersey (sorry, couldn't resist). That’s how I ended up in a krewe.  A few years ago, I started going to New Orleans music related events primarily up in NYC and on more than one occasion dragged my wife and kids to Central Park or Lincoln Center to see a brass band or, one year, the Mardi Gras Indians; I’ve secondlined with the Soul Rebels Brass Band and Glen David Andrews in Manhattan as well as going to numerous New Orleans/Louisiana music events here in Philly (including monthly Cajun dances at a local Polish club dance hall) . I have even-more than once- traveled across the Delaware to see New Orleans and Louisiana musicians perform in- of all places- Camden, NJ (which believe it or not has a very nice waterfront park set up across the Delaware River looking back at the city of Philadelphia)..Over time, I began to realize that there was a group of like minded people-especially at the NYC events- when it came to New Orleans and its music and culture. Two years ago, I participated in a secondline across the Brooklyn Bridge and I was really hooked. Then, last year, I read that the same group of folks who had put on the Brooklyn Bridge secondline were organizing a New Orleans style jazz funeral to celebrate the demise and-hopefully- the eventual re-birth of the Coney Island waterfront. Well, thats all I needed to know- I drove up to NYC, jumped the subway to Coney Island and there I was-hanging out and then marching with the NYC/New Orleans contingent. The event featured a NYC based brass band, Dancing Man 504 straight out of New Orleans and a mermaid in a coffin (see NY Times article and slideshow here or see my pix/slideshow over to the right of this post)…Anyway, after the event, I got to talking to one of the guys-Arthur- who was a pallbearer in the parade. He mentioned that altho he lived in New Jersey he was part of a New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe and had been parading down there for the past few years. Huh?.. you mean you can live in NJ but also be a member of a New Orleans parade krewe?... I always thought that this was a “locals only” kind of thing...As we talked, tho, it started to make sense..it turns out that since the Federal Flood (aka Katrina) a lot of the New Orleans Krewes lost local membership and so they started to turn to out-of-towners as one way to fill out their ranks.. so as we continued to talk-and down a couple more Coney Island beers-I continued to quiz him on the details..at one point he suggested that I consider joining up-I was officially being recruited… The rest, as they say is history …so in a couple weeks- Sunday February 19^th at around 11:45am CST to be exact- I will be on a float, in mask and costume rolling down the Uptown New Orleans parade route …stay tuned.....