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When I ask a local vendor or two who I have met at my office, suburbanites to a person, who live in Metairie, Jefferson or Gretna, they remember that there's a story around the colors, but can't tell me what that story might be or what the colors stand for. They suggest I look it up on the Web.
The version I found at this Mardi Gras site on the Web says this:
"It's interesting to note that our Mardi Gras colors influenced the choice of school colors for arch rivals Louisiana State University and Tulane University. When LSU was deciding on its colors, the shops in New Orleans had stocked up on purple, green, and gold material for the Mardi Gras season. LSU decided upon purple and gold, and bought much of it. Tulane bought much of the only remaining color -- green! (Their colors are blue and green.) Remember to wear Mardi Gras colors whenever you're not in costume."
Nowhere near as romantic a story there, so I looked elsewhere.
In the dead-tree publication (book) New Orleans by Bethany Ewald Bultman (Fodor's Compass American Guides) you can read this:
Much of the pomp employed by the old krewes comes from the entertainments planned in 1872 when the Russian Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff came to New Orleans at Carnival time in hot pursuit of actress Lydia Thompson. Forty businessmen got together and founded the Krewe of Rex, mounting a daytime parade in the archduke's honor. Every Rex from 1888 to 1997 has belonged to the exclusively white and male Boston Club. The city's upper-crust folks, always socially ambitious, decided to adopt the Romanoff household colors -- purple (signifying justice), green (faith), and gold (power) -- as the official Carnival colors. The local gentry also learned that the Grand Duke Alexis's favorite song was a regrettable ditty called "If I Ever Cease To Love" from the New York musical Bluebeard that starred Ms. Thompson. All these years later, it remains the official song of Carnival. (The song is indeed so forgettable that many a jazz band gives up on the melody and plays a tune akin to "Little Brown Jug.")
Ahh! Matt came correct once again! AND besides the tales of pirates, future Presidents, the Spanish and then the French and Acadians here in New Orleans, we now have a Russian prince to add to the mix. Only in New Orleans.
Which is probably the best segue I can think of for our next point about the New Orleans Way: if you have money to spend, we have thousands of ways for you to spend it down here in New Orleans. From the curio shops and galleries to the ghost tours and great events like JazzFest, not to mention Mardi Gras, of course, the music, the foods, the restaurants and bars.
And this weekend, the Super Bowl, number "XXXVI" (36), is here in The Big Easy, too! I've already covered how that has disrupted much of our trational Mardi Gras and caused some local animousity toward the National Football League. There's no reason to beat that horse anymore.
Let's just say that this week in the Quarter the beer trucks have tandem crews and have to jockey with the liquor distribution trucks for the commercial parking enforced in the Quarter every day until after 11:00 p.m.
I have a funny parking enforcement story for you. Matt's boss at the real estate office owns a building here owned by Gennifer Flowers. Yes, the same Gennifer Flowers made notorious for being one of former President Clinton's bimbo eruptions. Ms. Flowers also performs at a dinner club here about four doors down from my office. It seems that Ms. Flowers is having guests in town for Mardi Gras and Matt was asked if he would do her the favor of moving some extra furniture to her place near Jackson Square.
It was evident by this past Thursday that our town was totally into the giddiness of Super Bowl madness. Lots of the shops in the Quarter and along Canal Street -- that huge strip of three lanes in each direction and an island in the middle where cable cars run for the tourist trade, that strip capped by Harrah's Casino and featuring a number of major hotels, that strip separating the French Quarter from the Central Business District (CBD) --- also offered Super Bowl memorabilia.
My boss's Super Bowl tickets arrived on Thursday, too. They are done up with one of those holographic strips that will make people want to keep and frame them. Each ticket cost him almost twice what I take home in a week...
By 2:00 p.m. Friday afternoon, from the Bourbon Street window of the storage area behind my office, I could see all of the "amateur" drunks (as we say here in Nawlins) milling up and down Bourbon with large cups of beer glutched in their hands, or leaning over the balconies of the noisy clubs boisterously calling down to the street. "Show your tits!" and then a huge roar of approval. I could only imagine what the crowds cruising the Quarter would be like by 8:00 p.m. when I was scheduled on clock on duty at the Kerry Irish Pub. I cringed and went back to editing documents for my boss. The first band on the other side of the walls to our office was already blaring. This act would go on until about 4, when they would be replaced by a "party" band. The street was ready for a party band by that time. When I went outside to have a cigarette, I watched three drunken guys in business suits, one of them festooned with Mardi Gras beads, wrestling with each other like they were back in high school. Three sheets to the wind and the fourth one flapping... I turned to be buzzed back into our offices.
The convergence of Super Bowl and Mardi Gras is a dangerous mix. The best I can do is hope that I and all my friends in the service business of New Orleans make lots of money during the next two weeks.
NEW ORLEANS, LA, USA - Walking to and fro for work each day, I pass through the Fauberg Marigny ("the Marigny") and the French Quarter ("the Quarter"). At this time of year, many of the balconies and a number of the houses are festooned with banners, bunting, flags and tinsel, all in Mardi Gras colors (purple, green and gold.) Some houses have carnaval masks larger than life, usuallly also in the colors, and you can see harlequins and mannikins on the balconies in suspended states of revelry. It's a nice touch, to be found only in New Orleans.
Before doing that, I decide to ask Matt, my roommate, who has steeped himself in New Orleans lore. (More on the impression that causes later.) Matt says that there's a love story, the details of which he was vague about at the time, in which a Russian prince --- whose colors were purple, green and gold --- was supposed to come to New Orleans to meet his lady love for Carnaval here. But, because of a tragedy, the lovers were never to rendezvous. It apparently became a firestorm story for this city of "romantic warriors" and the colors were adopted. That's Matt's version.
"Rex selected the official Mardi Gras colors in 1872. The 1892 Rex Parade theme Symbolism of Colors gave meaning to the colors: purple represents justice; green, faith; and gold, power.
"...There is much debate as to whether the first formal parade was held in 1835 or 1838, but no matter, the parades that traversed the muddy streets are said to have been wicked and satirical. The first krewe to parade was the Mystick Krewe of Comus (see "Krewes," p. 166).
You've all see the Spanish architure, with the wrought-iron balconies and fine courtyards, that characterize the "French" Quarter. They are special to this place. Only rivaled by some of the fine architecture in south Florida as exhibits of some of the great work of that era.
While he moving the furniture into the building with the assistance of a brother called Peanut, one of our ever-vigilant meter maids gave Matt a citation. He was upset, because he was loading furniture in a loading zone. He was unaware, I explained, that in order to even stop in those zones during certain hours you needed to have the special "PRIVATE" plates given commercial vehicles. It was not the activity involved that mattered, but the taxes paid for the privilege. My explanation did not make him feel any better about the citation.
CONTINUED IN "MY GLASS HOUSE."
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