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Mardi Gras in New Orleans always generates a mind-boggling amount of fodder for the local media. On the airwaves and in the pages of the Times-Picayune, news from the real world sometimes struggles for attention as the rites, frivolities and politics of Carnivaldom take hold of the public’s imagination. As Eric Granderson, chief of staff to City Councilman Troy Carter, whose district includes the French Quarter, puts it, “Mardi Gras is the story during Mardi Gras.”

March 2000 cover of Playboy magazine Portrayed Mardi Gras in the French Quarter as a "nonstop bacchanalia" where flashing breasts for beads was "outrageously contagious."

The first Mardi Gras of the new millennium was, in this regard, a bona fide bonanza, generating a number of stories deemed worthy of follow-ups and editorial spin-doctoring. Case in point: a threatened crackdown on public nudity. A media feeding frenzy erupted when Playboy magazine, on the eve of the festivities, published an eight-page spread highlighting the risque side of French Quarter revelry. The ensuing hullabaloo—which gathered momentum when the police upped the ante by vowing stricter enforcement of a law prohibiting the throwing of beads from balconies—became the top story of Mardi Gras 2000. “It led the news just about every night,” laments Lt. Marlon Defillo, public affairs officer for the New Orleans Police Department. “If you had a violent offense occur in the city, that was like second or third.” (For a full report on the threatened crackdown, click here.)

Then there was the controversy over Silly String and small pyrotechnics, known as Snap Pops or “crackerballs.” 

On Feb. 1, St. Bernard Parish, located just outside of New Orleans, banned the use or sale of these novelties within 150 feet of a parade route, on the grounds that they’d become a nuisance and a hazard. In response, a local vending company—arguing that it was unfair to stop street vendors from selling items that could be bought at stores along the main route—won a court-ordered injunction blocking enforcement of the new law. Then, on the Friday before Fat Tuesday, a judge ruled that the ordinance was a “permissible discrimination” against street vendors. (Ultimately, the St. Bernard Parish Council adopted a revised version of the law. Alas, not only is the use of the novelties near a parade route a no-no, but both street vendors and  permanent stores are now prohibited from selling them during the 14 days leading up to Fat Tuesday.)

In an op-ed in the Times-Picayune that ran after Mardi Gras, Amy Blakely declared that the Mardi Gras 2000 celebration in St. Bernard “will go down in history as the ‘Year of Silly String.’

“St. Bernard Parish’s Carnival season typically makes small news—a smashed finger here, a pot arrest there,” she observed. “But this year’s on-again, off-again ban against the notorious fluorescent spray foam made front-page news on numerous occasions.”

Other noteworthy news on the novelty front included the debut of HotBeads—-battery-powered necklaces with beads that pulsate with light—and a hubbub on the West Bank, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, involving “vulgar” parade throws. The Gretna City Council took up the issue after a resident saw an advertisement for a necklace featuring an ornamental representation of a pair of bare female breasts (in the form of a pacifier) and expressed concern that the throw might appear in Mardi Gras parades. Result: Civic leaders passed an ordinance prohibiting “sexually explicit throws.” The list of banned items originally included panties, which for years have been a popular throw item. But after krewe officials complained, the “panty clause” was dropped. next page

HotBeads Visible at night from quite a distance, it was hard not to spot these blinking trinkets at Mardi Gras 2000.

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