The crackdown that wasn’t

Three weeks before the first Fat Tuesday of the new millennium, officials of the New Orleans Police Department held a press conference to announce a get-tough policy on public nudity at Mardi Gras. It was hard not to read a measure of symbolism into their choice of locale: the 300 block of Bourbon Street.

Playboy balcony at Temptations The presence of Bunnies on Bourbon Street helped to focus media attention on a phenomenon—flashing breasts for beads— that had become increasingly prevalent. Photo © Ray Broussard 1999

Located at 327 Bourbon is Temptations, home of the “Playboy balcony.” Thanks to the presence of a contingent of Playboy Bunnies, whose breast-baring revels caused pedestrian gridlock on the street below, the striptease club became infamous during Mardi Gras 1999. Playboy magazine was very much in the news on the eve of the anti-nudity press conference. Its March 2000 edition, which had just hit the newsstands, included an eight-page spread highlighting the risque side of Mardi Gras in the French Quarter. Documenting what it described as “nonstop bacchanalia” where flashing breasts for beads was “outrageously contagious,” the pictorial left little to the imagination.

Having such images of rampant Mardi Gras nudity appear in a national magazine with a paid circulation of 3.2 million and a readership of nine million, did not go over well with anti-nudist elements of the New Orleans establishment. For years they’d seethed as scenes of French Quarter fleshcapades migrated to the Internet and vendors of salacious Mardi Gras videos took to promoting their wares online and via late-night TV. Such exploitation, in their view, has tarnished the city’s image and overshadowed the celebration’s traditional family orientation.

As fate would have it, Playboy, by portraying flashing as an accepted form of behavior at Mardi Gras, unwittingly played right into the hands of the anti-nudists—and ignited a feeding frenzy in the media. The hullabaloo gathered momentum when the police subsequently upped the ante by vowing stricter enforcement of a law prohibiting the throwing of beads from balconies.

One could argue that if it wasn’t for Kevin Kuster, and the fact that New Orleans is such a popular meeting and convention destination, the headlines during Mardi Gras 2000 would have been a lot less sensational. 

Kuster, senior photo editor at Playboy, happened to be in New Orleans for a photography conference just as the 1998 Mardi Gras festivities were getting underway. Returning to Chicago, where Playboy Enterprises International is headquartered, he pitched his boss on the idea of a “documentary feature,” to be shot on location at Mardi Gras 1999, for Playboy.

“And once we decided we were going to do it in the magazine,” he says, “the video crews and Playboy.com all jumped on board.”

For its 1999 “Mardi Gras Extravaganza,” the media company milked the flesh-baring aspect of the gala for all it was worth. Camera crews hit the streets of the French Quarter with a Swiss cheese-inspired “Hooter-meter”—described on Playboy.com as “a cheap sheet of cardboard fashioned into a device for gauging breast size”—and an “official Mardi Gras Hooter-meter stamp.”

The site went on to report that, “the Hooter-meter team had the good fortune of meeting up with legions of women who were oddly intent on having their Hooters metered.

“ ‘We’ve got hours of videotape,’ said one member of team Hooter-meter. ‘There were times when they were lining up 20 at a time.’ “

Playboy Entertainment Group subsequently released a one-hour video entitled Girls of Mardi Gras. Playboystore.com, in hawking the $14.98 tape, makes no attempt to pardon the puns. “They call New Orleans the Crescent City,” a promotional blurb reads, “but that doesn’t begin to describe the sexy shapes you’ll see in this red-hot video.... You’ll want to be seeing double (a common affliction during Mardi Gras) as you embark on a sinfully satisfying journey to the city where hedonism reigns supreme. Full nudity.” If nothing else, the presence of the Playboy entourage at Mardi Gras 1999 drew attention to a phenomenon—flashing—that had become increasingly prevalent.  “Media crews came down to interview us, and it was very positive,” recalls Kuster. “Most of the people were like, ‘Boy, this is a no-brainer; we can’t believe this is the first time you guys have ever done this.’ ”

Playboy's "Girls of Mardi Gras" Showing an aspect of the festivities that some tourism executives would rather see covered up.

Indeed, given that Mardi Gras has traditionally served as a forum for expressing sexual fantasies, it’s hardly surprising that a company in the business of peddling such fantasies would endeavor to exploit this aspect of the festivities—which, to be sure, has long been a source of controversy. Consider that in 1889, the Times-Democrat lamented the “degree of immodesty exhibited by nearly all female masqueraders seen on the streets [on Fat Tuesday].”

“Immodesty” at Mardi Gras, while always a question of degree, has certainly been on the rise, especially as the scene in the French Quarter has come to take on a Spring Break atmosphere, attracting visitors more interested in drunken escapades and flashing than the celebration’s cultural significance and storied pageantry. Of particular concern to some observers is the fact that in recent years, the flesh-for-beads ritual has surfaced along sections of parade thoroughfares traditionally associated with family-oriented Mardi Gras. And indeed, krewe captains have come under pressure to take a hard line against float riders who encourage women to lift their shirts.

Even some people with a vested interest in the bead economy, who profit from the fleshcapades, acknowledge that the pendulum may have swung too far.

With a balcony at 711 Bourbon, Tricou House has long been a hot spot for beads and breasts. “I knew sooner or later there had to be a backlash,” says owner W. Fred Hendrix, who does a brisk business selling beads to patrons during Mardi Gras. “It couldn’t go on getting more nude and more crazy.”

The trigger for the backlash, as it turned out, came courtesy of Playboy. But even before the Bunnies turned heads on Bourbon Street, images of bare breasts had become the stock in trade of French Quarter Mardi Gras. This, despite periodic pronouncements portending a crackdown. “We will enforce the public nudity laws,” Mayor Marc Morial declared at a Mardi Gras press conference in 1995.

And yet, the practical reality is that the police, while generally taking a hard line on below-the-waist exposures, have basically allowed the flashing of breasts to continue unabated. Their main concern is, after all, crowd control and public safety, not filling Central Lockup with college coeds. When flashing on a balcony caused gridlock on the street below, they’d ask the owners to clear the balcony. As for the breast-baring revelers, they might get a verbal warning. The vast majority of arrests for “lewd conduct” involved instances of public urination and below-the-waist flashing.

So why all the anti-nudity posturing at Mardi Gras 2000?  Although who said what to whom in city government remains something of a mystery, one thing is clear: City Hall, apparently embarrassed at having the racy side of Mardi Gras flaunted in Playboy, ordered a high-profile crackdown.

"This is a Bust" masker Controversies in the news often make good fodder for Mardi Gras costumes.

First came the press conference on Bourbon Street. Then, reinforcing its no-tolerance message in black and white, the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) distributed flyers to businesses in the French Quarter. The “warning” noted anyone engaging in “obscene live conduct,” including the “exposure of the male/female genitals or female breasts in a public place,” was subject to imprisonment and a fine of up to $1,000. “Uniform and plain clothes officers will be vigilant in the French Quarter and WILL TAKE the appropriate action if the law is violated...just as the 360 people who were arrested last year [during Mardi Gras] for lewd conduct.” Adding fuel to fire, the police subsequently vowed to enforce municipal code 54-413—a law that many revelers could easily be forgiven for not knowing the first thing about. In essence, it says it’s unlawful to “throw, cast or propel any substance”  from any part of a building that is eight feet or more above street level.

Boiled down, the message from the police was simply this: Since the throwing of beads from balconies contributes to flashing, it, too, would have to be reined in.

Some influential people welcomed, if not encouraged, a crackdown on the shenanigans. Among them was Sandra Shilstone, executive vice president of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp., which uses city and hotel tax money to promote the city as a leisure tourist destination. Shilstone serves on the board of the New Orleans Police Foundation (a private, nonprofit entity that organizes fund-raisers and provides consulting and other assistance to the New Orleans Police Department) and formerly headed the Mayor’s Office of Tourism & Arts. 

On February 27, the Times-Picayune ran a story citing concerns among tourism executives about how Playboy and other media promoted “a low-brow image that increasingly is becoming the national symbol of Carnival: the naked female breast.”

“That’s become the overwhelming image of Mardi Gras,” Shilstone was quoted as saying. “And that’s an image we just don’t want to project. There’s more than breasts and beads to Mardi Gras.”

According to Eric Granderson, chief of staff to City Councilman Troy Carter, the NOPD’s tough stance against public nudity and the throwing of beads from balconies represented a sudden, and unexpected, shift in policy. Not even his boss, whose district includes the French Quarter, got the heads-up.

“Common sense would have said that if we wanted to do this,” notes Granderson, “we’d have to develop a consensus, put this out in a public forum and give ample notice and receive ample comment....”

By not laying the groundwork for the policy change, the powers that be invited a backlash from businesses with ties to the bead economy. These not only include merchants that sell beads, but also French Quarter hotels, barrooms and restaurants that rent balconies, typically to companies entertaining VIP guests. As a perquisite, the hosts of these parties often provide their guests with beads to throw.

Alarmed at the prospect of the cops putting a stop to the fun, some companies that had already shelled out big bucks to rent balconies and buy beads expressed concern to balcony owners. Amid reports of cancellations, phones at City Hall, Councilman Carter’s office and the Greater New Orleans Hotel-Motel Association, a powerful industry group, started ringing. “Balcony bead ban baffles hotel execs,” proclaimed a headline in the Times-Picayune.

Merchants also felt burned. During the first big tourist weekend of the Mardi Gras season, as trepidation about the crackdown swept through the Quarter like a cold thundershower, bead sales were off 20% to 30% from normal levels, according to Mel Ziegler, president of the Bourbon Street Merchants Association.

The association wound up retaining legal counsel to explore obtaining a court-ordered restraining order against the city. Such a challenge would presumably have cited legal precedents that call into question the constitutionality of police busting women who expose their breasts while permitting men to walk around with their shirts off.

That first Mardi Gras weekend, at least 50 people were arrested for lewd conduct. In some instances, crowds booed as the cops clamped down on flashers.

What happened next spoke to the peculiarities of New Orleans politics. When business and cultural considerations collide with the letter of the law, the famously laissez-faire city has a way of bending. 

“There is no crackdown,” Police Superintendent Richard Pennington announced at the mayor’s annual pre-Mardi Gras press conference. Enforcing the law against public nudity, he added, is  "what we’ve always done, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

That same day—Monday, February 28—an editorial in the Times-Picayune, entitled “Taking the Fat out of Tuesday,” suggested that the police needed to lighten up. “Those who dare enter the Quarter on the days leading up to Mardi Gras should know up front that the sights on display are not ones to write one’s Sunday School teacher about.” The paper went on to note that while “flashes of bare flesh bartered for flashy strands of beads...can hardly be considered appropriate family entertainment, the French Quarter doesn’t pretend to offer G-rated fun.... “That’s why the New Orleans Police Department’s recent fist shaking over the looming threat of bare breasts and revelers throwing beads from balconies has a Chicken Little quality to it.The truth is, the sky is not falling and city officials don’t need to be so worked up.”

Flashing for beads in the French Quarter Like it or not, showing flesh has become a Mardi Gras tradition. Photo ©  Ray Broussard 1999

By the time the second weekend of Mardi Gras rolled around, the “Fat” was, for the most part, back. “It’s monkey business as usual with revelers,” a Times-Picayune headline announced on March 4.

However, the Playboy Bunnies on the balcony at Temptations were playing it safe. “Taking their cues from strip bars in other parts of the country, the women are lifting their shirts to reveal pairs of...pasties,” the Times-Picayune observed in a front-page blurb on March 6. “The silver-dollar-sized coverings give them the excuse that they’re not fully exposing anything.”

But while lingering uncertainties about the risks of exposing oneself tempered the behavior of some celebrants, the literal truth of Pennington’s “no crackdown” pronouncement seemed very much in evidence at Le Booze Bar on Fat Tuesday. Le Booze is, ironically, located in the 300 block of Bourbon Street, across from Temptations, where officials had held their initial press conference to announce that nudity wouldn’t be tolerated at Mardi Gras.

Presiding over the festivities were the white-wigged, black-robed Judges of Mardi Gras. According to the group’s ringleader, who is known as “The Bailiff,” over 400 ladies were awarded a  “Certificate of Exposure” for having bared their breasts. “It was awesome...the best time we ever had,” he reports. 

As it turned out, though, the mock tribunal was lucky to have found a place to convene. Until this year, the judges had always practiced their ribaldry at the Stage Door Cafe on Toulouse St. But after the police announced their get-tough policy, Jessie Hombre, who owns the Stage Door, decided to pull the plug on the judging ritual.

When all was said and done, there were 360 arrests for lewd conduct during Mardi Gras—-the exact same number as in 1999. “The enforcement this year was no different from previous years,” says Marlon Defillo, public affairs officer for the NOPD.

“It is virtually impossible, and impractical, to enforce every single law [during Mardi Gras],” he adds. “So, we will enforce the law as we see the public at risk.”

While a blanket enforcement of the public nudity law doesn’t seem to be in the offing, many New Orleanians would certainly welcome an ongoing effort to clamp down on Mardi Gras excess. During the 2000 festivities, the Times-Picayune, in conjunction with its affiliated MardiGras.com and nola.com Internet sites, invited people to express their views on whether things had gotten so out of hand as to warrant stricter enforcement. The paper reported that of the more than 3,000 respondants, 70% said that it was “time to tame the party animal.”