Chris Bickford

Last night it was bedlam in New Orleans. I was hanging out at a Super Bowl party at an apartment on Frenchmen Street when the late-game interception pretty much clinched the game for the Saints. I decided to go down on to the streets to see what the action was like. I wandered into the Maison Bar, where a packed house full of college-age kids and twenty-somethings was going wild with hysteria, while the Young Fellas Brass Band played New Orleans fight songs and the game was being projected against the wall. As the clock ran out, the band stepped off the stage and stepped on to the street, and the whole bar emptied out to join them in a spontaneous street parade. We marched down Frenchmen Street, up Royal and into the Quarter, up to Bourbon Street, where the crowd was so thick at times it was impossible to move….we headed south somewhere around St Peter, then wended our way back down to Decatur and back into the Marigny, singing, dancing, shouting “Who Dat!”, high-fiving passers-by from the other direction. Cars on the street were honking their horns and drivers and passengers alike were extending their arms out for high-fives…There were umbrella dancers and flag wavers, people tossing beads off of balconies, confetti in the air…a few folks were even dancing on the tops of cars…

It was a little piece of history, and one of the coolest parties I’ve ever attended–made all the more special because up until the fourth quarter we were all biting our nails wondering whether it was even going to happen. Had the Saints lost, I imagine things would have been a wee bit more quiet on the streets. But it definitely has to go down in history as one of the largest–and definitely one of the most significant–spontaneous street parades in the history of New Orleans. And the Young Fellas parade was only one of, no doubt, dozens of second-lines crawling through the city last night.

On Tuesday the city will hold its victory parade to welcome the team home. I’ll be covering the event for the Times, so I’ll have to wait a day or so to post those pics. In the meantime, enjoy these…I’m already behind, with posts from gay balls and hippie masquerade parties to post, as well as a little bit of Bourbon Street “culture”…Good thing there’s no TV in this apartment to distract me from this relentless party schedule…