Mardi Gras House Floats of New Orleans | A Yardi Gras Walking Tour

[Music] so hey y'all andrew with free tours by foot new orleans today we're going to induct you into a new new orleans tradition it is mardi gras weekend and lots of us across town right now are doing this walk or bike or car trip around town where we're looking at house floats these are the substitute for how mardi gras would normally happen this year to adapt to the covent times so we've actually got all across the city 3 000 odd houses doing stuff like this at different levels of production value and a lot of times there's a little taste of uh what normally things would be like this time of the year so a lot of them are using these cutouts of the people who would be all along the parade route catching beads wearing their costumes etc and this yard too even has a reference to something else we normally have the ladder over here with the little seat on top normally that is where you put your kids so that they can be high up enough to catch some stuff and to see everything well although this one has cup holders so kids of all ages maybe anyway uh james on camera and i are just like walking around and checking this stuff out for the first time so we're going to be seeing things we haven't seen before some that we have maybe a little less of a historic tour than we sometimes do maybe these things will uh render me speechless we like sports in new orleans y'all i'm told and here we have an interesting combination of teams we have the lsu tigers fairly celebrated and then we have the new newman i don't know the name of this team because they're a local high school and i don't know that they're terribly celebrated but you can tell where somebody's loyalties lie uh we have on that house back there y'all a lot of uh kind of suggestions of springtime and another one that we're going to come up and see will be very much that flavor too uh it is i guess close to technically spring right now and a lot of times this time of the year things are starting to flower and bud out if there was one mardi gras to miss out on parading because of whether this is the one i'm dressed for the weather right now versus dressed for the holiday as i was when we shot our last mardi gras video had a sequined jacket that really suggested the times but it's a bit cold today and we even have the possibility of snow going from monday night into mardi gras morning so here's another one what nature is not giving us right now we can create artificially and the sign in front of this y'all says kern studios they're one of the professional float producing outfits and they are the biggest ones so the really high production value stuff like this that's going to tend to be from them and and if you've seen some mardi gras parades before there's this kind of airbrushed look about this stuff that is very signature them so we'll see a lot of kerns work especially right here on st charles avenue they're doing a lot of the bigger mansions where folks have a budget to produce their house but we're also known for diying our holidays and so right along here you get a house that's actually famous for their halloween decorations so normally these guys are gonna have a yard completely full of skeletons more of our children's seats and y'all know throwing beads normally a big part of our thing and so i don't know this has been a terribly successful formula so far but uh usually bead recycling is done through this organization called our canola and so anyone who ends up with beads to spare is going to be less of a problem this year than usually here's a place to put them so we have we have one mannequin in this yard versus the few dozen that you'd normally see during halloween these guys as far as i can tell they spend their year thinking of every like bad death pun that they can and then dressing up a skeleton around it so there's uh like like bone again for example then you'll have a skeleton dress as a preacher we love bad puns it's a really big piece of our sense of humor and this place goes to the nines on that on on halloween normally but mardi gras very much into that too so more on the mardi gras sense of humor soon ha and these are here all year long but uh but they too are costumed for the season so passed by the rest of their stuff and then we've got another one across the street so we'll head over there and any of y'all who have seen our first mardi gras video you'll recognize this guy excuse us [Music] oh nice y'all so we have here this is another kern project but they also have a flag for the crew of iris so this is one of the float parades and in the middle of their flags up there is a flag for the crew of red beans and they've been producing uh some of these houses by which they're hiring on mardi gras artists who are out of work and some of those are gonna go through current some of them are going to go through other places so lots of those across town too we'll have a little bit of that happening uh in terms of the whole terrible sense of humor thing y'all um favorite example of that would be there's a parade called crew de vu which is usually one of the first ones of the season and they uh who is v-i-e-u-x like old in french and it's named for the vucare which is an older name for the french quarter and they roll through the french quarter which most parades don't they if you think of mardi gras as like raunchy that's the parade you're thinking of but they're like cleverly raunchy so they're also always going to comment on the times and their theme this year had to be kovid related so their theme for 2021 is crew devo has no taste wait for it you got it if you didn't get it think about covid symptoms anyway uh they so they have done house float stuff for their parade entirely this year and decorated places with these what they called art installations a little bit of a stretch of the term but they did some temporary ones and they've also added y'all know little free libraries the little boxes in front of houses that have books you can take one you can leave one they've been doing those they've had tasteless libraries all across town with like labeled shelves for like friction and non-friction we're trying to keep this as pg rated as possible but you can look up some crude stuff if you want to get a little deeper into the the other ratings for that material blaine kern again y'all this is uh this is kind of them doing their absolute best they don't just make mardi gras floats actually these guys also do they've done like props and figures and all kinds of ornamentation for universal studios and for disney world so for fabricating this kind of stuff that you just need one of ever that's really their specialty so there's a good chance even if you've never seen a mardi gras parade that you've seen something blaine kern has made they're part of like ad campaigns all kinds of stuff and we got one more of them here and this one i'm gonna guess this is a midsummer night's dream theme because we've got a man with a donkey head and a female person so looking at uh puck and titania maybe but also like plenty of the time mardi gras parades are always supposed to have a theme but sometimes it's just like pick 12 or 20 random figures and find the commonality between them so oh this is beauty and the beast they've got the covered rose and the beast is just a a donkey this time you know the disney interpretation doesn't have to be the definitive interpretation so good job to anybody who caught that before i did anyway we're going to jump a little bit ahead we'll see a few others further along st charles so we'll be right back hey y'all we're back to st charles it's getting a little further in the morning the crowds are turning out a bit more this is one of the ones that a lot of people want to stop and see we are looking at a zoo concept or circus concept actually this time around but it being where it is in town i think makes most of us think of the zoo this part of town is where the audubon zoo our main our one for new orleans is located and we've got here again kern studios doing their thing this is lots of creatures that they would have had already circus concepts are evergreen in mardi gras parades y'all if this season has you feeling like a caged animal worth bearing in mind we have lots and lots of other videos from new orleans and other cities so if you're wanting to stretch your metaphorical legs if not your literal ones or walk with these if you want to you can look over in our channel's feed and we have different tours of neighborhoods throughout new orleans we have tours in new york dc london berlin lots and lots of places so it doesn't have to end with this video and y'all like the name of the company suggests the tours we do are pay what you will so the whole concept is take a tour for free or for a small amount at the end you pay whatever you feel like it was worth that is how i and all the rest of our guides make our living and you can think of the videos that way if you want to so we'll have links for dropping your guided tip in this and other videos so thank you if you decide to do that and thanks to everyone who has done that already it's really a game changer right now given how things are so here we are at another one y'all so this one is new orleans music themed so this is uh new orleans musician dr john one of our local star losses of the last few years and actually when we went through mardi gras world for our general mardi gras 2021 video we actually saw that piece built into a float at the time so blaine kern who did this one too has been taking apart floats that they already have they repurpose these things over and over and over again across the years so they've been doing that again here and they got cut out so lots of different new orleans musicians so you have kermit ruffins up there in the back you have a band called the radiators all around him local rock band we have the meters on the other side that i can make out we got trombone shorty and here in the foreground you got mardi gras indians and second lines represented so lots of the new orleans music and kind of more generally new orleans performance tradition represented so past this step from studio produced to very very diy and this one yes oh this is just creme de la creme y'all mwah this is a mystic crew of unicorns so if you ever go to a mardi gras ball like this is what it looks like to an outsider i think is this kind of just uncanny freakishness so you have the queen of the mystic group of unicorns at the top of the stairs and these are her maids oh coming down oh my goodness and these people did this all by themselves they kept these mannequins and they got just the most terrifying protruding veined unicorn masks [Laughter] and they made a chandelier out of like hula hoops and spare fabric so the diy stuff can really outdo everything else you know this is i think they have teenage children and this is what happens when like a young whimsical imagination uh gets a little bit of uh adult crafter production behind it that is all i have to say you always stepped further down st charles i have recovered my face still hurts but uh we're stopping by one of the house floats that kind of gets in with what we do with parades in terms of a lot of the the higher budget ones the supercrews will have a celebrity grand marshal and there's always references to celebrities floats designed after them etc but like this is very much doing the the kind of tribute that we would pay in person and so dolly parton is the signature here and while saint dolly is a concept that well pre-exists the current circumstances her major support for covet vaccine development is the subject matter here so you can see her holding the syringe and they have been really clever with their song titles and song lyric puns around the themes of the year so my easy favorite being vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine [Music] i'm going to get the giggles again so anyway more in the in the way of celebrities just not local ones this time around like our musicians back there we're gonna head a little further down to where the actual parade route portion of st charles avenue is so that's our next stop we've moved down to the intersection of napoleon and saint charles so this is saint charles avenue this is napoleon avenue and this is usually the spot where most mardi gras floats are going to turn from one street to the other and a few awesome things here y'all for one thing a few of the parades that go by here so there's the crew of tux which is a sort of toilet humor themed parade and then there's the crew of toth a little later on and both of those tend to throw this stuff into the trees along the route and so while beads are not being added to the trees this is really for for those of us familiar with the neighborhood really driving home the season and uh and they've also got here at this restaurant at the corner a house float that for me wins the prize for functionality so you got over here a float made by royal artists and it a looks an awful lot like a house float but for like a float like a typical mardi gras float but but b is also one that people are legitimately occupying because this is a restaurant and so folks are using it as an outdoor dining area so you get to actually be inside of one of them and you know for folks who've never been inside of a float a little bit of uh of discovery of the internal architecture though you know plants and tables and heat lamps are not usually a part of the experience so this too it kind of it evokes what a lot of us think of as the then we get a little bit of structural discovery here so normally these things are made out of styrofoam and you know while it's nice to be able to see these things in fine detail let people too close to anything and someone's going to destroy stuff so one too many frozen mojitos at the restaurant here and someone decided to get into some mischief uh when you spend time on st charles or napoleon during parades a big part of what you see is people setting up parties and like these streets are getting used for that right now because outdoor distant parties are kind of more the thing and so you're every now and then seeing people set up a grill or just some chairs and do a picnic together in these kind of shared public green spaces that we have and normally during parade season that's happening all up and down st charles avenue where you've just got tents where people claim their space for like a week at a time the streetcar doesn't roll because there's so much stuff in the way and you just kind of camp out for as many days as your favorite parades are going and that can be as much as two solid weeks so while that stuff isn't happening this year when we see these outdoor socially distant parties happening it's like a little extra burst of mardi gras nostalgia for those of us who spend a lot of time here anyway we're going to jump a little further down this street and show you one paying tribute to one of the parades that normally rolls this way some of the house floats y'all are getting into the themes of specific parades that are not happening and in this case we've got one designed after the crew of muses and this is actually put together by members of that very crew so crew of muses is an all-women's crew they usually roll the thursday before mardi gras they're what we call a super crew so it's a big high production value parade and they are themed after the nine muses in greek mythology the goddesses who inspire the arts and you have some artsilly inclined people in there so what they did is they took nine images made by uh alphonse mucha the czech artist who's kind of the poster child for art nouveau and they adjusted those images a little bit they had a graphic design on a person on board who altered skin tones on some of them give it a little bit more of a representation of who all's in the crew and then they had a print person who enlarged these images and made them where they could be hung outside for some days of rain and weather and they also the signature thing with muses is they throw shoes they really hand out decorated shoes during their parade and you got in the middle they made a chandelier out of high heels so the whole the diy element of all this even when you have a budget and you have people with the skills to do something more impressive there's always going to be a homemade piece to even the really high production value stuff like this one thing about this one too y'all though is it looks great at night we actually happened to buy this at night a few days ago and we shot our first mardi gras video so again check that out and if you're going to be exploring a lot of these are designed to be seen at night and if you look at the crew of house floats map usually in each entry it says whether it's ideally viewed during the day at night or if it's good any time so plenty of them are but the lighting on this one is just so uh so happened that when we passed by my uh so james who's on camera knows his lights and somehow one of the people who was orchestrating the construction of this read his mind and knew that and asked him for lighting advice for about half an hour before we left so he had a little hand in making sure this looked good at night because there was the the main lighting artist who had a larger hand so credit where it's due but this is if you're gonna do an evening drive to see these things this is one of the ones to linger by them we're further down st charles now y'all along the garden district portion and i heard about this house that celebrates one of my favorite new orleans people local hero uh if you ever watch our bourbon street video you'll hear more about this person but her name is chris owens and she is the longest lasting bourbon street show girl let's say been there since the 1950s and every year she hosts an easter parade so this house this whole building is commemorating her easter celebration every year which is like her and a bunch of her friends of a certain age all going out in like mule-drawn carriages through the french quarter and tossing beads and easter in new orleans we have like her parade we have a gay easter parade full of drag queens and people who show up for easter and just expect like church ladies and big hats don't even know what they're signing up for so easter in the french quarter is a really really good time and of course having the spring colors and flowers being thought of right now adds to our sense of things getting better and hope unfolding y'all we came off st charles a little bit on to state street to check out they have they have a kind of united theme here so the people who live on i guess this block of state street have all gotten together around the concept of state of something or other and these were much more like the homemade low-budget ones which is it's real for us who have seen a lot of mardi gras it's this is all really lovable in its own way and bad puns are the heart of mardi gras the absolute essence and i think this is about as good as it gets this year so oh there's some layers to this so you might recognize the reference this is uh this is a version of the george serra painting the the creator of pointillism uh called sunday afternoon on the island of lagrange so this is a new orleans version of that called sunday afternoon on the fly which is our kind of riverfront area for hanging out on sunday afternoons when you're not working and this is a version of that painting full of people from mardi gras dance crews and other mardi gras groups so you have like the 610 stompers or dudes in track suits who dance in particular operates you have a baby doll these are women who do these doll costumes uh you have an organ grinder you have a member of one of our high school marching bands there's the crew of the rolling elvi which is elvises on scooters and they also have some beads all up in the branches a muse's shoe a zulu coconut these are decorated throws that some of the parades give out like and then i think oh yeah yeah so pussyfooter and uh and we have we have a barkus reference down here this is the the crew that costumes their dogs and a dog on stilts which may be a reference that i'm missing and like it's not mardi gras you don't at least miss some of the jokes so it's an inside joke for somebody at all times i think it's supposed to be the person who lives here but uh so max bernardi who made this is a float artist like an independent float artist who was brought on for this and mentioned about the crew of red beans that a lot of this is about hiring on people who would normally be doing this work professionally this time of the year and obviously like these folks can produce so howdy uh like you when you watch a float go by you don't get to admire it in this much detail and that's why i feel like this is when i say we're initiating y'all into a new tradition like we haven't been able to give the art itself this level of attention in the past and so i really think like we're gonna be doing this in the future and like for free tours by foot the our company like we could very potentially be doing walking mardi gras tours in the future taking y'all when you visit by spots like this so i i hope that's what we're in for at the very least we've got this year and if y'all want to see a bunch of other of these we're going to take you to some more but you also can be looking on social media with tags like crew of house floats hire a mardi gras artist and there's also yardy grah y-a-r-d-i so any of those is gonna get you lots lots more images we've got several more still to come though y'all we've been talking about mardi gras as an exercise in like the worst possible puns and just embracing it and loving it so that's amazing and i actually really love the compliment of this with uh it's not rocket design because it's not this full disclosure is the work of cameraman james and his wife and i hope to put it up so appraise this from the inside this we've called this art so we're going to treat it like art this is a creation of mulan very thin sheets of wood let's call it i think of this having been in parades like there's something about seeing the window in other people's faces it's something that you that you're doing or that you're helping create and especially but up at night and people can't find colors it's super satisfying so an encouragement to y'all that if you are moved by this stuff i mean it doesn't have to be this season we're going to do this again next year there's already registration going on for 2022. make something i mean these guys are theater artists and so they've got some exposure to the mediums and there's practice and painting and all that but really like anybody who wants to give this a shot like you can do this and i think it has really been delighting things are in australia they're in europe they're in like lots and lots of american cities and towns and having a little bit of festivity on what would otherwise just be a tuesday and a fairly draft they time brighten people's experience of you know any place it doesn't have to be here so here with house floats and before carnival of 2022 comes along and before we get on to our next house float there is another constructive thing you could be doing liking and commenting will help people find this video if you think that these are fun and worth other people seeing and we always love to see in the comments what else you think we should be doing so if this gives you ideas if you know of stuff going on where you're from or there's just favorite cities that you'd like to see please please please let us know down below and we're working with those comments right now to produce our next round of videos so we'll have some viewer suggestions getting on this channel pretty soon y'all we came way off st charles for this one but worth it uh this one is worthwhile on a couple of different fronts so for one thing this is the home of a local order of nuns and we have on the front tribute to the founder of this order and the person who brought the order to the united states i had to look up who these people were and uh and the order is called the sisters of the presentation of the blessed virgin mary headquartered in iowa so their presence here and they have a shelter for homeless mothers and their children nearby in the neighborhood that we're in right now and in addition to honoring their own founders and leaders they also have ruby bridges up here who was one of the first four black girls to integrate new orleans schools back in the 60s and we also have andrea deleo who was the founder of the first order of nuns that accepted black women in new orleans in the 19th century so the whole theme here is women of light and the concept is in line with what these nuns do in the first place but also with women sharing hope in the first place and then uh they've also got their own little free library which also contains food so if you were to visit this one today you would get some high fantasy some advice about pregnancy some self-help or some canned potatoes so resources for all kinds of people and down the side we've got lots more women that they include it and then they this this is maybe my favorite part they have stickers that you can add where you can put the name of one of your own heroes on so we just got to chat with the folks who put this up and they were one of the groups that hired the crew of red beans which has been running this hierar mardi gras artist program and so they've been putting new orleans float artists to work through this group fundraising effort and they execute stuff that has this you know higher level of professionalism on top of the artistry of somebody who's been doing it for a long long time so they just they meet with the concept of the folks who have the home and they will put up something like this and when we filmed our last video there were five of these that had been publicized and now there's in the low 30s i think so there's a whole lot more to see now and in addition to coming by and adding one of your own stickers on mardi gras day if you happen to be here they are going to be throwing beads out their window which they were cool enough to do for me these are the only beads i have caught this year or expect that i will catch this year so it makes a really welcome addition to the weekend for me y'all earlier we kind of zoomed through what all this stuff is about how it all relates to mardi gras traditions as a whole if you want to understand that better you can go check out that mardi gras video that we shot previously you'll find it up here probably down there like comment subscribe thank you for your time see you soon

Channel: Free Tours by Foot - New Orleans

Views: 48,235

Keywords: mardi gras house floats, yardi gras 2021, krewe of house floats, mardi gras, free tours by foot, virtual tour, virtual video, city walk, krewe of red beans, kern studios house floats

Id: I3iGox7SkKk

Length: 30min 30sec (1830 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021