Halloween in the Crescent City

It's October 31st and it's another gorgeous fall day in New Orleans, perfect blue skies, soft breezes, rather warmer than usual, about 75 degrees, and you know what that means: more nudity in the French Quarter tonight for Halloween once the sun goes down. (I said that to Big Man, and his reply, "Oh, that -- it started last night actually.")

Halloween in the Crescent City starts early in the day, to make it last longer. And it's not just little kids who jump the gun and put their costumes on in the daylight -- all over the city, otherwise respectable grownups gleefully don wigs and silly outfits and cutesy Halloween vests and earrings the morning of the 31st. Or even earlier -- several women in the "One Book, One New Orleans" discussion group last night sported fluorescent green, pink, purple, and blue hair swatches as we talked and cried over Tom Piazza's "City of Refuge."

The women behind the counter at Rocky & Carlo's in Chalmette were dressed as witches as soon as they opened this morning. (God bless them for the reopening after Katrina, and for having the most wonderful New Orleans-style comfort food on the planet.) A young man in the his 20s leaned nonchalantly and unself-consciously against the railing at a local bank, waiting to use the ATM machine while wearing Peter Pan green tights, brown elf-boots, and a ragged green tunic (he was either Peter Pan or Robin Hood, hard to tell). A middle-aged black woman emerged form a store on St. Charles Avenue, snazzily dressed in outrageous day-glo tie-dye skirt and top, accented by a belly-dancer style scarf replete with dangly coins around her ample hips. She laughed and waved and wiggled as a car going by beeped its horn at her. As I've written before, normal for here.

The Rouse's had an all-day trick or treat for little kids in costume in the store and so the parking lot was full of cars unloading tiny princesses, turtles, tigers, bears, kitty cats, and lots of superheroes. A young mother walked past me, holding a little daughter by each hand, one a princess and the other, as she proudly called out to me in response to my Happy Halloween greeting, a Little Mermaid. Inside the store, a woman was on her cell phone seriously discussing the price of various cuts of meat with someone on the other end, while wearing a low-cut red dress, a black cape, and a headband with devil horns.

It's perfectly normal here to go way overboard in decorating your house, and you don't have to justify it by having children. (We don't, and you should see the front of our house!) One of our next-door neighbors has decorated her house, and she's not even going to be home tonight for any trick or treaters. Of course, some people do the whole decorating thing, and are on everyone's must-see and must-visit list for Halloween. The Bergers on St. Charles Avenue have gone all-out with about 2 dozen skeletons posing all over their expansive front yard, ghosts dangling from the sprawling old oak trees, and various tombstones, ghouls, and other appropriate decorations all over the front of their lovely home. Plus, they are known for their high-quality hand-outs -- no cheap hard candy for them!

This year, New Orleans has its first annual (remember what I said before about doing it once and then it's annual?) Halloween Parade by the self-proclaimed Mr. Mardi Gras, Blaine Kern (with the bad rug on his head). Big Man and I got a preview of some of the floats a few months ago when we visited Mardi Gras World with our nephew -- they are large and scary and decorated with the new kind of LED lights that change color. Kern was interviewed in the media, and he was great. (No one's a bigger NOLA booster than Blaine Kern!) He said, "We got voodoo, mojo, gris-gris, zombies -- we should be the Halloween capital of the country!" Which was really funny, since he made it sound like all that was on every other street corner of New Orleans every day -- which, I guess, is not far wrong.

Gotta love this place.