It's finally Mardi Gras day and the festivities will kick off bright and early in New Orleans. The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club parades at 8 a.m. and Rex rolls at 10:30 a.m.
The Fat Tuesday parades will all be livestreamed on the?NOLA.com Parade Cam?starting at 8 a.m. in the video player above.?
There will be a delay between the broadcast's start and the floats reaching the cameras, which are located at The Times-Picayune office at 840 St. Charles Avenue. You can also watch on?Facebook,?YouTube?and?Twitter.
The Parade Cam broadcast will be hosted by Quo Sylve of Kipp Schools with a guest appearance from John Pope from NOLA.com.
This year's Parade Cam sponsors are NewOrleans.com and the National World War II Museum.
Looking for another NOLA.com Parade Cam broadcast? Click here for the full schedule.
What to expect
More than 1,100 male riders on 44 floats will parade under the theme "Celebrations and libations Zulu Style."
The Zulu coconut remains one of the most coveted throws of the Mardi Gras season. Members hand decorated the coconuts before tossing them to people on the parade route.
There will be 440 Rex riders on 29 floats, and they will parade under the theme "The Two Worlds of Lafcadio Hearn - New Orleans and Japan." Themed floats include La Cuisine Creole and The Festive.
Each float has its own beads and sports towels.
What's the meaning behind the Rex theme?
Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), the inspiration for this year’s Rex parade, was a writer and foodie extraordinaire whose life spanned three continents. He was born in Greece and lived in Europe before moving to the United States, where he spent slightly more than a decade in New Orleans. In 1890, after three years in the West Indies, Hearn moved to Japan, which became his home for the rest of his life.
In the 120 years since his death, Hearn has become an obscure literary figure. But at the end of the 19th century, he was just as celebrated as such writers as Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote Andrei Codrescu, the writer and longtime New Orleans-based NPR correspondent, in a Paris Review article in 2019.
Read the full story from John Pope here.
Parade route
Check out the full routes on the maps below.
About Zulu
The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club formed in 1909. Zulu's founders chose their costumes to mock the demeaning portrayals of Black people in early 20th century culture and the pretensions of the all-White parading organizations of the time.
Each year, members don black makeup, wear grass skirts and hand out coconuts following in the example of their brave founders.
As Carnival season ramped up, Melvin Labat was still processing his status as the mythic monarch Professor Longhair celebrates in “Go To the M…
About the Rex Organization
Rex was founded in 1872 with the goal of creating a day-time parade that would be the centerpiece of Carnival.?
The name Rex comes from Latin which means king, so Rex is the king of Carnival.
Once people started throwing things from floats, Rex led in originating things like crew-specific throws. In 1960, Rex introduced the doubloon as a throw, which is now a traditional Mardi Gras-wide throw.?
Meet the king:?Rex 2024 John Eastman is a New Orleans businessman with a heart for service
Meet the queen:?Meet the Queen of Carnival, Ellie Montgomery, from a family steeped in Mardi Gras tradition
Other parades happening today
- Krewe of Argus: 11 a.m., Metairie
- Krewe of Elks Jeffersonians: follows Argus, Metairie
- Krewe of Elks Orleans: Follows Rex, Uptown
- Krewe of Crescent City: Follows Elks, Uptown
- Covington Lions Club: 10 a.m., Covington
- Carnival in Covington: follows, Covington
- Krewe of Folsom: 2 p.m., Folsom
- See the full updated list of New Orleans area parades happening?from now to Fat Tuesday
