Sex, drugs and marching bands, Mardi Gras ’01 lived up to its expectations of bacchanal orgies and general debauchery.

My trip there began with a flight from Ontario to Las Vegas. Hopping from one city of debauchery to the next, the planes got rowdier. One guy won a thousand bucks on a slot machine at the Las Vegas Airport, and he sponsored the drinking for the back section of the plane. A few hours later, we all stumbled off to be greeted by beads and friends in New Orleans. One of my first nights, the friends I was visiting and I went to one of the parades. Hundreds of people lined up on the streets with their coolers drinking beers or whatever else they wanted (the very loose open-container policy in New Orleans gets even looser for the last stretch of the Mardi Gras season).

The parades finally came by, with everyone yelling and screaming at the floats to get the best beads thrown at them. The next day we passed another parade, but in a more sober state, and it just looks silly how people jump and scream for little strings of beads mass-produced in Taiwan. But in the moment, nothing else matters. During Mardi Gras, currency is replaced with beads and bodies. You can get basically anything if you got the beads or the body. The next day, I did the St. Charles crawl–which I highly recommend to anyone who visits. St. Charles is a major street that circles downtown. Every few blocks there’s a daiquiri shop, so going from shop to shop, we made our way halfway up the long street before crashing at another friend’s house.

Our exercise over for the weekend, we went to the French Quarter the next night. That’s where most of the shit goes down. Half-naked people stroll the streets, drunk people stumble over the empty beer cans and pizza boxes covering the street. Bourbon Street, the center of the French Quarter, was so full, the crowd just kinda carried us along. People were offering their beads from the tops of balconies in exchange for exposure from the people below.

Walking along, one guy tapped a girl’s shoulder. She stopped, looked at him, leaned back and he reached over and de-beaded her with his teeth. Another guy walked up to a girl standing in front of me and just whipped it out. The girl just laughed (yikes!).

Mardi Gras offers a little something for everyone. The vampires were having a good time, the drag queens were getting into it, the Christians parading at midnight to demand that people repent seemed to enjoy themselves. The cops got a thrill out of the guy who resisted arrest. The naked people were laughing, the drunk people were dancing–and that’s the spirit of Mardi Gras. The guys holding up the sign, "We’re too old for tits, show us your bush," were probably hoping for a little more, but they were trying.

Granted, it takes the right mood and the right disposition to go to Mardi Gras, but it lives up to its reputation.