Category: Vieux Carre

Krewe of Fools crowns King Leo as group continues its tribute to French Quarter buskers

The Krewe of Fools will choose King Leo as its next monarch during a Lundi Gras celebration and the public public is invited to commemorate the group’s 16th year of paying tribute to the men, women, children and animals who are the French Quarter’s street performers.

Warpo Cole, one of the krewe’s “founders” told The Quarter Rat that King Leo “does a great juggling and balancing act” and has been a staple in the French Quarter for at least a few years.

The party begins on Monday at noon in the 600 block of Dumaine Street, where Fools will serve red beans and rice, show some street performances for anyone to watch, coronate King Leo and also march throughout the French Quarter.

While it’s only an informal krewe, Cole described Fools’ as more of group of artists engaged in a “mobile party” and its king as an an inspirational individual who actively supports the French Quarter busker community, whose members are periodically hassled city officials simply for the act of entertaining the public.

Walking through the French Quarter on any given day of the year, you’re bound to notice people playing music, singing, doing card tricks or dressed as characters. Tips are highly encouraged, but not mandatory. Cole said Buskers are a core part of the neighborhood’s history.

“There have been buskers in NOLA as long as the city has existed,” Cole told The Quarter Rat. “Jesters have always had the ear of the king. Buskers interact with people from every race, income, gender, political party etc. We bring people together and do our best to produce smiles.”

Street performers are not appreciated by everyone, as they are the target of New Orleans Police and/or French Market security personnel in sweep operations, Cole said. He added: “We have the freedom to not worry about whether a ‘boss’ is going to fire us for something we say or do, at the same time we know we can be arrested like anybody that crosses the boundaries of social proprieties of any kind. All our actions are in a spotlight, so we’re both a target, and a social bridge.”

Krewe of Fools started off as a party in 2011, when about a dozen people dressed up for Mardi Gras and and wandered around the French Quarter, according to Cole.

Today, he said Fools’ is pretty much still a party, albeit a bit more organized. The krewe adopted the motto “Pro Bono Ridiculum,” meaning “for the good of the weird” in Latin, and whose purpose is to “celebrate, preserve, protect, promote the art of street performance in New Orleans.”

Kings are selected among street performers who inspire other buskers, Cole said, adding that the monarch is also someone whose appearance is easily recognizable and thus easier to emulate in costume form. Which means that if you do attend the coronation ceremony, you’re highly encouraged — perhaps even obligated — to come dressed as King Leo.

Fools tried to uses horses in its march for two years, but Cole said the cops were rather insistent with obtaining permits. Since then, and as always, Fools was a party with friends gathering every year to honor each other’s contribution to what makes the French Quarter an extraordinary neighborhood.

“We are Fools after all,” Cole said, “and don’t like paper work or responsibility.”

Joan of Arc parade, Société Des Champs set to start 2026 Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is officially here, with the Joan of Arc parade and the Société Des Champs Elysée streetcar ride ready to start the 2026 season Tuesday in the French Quarter.

The events fall on Epiphany, or the Christian holiday commemorating the three wise men visiting baby Jesus and bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The day is also known as or Three Kings Day, which kicks off the celebratory span of time that lasts more than a month and culminates on Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday.

Known as the Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc, the group formed in 2008 and now holds the first parade of the Mardi Gras season. It’s a two-hour medieval-inspired walking procession that starts at 300 N. Front St. and ends at the corner of French Market Place and Barracks Street.

The krewe is slated to begin assembling at 5:45 p.m. at the starting point and the parade begins at 7:30 p.m.

Several stops occur along the way, including a king cake ceremony at Oscar Dunn Park across the street from Jackson Square and a brief pause to sing happy birthday at the Joan of Arc statue where North Peter and Decatur streets converge.

Joan of Arc’s birthday is generally accepted to be Jan. 6, 1412, although the exact date of her birth was never recorded. At the age of 17, Joan of Arc helped a demoralized French army beat back the English during the siege of Orléans in the Hundred Years War after claiming to be guided by divine visions. She was burned at the stake in 1431.

A map of the parade route can be found at joanofarcparade.org.

The Société Des Champs Elysée, also known as La Société Pas Si Secrète Des Champs-Élysées or The Not So Secret Society of the Elysian Fields, has held its streetcar ride since 2017.

The ride starts at 7:30 p.m. at the intersection of North Rampart Street and Esplanade Avenue, and proceeds southwest down North Rampart until the streetcar reaches Union Passenger Terminal near Loyola and Howard avenues.

The streetcar then turns around and heads back down the same route until reaching its starting point.

Jive Turkey Day

There are so many traditions associated with Thanksgiving: Gorging on three days’ worth of food in one meal, bickering with in-laws over politics, a week’s wage lost on football games and the occasional errant balloon injuring dozens at the Macy’s Parade.

Here in New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter, the tradition of accusing businesses of being racist. This ritual stems from the Bayou Classic, the annual college football game hosted at the Superdome between Grambling State and Southern University.  Again, we host the rival college game for the 52nd season.  New Orleans will be populated by thousands of fans from historically Black colleges.

This happens to coincide with the time when many of our businesses may choose to close their doors for a few days around Thanksgiving and the following weekend. This has, in many previous years, brought up allegations of our local business having a racial motivation for the closures because it directly impacts the fun the visitors are able to have on Bourbon Street. There will be many social media posts calling out the “racist business owners” for blatant discrimination. The outrage is fatter than any genetically modified turkey.

As a service industry worker here in The French Quarter for the past 15 years, allow me to offer these insights.

First, as service workers we are expected, even demanded to work long, hard hours for every other major and minor holiday during the rest of the year. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Halloween. Not to mention Mardi Gras, the rest of the city just shuts down for it.”

Good luck trying to find any local business to return a call as Carnival starts to get into full swing. Other than the essential government services like police and fire who like us have no choice, the city government practically closes down.  If you were so presumptuous as to dare to ask your employer for time off, his laughter would drown out the jukebox. You either work 12 hour shifts for a week straight like your coworkers or you can quit.

Thanksgiving Day has become sort of a default for staff to have one holiday to enjoy being served instead of serving.  We too have friends and families that we would relish time to spend with. Being a traditional family-oriented holiday, karaoke on Bourbon Street isn’t the first activity that comes to mind. It’s not that big of an ask. How about a little support for the working proletariat pushing back against heartless capitalist systems denying us of our basic human need to enjoy a holiday.

Second: This time is often spent by the businesses to do much needed maintenance work to their establishments.  Most are open seven days a week and are only closed for a few hours per day. That’s enough time to clean and do simple repairs, but major work that may take a couple of days cannot be addressed in a couple of hours. I know of one establishment utilizing this year’s closure to do some floor tile work. It needs a few days of no one walking on it to set properly. These old buildings require a lot of  services, plumbing, painting, electrical etc. That cannot be rushed.

Third: To accuse any establishment in New Orleans of being “rAcIst” is ludicrous. Take a look around any other weekend; half of the staff and customers are most likely Black. What do you think? Behind all of the shuttered doors and windows this weekend Klan meetings are being held?

Allow me to submit this piece of evidence. July Fourth weekend New Orleans hosts Essence Fest, an exclusively Black event that our doors are always open to welcome them and their money. We’re capitalists, the only color we care about is green. If they were the crackers that online warriors claim they are, then Billy Bob would be able to find an excuse to close for that Black event as well.

Just allow the service industry workers to have one holiday for themselves and allow the maintenance workers some time to glue everything back together.

FQMD Finance and Development Committee meeting at HNOC classroom Dec. 3

The French Quarter Management District‘s Finance and Development Committee will hold its next meeting at the Historic New Orleans Collection classroom on Toulouse Street Tuesday afternoon.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 3 p.m. at at the HNOC classroom located at 610 Toulouse Street. The meeting is open to the public.

The meeting agenda includes discussion on the committee’s 2025 work plan, review of the 2025 budget proposals and vehicle procurement for community liaison officers.

Discussion on the French Quarter Museum Association cooperative endeavor agreement is also slated for the meeting and includes a motion to recommend to the FQMD board of commissioners approval of the fourth amendment to extend the agreement term.

The agenda also includes committee discussion on the New Orleans & Company 2025 general operating memorandum of understanding and will include consideration of a motion to recommend that the FQMD board of commissioners approve the MOU.

Additionally, the committee is scheduled to discuss the New Orleans & Company Upper Quarter Patrol cooperative endeavor agreement and will consider a motion to recommend that the FQMD board of commissioners approval a third amendment to extend the agreement term.

The committee will receive a presentation of the 2024 revised budget amendment and will also discuss updates by the Committee of Public Relations.

New business includes consideration and taking action “upon any other matters that may properly come before the FQMD’s Finance and Development Committee,” the agenda said.

Picture courtesy of vxla via CC Flickr.

Rampart streetcar suspended indefinitely due to signal damage, RTA says

The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority reported Tuesday that the Rampart-Loyola streetcar was indefinitely suspended due to wiring damage to the signalization at Canal and North Rampart streets.

From the RTA:

Due to damage wiring to the streetcar signalization at Canal and N. Rampart, line #46 streetcar service will be suspended until further notice to error on the side of caution. All riders should be redirected to lines #8, #55, and #91 to travel on Rampart.

The street was brought back online in May after more than four years since the Hard Rock Hotel collapse in October 2019.

Picture courtesy of Infrogmation / CC Flickr