'tit Rex Meets its People

The Mardi Gras microkrewe was one long photo op Saturday night in the Bywater.

Saturday night, ’tit Rex, New Orleans’ first microkrewe, rolled through the Bywater and I rolled with it. My wife and I have been a part of the krewe for five years, and this year’s theme, “L’Enfant Terrible,” inspired what I thought to be the krewe’s most consistent parade. To my mind, it had the right balance of heart—two shoebox-sized tributes to the late Veronica Russell, who was also a member of ‘tit Rex—and wit. The latter was manifest in many political floats aimed at Governor Bobby Jindal, and the one of the darkest floats, Jonathan Traviesa’s “Bill’s Pills,” commenting on Bill Cosby’s and the allegations against him.

We pulled another of the floats in dubious taste, “Baby on ‘Board,” which presented a baby being waterboarded. After the beautiful and meticulously crafted "Gashleycrumb Tinies," our punk rock craft seemed even more apparent, but one of the advantages of a walking parade is that we could hear every gasp, explosive laugh, and comment when people focused on our float.

Because our floats are so small, the parade is one long photo op--at least where you can see it. There are points where the crowd barely leaves a chute a shoulder’s width for us to walk through. But while going through the throng outside Mimi’s, I couldn't imagine that people riding floats on St. Charles Avenue have more fun. They ride above the crowd’s energy while we’re in the middle of it, and when people had costumes or their own miniature festivalgoers for a miniature parade, we were on eye level with each other sharing our passions for Carnival. 

For those of you who missed ’tit Rex this year, here’s Doug MacCash of Nola.com’s review of the parade, a video of us near the start on St. Roch at St. Claude, and Tweets from the parade including some from one of the floats.