With costumes, beads, music, New Orleans marks Fat Tuesday

Biloxi, which debuted its first Mardi Gras parade in 1908, today hosts more than 20 parades cheered on by half a million revelers. Lenten season of sacrifice begins.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – FEBRUARY 9, 2016: Jay Banks, King of Zulu, waves to crowds during Mardi Gras day on February 9, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The band, Wild Linoleum, is a little known group from the bars of New Orleans…let’s just call them “legends in their own room”.

There are other events and Mardi Gras traditions taking place across the city. All you need is some friends, some cool costumes and possibly a Do-It-Yourself float.

Eventually, they’ll wind up in Iota where the Folk Life festival attracts people from far and wide.

He was hoping to catch one of the hand-decorated coconuts given out during the Zulu parade Tuesday morning. Famous krewes of Zulu and Rex take to the streets and family-friendly parades in Jefferson Parish will close the season later in the afternoon.

El Paso is ready to celebrate Fat Tuesday New Orleans style with several block parties around town.

Mardis Gras this year brought out thousands of people to parade on the old cobblestone streets of New Orleans.

Mardi Gras has varying names in other countries like Carnival, Pancake Day and Fastnacht. Members of the tribes spend months preparing elaborate costumes resembling Native American dress and on Fat Tuesday they travel through various neighborhoods, chanting and dancing to songs passed down through generations. “I was wonderfully astounded by it all and really wanted, as an archaeologist, to know more about all these insane plastic beads getting hurled about”, she says in an interview with fellow archaeologist Kristina Killgrove. “I’ve been taking pictures of the parades for 15-20 years from when I just started to come here”.