"THROW ME SOMETHING, MISTER!!"
That's what people scream out from the sidewalks as the floats slowly roll past. We want beads and cups and toys and rings and bracelets and footballs and flowers and swords and horns loads of other things.
We just want them to throw it so US, no one else.
Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to show anything to get something. That generally happens in the French Quarter...at night...from certain types of people.
The parades we go to are in the Garden and Warehouse Districts, where parades are more about the festivities rather than the unmentionables. It doesn't hurt to wear a creative costume or make a cool sign, but if you bat your eyelashes the right way and simply push your way to the front of the crowd, you'll get plenty of stuff.
There are even t-shirts solely for this purpose.
The items parade-goers collect are called "throws". The reason behind that verbiage is quite simple...
...they throw things at you!
The person who threw me these said, "give these to your boyfriend!".
How. rude.
You quickly accumulate far too many beads to carry around (I learned this the hard way my first year...sore neck the next day), so we either give them to kids, hang them on nearby trees or fill our bags and take them home
(I've also found them to be highly useful in the classroom).
A friend once said,
"You know it's carnival season when the bead trees begin to bloom!"
This massive cup will come in useful at tomorrow's parade.
Even the little ones are useful "to go" cups throughout the year.
Some of the necklaces they throw hold unique pieces like these, representative of the Krewe named in that parade.
When people get the chance to ride on a parade float, it costs hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars (per person!!). The rider's fee is only a small part of it...
Consider having enough of these items--throws--to hand out to spectators along an 11 mile parade route...that's a lot of stuff. They buy bags and bags of beads. Because of that, the cost of the rider's throws far outweighs any other part of the privileged experience.
Warning: if you're at the end of a parade route or encounter someone who has more than their share to shed, you may fall victim to a bag-o-beads-in-the-face (it's happened to me before. ouch).
Me and my parade pal.
Since we'll be back in Chicago eventually, we've decided to collect our throws and use them to decorate our Christmas trees from now on.
This will be our tribute to the city that has meant so much to us--two times now.
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