10 Reasons Why Jaded New Yorkers Need Go To Mardi Gras

1. TUCKS.

The day parade centered around toilet humor will make even the most jaded Brooklynite crack a crooked smile. Toilet seat sunglasses exist. What is not to love about being able to flip up a toilet seat on your eye? Besides the pinkeye connotations, but that’s only amongst your hypochondriac friends.

2. Acceptable day drinking.

ACCEPTABLE DAY DRINKING. ACCEPTABLE DAY DRINKING. I needed to put that thrice but it’s so awesome. In NYC they’re trying to ban bottomless brunch. In New Orleans there are no open container laws. 🙂

3. Culture shock.

Unless you live in rural Pennsylvania or Upstate NY you are not used to the people that exist on Canal at 8 am. They will be the type of people you swear only exist on TLC hanging out in the streets with their ladders, coolers and brood of kids playing football and it’s awesome.

4. The food.

I do not care how good you think NYC food is, go to Morning Call and get Beignets and Cafe Au Lait. You will have a foodgasm and you will thank me. If you can’t get to Metairie there’s always Cafe Du Monde, which is good, but it’s kind of a tourist trap.

5. The People.

New Orleanians are the most down for whatever, un jaded people and it’s so refreshing. The conditions of Mardi Gras are questionable most of the time but no one complains about it and just parties at all hours.

6. New Orleans is the most European City in the country.

Everyone lauds New York for being chic and European, but they’re wrong. New York City has way too many rules and regulations to be that European. Small children can be placed on ladders to watch parades at all hours while everyone around them is drunk. That would never happen in NYC, ever.

7. New Orleans is basically home of all the crazy shit you were told you’d experience in NYC but never happened.

Mardi Gras is basically where all of the crazy comes out. You can wear whatever the hell you want nipple tassels, beads as a shirt, everyone is topless. Yes, you can legally be topless in New York but who even does that unless it’s a feminist statement?

8. No annoying pretentiousness.

New York City is just all about whose apartment is nicer, who gets more likes on Instagram, who is the most jaded intellectual in the group. Maybe that goes on in New Orleans at other times but at Mardi Gras everyone is too into enjoying themselves to let that matter. And isn’t that so refreshing?

9. You aren’t freezing your ass off there.

It will be in the 70s this weekend. I’m packing shorts. Hell yes.

10. NYC is really stifling after a while.

Is it not awesome to be able to wander around the Quarter with a huge hand grenade and just not care who sees you being sloppy?