Mardi Gras: the parade

The Mardi Gras parade is, in many respects, better than New York's pride parade. It's shorter (clocking in at just under three hours) and better paced, with few long gaps between contingents.

It's less political as well, with very few elected officials marching and a relatively small number of groups representing narrow-based identity politics. Instead, you have many more groups that are basically krewes just out to have a good time in fabulous costumes:



The political messages that are there tend toward the sly and humorous, rather than the in-your-face attitude of many American Pride marchers. Here, the parade organizers have chosen to pair the Australian Federal Police (in the blue shirts to the left) with the medical-marijuana advocates (carrying an inflatable joint, to the right):


But perhaps the most thrilling moment of the parade, to the Americans in attendance, was one that was matter-of-fact to the locals: when the openly gay soldiers, sailors and aviators from Australia's armed forces marched by:



They ask, and they tell, and the world hasn't collapsed.