Mardi Gras revelers lampoon BP spill

Photo by: G.M. Andrews

AP

Photo

Parade-goers reach for trinkets as the Knights of Revelry toss beads to parade-goers gathered along Government Street in Mobile, Ala., as Mardi Gras comes to a conclusion along the Gulf Coast Tuesday, Mar. 8, 2011.

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

Mardi Gras revelers drank and danced the rowdy Carnival season to its peak Tuesday, defying drizzle to snag beads from the last parades and jamming the French Quarter with colorful, sweaty costumes.

Some bared flesh on Bourbon Street, while others wore outfits lampooning the BP oil spill or other headline-grabbing events. Overall, this Carnival season has been among the most raucous since Hurricane Katrina, partly because it overlaps with college spring break.

Clarinetist Pete Fountain kicked off Tuesday’s parades shortly after dawn with his marching group. The traditionally African-American Krewe of Zulu and the parade of Rex, King of Carnival, followed. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led Zulu on horseback before dismounting at the antebellum-columned Gallier Hall for champagne toasts with Mardi Gras royalty.

By afternoon, the party had largely shifted from the family-friendly neighborhoods where the parades start to the packed streets of the French Quarter. The carousing would last until midnight, when Carnival is replaced by the Christian season of Lent.

Allen Logue, 58, walked through the French Quarter clad as a one-man oil- spill cleanup crew. The oil- field consultant from Barataria, La., didn’t have to do much shopping to build his costume. He already had a hard-hat helmet and BP-branded sweat shirt from work he did for the company in Alaska.