MARDI GRAS IN NEW ORLEANS

Parades, Photos & Carnival News

Gone are the floats, the masses, the revelry. Work crews with electric screwdrivers Wednesday methodically dismantled the green and yellow and purple awnings that stretched along Veterans Memorial Boulevard.

Donald Stout/The Times-PicayuneThe float titled "Mickey and Minnie's Cowboys and Cowgirls" rolls down Veterans Memorial Boulevard in the Krewe of Jefferson parade on Mardi Gras in Metairie.

Metairie's two Mardi Gras truck parades announced their float awards today.

Winners in the Krewe of Jefferson parade, which followed Argus, were:

Pete Souza / White HouseA personalized Zulu coconut is presented to President Obama in the Oval Office on Monday. From left: Sen. Mary Landrieu; Desiree Glapion Rogers; Patricia Wade Hamilton; President Obama; Zulu President Charles Hamilton, Jr.; and coconut artist Keith Eccles.

WASHINGTON -- The president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club presented President Barack Obama with a hand-painted, personalized Zulu coconut in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, marking the 100th anniversary of the black Carnival club and the election of the first African-American president.

Susan Poag / The Times-PicayuneZulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club president Charles Hamilton, Jr., left, and artist Keith Eccles, middle, today will finally present President Obama with a hand-painted coconut created in honor of his inauguration. Eccles, an art teacher at L.W. Higgens, worked 26 hours on the Obama coconut and box.

WASHINGTON -- On Sunday morning at 9:37, Charles Hamilton Jr., president of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and his first lady, Patricia Wade Hamilton, disembarked the Amtrak Crescent from New Orleans at Union Station in a Capital freshly dusted with snow.

SCOTT THRELKELD / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
It's all mask, beads and beer until the dawn of Ash Wednesday.

Complete Mardi Gras Coverage

It is 7:10 a.m. PCT (Post-Carnival Time) on Ash Wednesday morning, and I am surveying the extraordinarily spectacular mess in my house, wondering how many households in the New Orleans area look like mine.

I'm guessing a lot.

A glittering green wig is under a desk. Luckily, there is no head wearing it. A purple, green and gold boa is in a downstairs bathroom and an identical accouterment is slung over a stool at the kitchen bar. Multiple ice chests are a watery sea for cans of beer and soft drinks, some unopened and sunken, some dead soldiers floating on top. The aroma of skunky beer wafts through the house.