Southern Decadence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Southern Decadence is a week-long, predominantly gay-male event held in New Orleans, Louisiana and its environs by the gay and lesbian community in early September, climaxing with a parade through the French Quarter on the Sunday before Labor Day. Most events take place in or around the French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans, centering especially on the intersection of Bourbon and St. Ann streets.
Crowds range from 100,000 to 300,000 revelers from across the United States. In 2004 there were over 100,000 participants and the economic impact on the City of New Orleans was estimated at over $95 million. It is the last national circuit party of the season. Other circuit parties take place in Palm Springs, California, Miami, Florida, and on Fire Island.
Decadence, as it is known by participants, is marked by parades, bead tossing, street parties and dance parties. The festival like Mardi Gras is highly sexual in nature, with overt advertising that liquor will be flowing heavily. It is aptly known as Gay Mardi Grasfor its similarity to Carnival week earlier in the year.
Decadence crowds in the Quarter typically match or exceed the gay Mardi Gras crowds, leading some residents of the French Quarter to leave the city over Labor Day weekend, like some do for Mardi Gras itself, although the influx of visitors to the city as a whole is not so great as for New Orleans Mardi Gras.
In the past several years religious and conservative groups have rallied against the festival. In 2003 there was a formal petition filed to have the event terminated, with video footage handed over to officials depicting dozens of men engaged in "public sex acts". There were examples of men exposing themself to other men for beads, similar to the traditional Mardi Gras balcony bead toss.
There was an extremely vocal response from business owners and hoteliers in New Orleans in support of the festival which is the biggest money maker for them after Mardi Gras. As some of them put it: it brings almost all of the money of Mardi Gras with far less destruction and litter.
Ultimately the police made a show of posting notices clarifying public sex was forbidden.
A History of Southern Decadence indicates that the celebrations began quite inauspiciously in August of 1972, by a group of friends living in a ramshackle cottage house at 2110 Barracks Street in the Treme section of New Orleans, just outside of the French Quarter. It was in desperate need of repair, and the rent was $100 per month. At any given time the residents numbered anywhere from six to ten, and it was still sometimes difficult to come up with the rent.
The large bathroom became a natural gathering place in the house. It had no shower, only a clawfoot tub, but it also had a sofa. With from six to ten residents, and one bathtub, everyone became close friends. While one soaked in the tub, another would recline on the couch and read A Streetcar Named Desire aloud. The Tennessee Williams play inspired the residents to fondly name the house "Belle Reve" in honor of Blanche DuBois' Mississippi plantation.
On an August afternoon in 1972, the friends decided to plan an amusement.
According to author James T. Spears, writing in Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South, this "motley crew of outcasts" began Southern Decadence as a going away party for a friend named Michael Evers, and to shut up a new "Belle Reve" tenant (from New York) who kept complaining about the New Orleans heat.
As a riff on the "Belle Reve" theme, the group named the event a "Southern Decadence Party: Come As Your Favorite Southern Decadent," requiring all participants to dress in costume as their favorite "decadent Southern" character.
According to Spears, "The party began late that Sunday afternoon, with the expectation that the next day (Labor Day) would allow for recovery. Forty or fifty people drank, smoked, and carried on near the big fig tree ... even though Maureen (the New Yorker) still complained about the heat."
The following year the group decided to throw another Southern Decadence Party. They met at Matassa's bar in the French Quarter to show off their costumes, then they walked back to "Belle Reve."
This first "parade" included only about 15 people impersonating such "decadent Southern" icons as Belle Watling, Mary Ann Mobley, Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Keller, and New Orleans' own Ruthie the Duck Lady.
This impromptu parade through the French Quarter and along Esplanade Avenue laid the groundwork for future events, and the group decided to repeat the party again the following year.
In 1974, the Southern Decadence visionaries named Frederick Wright as the first Grand Marshal, hoping to provide at least a modicum of order.
For the next six years, the format of the celebration changed little. The founding group continued to appoint each year's Grand Marshal by consensus. Some were gay, some were not. But all were members of the founding group.
By 1981, most of the original organizers had moved on with their lives. Many felt that the event had become so big that it was no longer the intimate party they had started nine years earlier. Of the original group, only Grand Marshal V Robert King was actively participating. He, along with some of his friends that hung out at the Golden Lantern bar, thought it was worth continuing and they took over the festivities.
It was at this point that Southern Decadence became primarily a gay event. Other protocol changes made in 1981 included moving the starting point of the annual parade from Matassa's to the Golden Lantern bar, and allowing Grand Marshals to personally name their own successors. Both of these traditions continue today. And in 1987, the Grand Marshal began to make a proclamation of the official theme, color and song.
Because the 2005 celebration was cancelled due to Hurricane Katrina, Southern Decadence 2005 Grand Marshals Lisa Beaumann and Regina Adams will reign for 2006, making the very first time in Southern Decadence history that grand marshals will rule for two years.
In 2006 Roberts Batson of the Bienville Foundation and others wanted to expand the festivities. They thought to serve up culture, conversation and fundraising for financially-stressed gay organizations, all with heaping side dishes of fun, food and socializing. DecaFest will help apply financial CPR with a fundraising technique designed to benefit the entire gay community. The festival will support gay life in New Orleans more generally as well. The DecaFest website explains that the fesitival is a place “to cherish and strengthen community” and “to give notice the LGBT community is here to stay, is committed to the future, and is determined to be a vital player in the rebuilding of our city.”
DecaFest will be doing good as it entertains and edifies as New Orleans’ vital gay community institutions and HIV/AIDS services were seriously damaged by Katrina.
[edit] Hurricane Katrina
2005's Southern Decadence was officially canceled as a result of Hurricane Katrina; however, a very small group of residents who still remained in the French Quarter celebrated the event anyway. [1]
On August 31, 2005, the evangelical Christian group Repent America released a press release entitled, "HURRICANE KATRINA DESTROYS NEW ORLEANS DAYS BEFORE ‘SOUTHERN DECADENCE.’" Most of the press release concerns Southern Decadence. New Orleans is described as a "wicked city," noting its tolerance of Southern Decandence, Mardi Gras, Girls Gone Wild and abortions.
After mentioning New Orleans' high murder rate, it goes on to say:
- "We must help and pray for those ravaged by this disaster, but let us not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long... May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God." [2]
It is worth noting, however, that the French Quarter, the epicenter of Southern Decadence and a gay neighborhood, was one of the few areas largely undamaged and unflooded by the hurricane.
An abbreviated parade took place in the French Quarter with some two dozen participants. Most were French Quarter hold outs; there were also at least a couple of people who had to wade in through flooded streets from other neighborhoods to get there. As the city was officially being evacuated at the time, a police officer at first attempted to stop the small observation of tradition, but one of the participants was able to produce the parade permit issued pre-Katrina showing it was a scheduled legal event, and the small procession was allowed to continue. National media reporters noted the event. It was the first parade in New Orleans after the Hurricane, the most recent previous New Orleans parade having been the Krewe of OAK "Midsummer Mardi Gras" parade the night before the city's mandatory evacuation.
With the theme "Southern Decadence Rebirth," the event rebounded in 2006, attracting near-normal crowds.
