The Pink and Purple House

Mardi Gras Street Style

 

The wonderful thing about Mardi Gras is that EVERYONE dresses up. Also, daytime drinking is  strongly encouraged. I thought that there were certain costume themes for Mardi Gras but as with most things in New Orleans, anything goes, and the more colors/glitter the better.

It's hard to see in this picture but the details in this outfit are really intricate and amazing. This woman told me that when she was a kid her mother would wake her up on Christmas morning and ask: "What do you want to be for Mardi Gras?". And then they would spend the next two months sewing their costumes.

Shotgun

There are lots of beautiful shotgun houses in New Orleans. According to wikipedia (God), the shotgun style can be traced back to the Haitian and African roots of freed slaves who came to live in the city in large numbers in the ealy 1830s. The Dahomey Fon people (of Benin and Southern Nigeria) use the name "to-gun", meaning "place of assembly", to desribe this style of house... this may be the origin of the name "shot-gun".  According to this same article, 15% of the housing in Port-au-Prince is [was] shotgun style. In light of the recent tragedy in P-au-P it's sad to think that New Orleans was once created in the image of Haiti, and now remains a reflection of a city that no longer exists. 

Another more dry but practical theory is that the taxation structure in New Orleans made the shotgun house the best way to build the largest space for the least amount of taxes (only the front lot of the house was taxed). 

Also, "Superstition holds that ghosts and spirits are attracted to shotgun houses because they may pass straight through them, and that some houses were built with doors intentionally misaligned to deter these spirits".

Double shotgun. The wall that seperates the porch (not something you typically see, maybe the result of a neighborly spat?) delineates the two houses. Big windows = cool breezes

The assymetrical quality of the single shotgun houses is very charming...it suggests lack (the other door and window that would complete the symmetry), while being perfectly self-sufficient. This particular one is my dream house.

New Orleans has the best street style