- I'm Jim Kirchherr in Soulard, normally this time of year leading up to Mardi Gras there'd be all kinds of events, parades, and a really big party.

Not this year, because of COVID-19, most of the events have gone virtual, they've been scaled back, or they simply won't happen at all.

So we thought we would relive a Mardi Gras from a few years ago and all that went into it.

It's something we call "Method to the Madness."

(funky bass music) (vehicle engine) - Yeah, our celebration has definitely got a Midwestern flavor to it.

(saxophone music) - [Musician] It's cold out here!

- Hey, get out of the way!

- [A man] It certainly doesn't mean we don't know how to have fun.

(funky bass music) - What will I worry about the most?

(laughs) (crowd cheering) - The tents, the tables, the chairs, the beer, the soda, the hurricanes.

(loud cheering) - Their officers know to be a little more tolerant than they normally are on this day.

(police siren) - Minor fights, no large fights.

- Mardi Gras!

Mardi Gras!

- Evening, ladies -- It's not our favorite day of the year, but it is our job.

(people partying and cheering) - Last call!

(vuvuzela noise) (happy accordion music) (telephone rings) (indistinct) - I'm Tim Lorson, and I'm the Prime Minister of Mardi Gras inc. Well, there's three of us full time, myself, and Marco and Lindsey.

Marc basically handles sponsorships and some operations, - I hope you guys have fun, man!

- Hi Joe, it's Lindsay from Mardi Gras, how are you?

- [Tim] And Lindsay handles all of the brass tacks, she's the operations person, she's the person that makes sure we have the right permits, that we've got enough water, that we've got enough tables, all of those kinds of things.

- [Lindsey] By the spice rack right here, and go across like this... - [Tim] Mac Bradley is the foreign minister, which means he is the guy that is our media guru, and long-time Mardi Gras inc volunteer.

He coordinates all the public relations and the communications efforts, but he's actually more than that, he's also somebody that's very integral to the strategic planning and the operation with us.

In fact, he's one of the people that helped form Mardi Gras Inc back in 1999.

Hi Linsey.

- Yeah.

- [Tim] We always like to say that our job is to equally balance the fact that we're trying to create economic activity for the city of St. Louis, in the first quarter of the year, put heads in beds, let's see a big day for the bar owners and the restaurants, not just in Soulard, but all over the city, and the county, and the region.

But we have to balance that because of the very valid residential public safety concerns people have, that's our job.

A lot of what goes to the one point one million that it takes to put this thing on, is absorbed by putting things like port-a-potties, and security, and barricades, clean up details, dumpsters, all the things we have to put in place to make this thing safe but also minimize the inconvenience and the impact, I should say, on the residents as much as we can.

We have an obligation to do that, and some people take it very, very seriously, yes.

- [Don] We've got a couple hundred thousand people who want to come here for Mardi Gras.

People want to come to Soulard, they want to come here, it's a destination spot, I think.

People say it's a good day out for them.

Now, do we put up with some of the side effects of it?

Yeah, of course we do.

- We have neighbors who live less than a block who moved out because of Mardi Gras, they bought a house in the -- - But for those people, Mardi Gras was going on when they moved down there.

- Right, so if they didn't have kids, and it was a -- - Oh geez, come on.

- It's not for everybody, it's not for everybody.

- It's not for everybody -- - Some of us have come to expect it, I don't know, certainly no one should expect destruction, or you know, it's not something -- - [Bill] But at the same time it happens.

- But at the same time you kind of expect a little bit of behavior that you would not otherwise welcome any other Saturday afternoon of the year.

(jaunty accordion music) - [A man] Do we have any more brick painters?

(dog barks) - Linda!

- My name is Linda Nickel, and I'm the president of the Grand Sultans of Success.

We're a Mardi Gras crew that has been participating in the Soulard Mardi Gras parade since 1993, we've been working on our floats since the first weekend of January, we enjoy this very much, we do bend the rules just a little bit, just enough to get away with it but yet still not break 'em.

And I think every year the goal for our crew is to make a good float, have a good time, enjoy what we've done and then look back and say "oh yeah remember that year?

It was a great time.

We had a really good time that year."

Even in the snow, even in the rain, even in the whatever, I mean that's what it takes to be a crew.

- [Sara] I bartend, and it's a lot of fun.

I work at Llywelyn's Pub down in Soulard, I've been here three years, outdoor booths for Mardi Gras are the main thing of it.

You know, a bar is just a bar inside.

Outside you're in it, it's the whole culture of it, it's New Orleans and St. Louis, we've got 30 years in Soulard, it's culture you have to be outside.

You gotta be at it with the people.

I will be at the corner of 9th and Soulard.

Serving drinks, having fun, acknowledging the people, I enjoy what I do.

- One, two, three, and flip!

(in unison) One, flip, two... - [Steve] The name of this crew is the Gateway Precision Lawn Chair Krewe, it was established in 1993.

Our motto is that if it's not fun we don't do it.

I try to say we're trying to keep it elegant.

We keep it elegant, so if it gets too crazy man, we just drop it, we used to do a small float and it was too much work, it was a beautiful float but it was too much work so we dropped it.

- (shouting) Okay, from the top!

One, two, three and slap open close one, slap open close two... - All right.

so what we've got going on now is we've got our first round of you know, our basic moves down, and then we got a move that we haven't quite figured out yet, which is always fun.

We try to come up with something for the judges because most of them see us year after year.

What we do is we do turn to the out, right, one, two, three shwing!

I gotta show you Wipeout, 'cause we have this thing, we got a drummer, I play harmonica, so we got a drum harmonica thing going, so we do Wipeout, so it's la da da da da da, but then we act like we're surfing, so we go... (makes drumming sounds).

So, that's Wipeout.

(light steel guitar music) (helicopter whirring) (people chattering) (chickens clucking) - [Bill] This is I think the best neighborhood in the Midwest, you know I work with a lot of people who have come from Europe that work full time or are visiting, and when I bring them down here it's almost always, "I can't believe this is America, this must be a European city."

(laughter) - This must be European!

- The only exception was the Russian who said "Why do you have to live in the slums?"

(laughter) - You know, Soulard is St. Louis' french quarter, and this event was born in Soulard, it's unique because of this neighborhood, you know when I moved here in the early 90s there was a tree growing out of the collapsed roof of the building next door.

- [Don] Yeah but Soulard's way more than Mardi Gras.

- But Mardi Gras puts the spotlight on the news.

And it makes people think about us, it brings people here, they come here because of Mardi Gras.

- First year you worked on Mardi Gras, how many people?

- Oh, not very many, but it was a neighborhood thing, you know, it was neighborhood businesses, it was run by the neighborhood, it was all volunteer, no one got paid.

- This event went from, I dunno, let's say twenty thousand people to half a million people really quick.

- I wasn't directly involved in Mardi Gras until '99, until the troubles.

There were some altercations with the police.

- Somebody just made really bad strategic move and used way too much force for what was needed to shut that down.

- It was, uh, it was not a good scene.

And I'd never seen anything like that.

I, like everybody else, or like a lot of people in the neighborhood, I had some issues with Mardi Gras and how it was done, I felt like it needed to be more accountable, to the neighborhood.

- And it kinda got a little out of hand I think, because there were no guidelines, there were no rules, and then more and more people came and all of a sudden we had half a million people in the Soulard area tramping on people's lawns and people were saying we like it, but not like this.

And so that's how Mardi Gras inc came to be.

- There are people who aren't so in love with it, yeah that would be accurate, and sometimes they just don't like it, and there isn't anything you can do that's gonna make them like it, so we have to distill what they're saying to "Hey, this is a legitimate concern, this is something we actually can do something about that's reasonable."

- Well, we separate the festival zone into red zone and yellow zone, in the red zone we clear the streets and actually have to have any other cars in the streets towed.

The red zone often contains most of the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood, and there is the most compact area.

We have people out, officials out in the neighborhood all day long, just making the area safe, that is our biggest concern on that day is making the area safe.

- We look at things every year and try to critique it.

We have meetings way before this ever starts, we have meetings afterwards to make sure whatever went wrong this year we'll correct for next year.

- Hi, how are you?

- [Tim] Lindsay, this is Jerry Laschuk he's in the third -- - Oh, I think I've met you before.

- Good and you, Jack?

Nice to meet you.

- The safety meetings pretty much consist of the health department, the animal control, police department, fire department, operational planning, the excise division, and state liquor control, ATC, it's all those people who come together and we kind of just have all of our issues, metro's also involved, out in the open so everyone's on the same page and knows what's going on.

- License collector yesterday, and they are going to have their detail of license collector agents out checking for the rogue vendors -- - [Lindsay] You know, there's always one little thing that involves another department of another department, so if we can get them all together, a meeting of the minds is what we call it, they can all work things about amongst themselves and then everyone's up to date.

- And that will be enforced again, it's about five agents, just so you know, they'll be roaming around as well.

- Could you set those at 7th and Lafayette instead of 8th and Lafayette?

- I'm police officer Brent Feig, I'm in our operational planning section, which writes all the security plans for the police department for Mardi Gras.

We have number of shifts, our main two shifts would be from nine to five then four to midnight.

We'll have over 450 policemen, there'll be some undercover policemen, and then we'll also have uniform policemen, have also some policemen in the neighborhood surrounding Soulard.

- Anything else?

Any other questions?

You know, we have an interesting relationship with the police, and I've said this for years, you know we'd love to have a festival that draws a million people and dumps tons of money into the St. Louis economy, and of course have it all go off safely, you know, they're in the risk management business, and while I'm somewhat risk adverse they're very risk adverse, so they'd like to have a two block parade with one car and it's done in two minutes, because that means there's less to worry about, I get that, that's valid, but somewhere what we have to do is meet in the middle and we've always successfully done that, that doesn't mean we don't have our disagreements about issues at times, but we just like anything else, we gotta work through that, and we do.

- You know, we always remind people when they ask about the weather, Mardi Gras is after all a winter festival, and this is St. Louis, so you can expect it to be cold.

Really ideal weather for us I guess would be in the 40's or 50's, not too warm you don't want it to be too warm, but sunny, and 40, 45 degrees would be perfect for us.

- You know, snow creates problems with electricity, so you have to approach entirely differently the way that you lay out electricity for an outdoor event, snow causes snow removal to make it safe and also passable for people so that'll cause greater expense, snow also affects things like tents and that, because the weight of snow could potentially collapse the tent so you've got to then purchase heaters you put inside the tent and you've got to spend the entire evening going up and knocking the snow off so that they don't collapse.

So weather does have a great affect other than the other things like attendance.

- And it's supposed to be cold, and the last time it was as cold I did not enjoy it, it was below freezing.

- We're back behind the scenes, other than working at our booths, we're behind the scenes going to parties walking down the allies, and going in backyards to parties, and all these people are pouring through our neighborhood.

- We have our safe, calm place to go to, and place that we can access a bathroom within under 30 minutes, but then for everybody walking by, I mean, that's the show, that's what makes it fun.

- When the crowd's expected, that's fine, when it's over expected then people go all around the port-a-potties, so it you've got then in front of your house you've got a mess.

- It's one of the barometers of success, you know, we do look at the number of citations that the police hand out for public urination and those types of offenses, so each year we try to ramp it up, and also it's not just having more port-a-potties, it's understanding where the crowd goes and putting them in a place where they will find them and use them.

- [Jim] It's always been an issue, you know they'll find plenty of bushes and trees, and the people don't want to wait because they're impatient.

That's a big problem with the Soulard residents.

The standard portable stalls, there's a lot of difference between portable restrooms, and the stall is exactly designed for about 175 people for every two hours.

The Mardi Gras is the largest single day event where we put portable restrooms at.

We put some 850 to 900 portable restrooms, several urinal stations, and several handicaps and sinks.

- Jim and his guys do a great job.

They're kind of the unsung heroes to this whole thing.

- I mean somebody has to do it, maybe, but it's not a prestigious job, by any means.

I mean, it is a lot of work, and it's scheduling.

- On the toilets, this week is really a very hectic week, Matt have you been here to Mardi Gras?

Good luck.

(laughter) And Tony?

I know that this is your first Mardi Gras, it's going to be a fast, fast track, get that forklift as far out of your mind, you're not using it.

(laughter) - We, shush, you guys.

- I can guarantee ya.

We're gonna be behind on something.

(laughs) So, just don't plan on going home.

- What you'll see happen with my guys is they'll work Saturday night, all night, and get out of there, and then come back Sunday after daylight, where we can see what's going on... - [Jim] Charlie sets three different crews, and what they do is they pick up all the trash cans and all the trash out of the streets and alleys.

- Oh, I've been doing this for a long time.

I did this, my father ran the cleanup for Mardi Gras in New Orleans, so that's been over 30 years, so I moved here and now I'm doing it here.

Well, what we do is, what we mainly try to do is get everything through the streets off the sidewalks, off the curbs, and then the street sweeper runs both sides of the street down the middle, and then we have various dumpsters, we have about 30 dumpsters throughout the whole area out here, and as he gets full with the sweeper he just dumps whatever he dumps and keeps on.

I'll drive and stay out in front of him.

It's getting there, I mean over the last five years it's getting a lot bigger than what it used to be here, obviously it's not as big as New Orleans but when the weather's good here it's just as good as New Orleans when the weather's good here.

(snappy drum solo) - Like hopefully we get no precipitation, we don't like precipitation, precipitation beats down the crowd and actually costs us money.

65 degrees is awesome, they're inside, outside and everywhere else.

We don't want any rain or snow.

(thunder rumbles) - Have we got this figured out?

I enjoy all the people, I enjoy all the camaraderie that we have.

Oh!

There we go!

I enjoy the creation of the float every year.

Somebody have a ruler?

- They call them a tape measure.

- Tape whatever, you know what I'm talking about.

(indistinct) Tape dasher!

I'm just one of those kind of people that likes to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be, everything's in place, everything's done and then when we go down there on parade day everything is ready to go.

- No, do it from the inside!

- Just keep smiling.

(laughs) It's a lot of organization.

Kinda in a small amount of time.

- Where are we?

- We're at the ten feet, six inch -- - Oh, we're good.

- And if the weather's good half a million people will be down there, so we are very excited about it again this year as always, and looking forward to having great weather and having a great time.

(car engine) - [Marc] We'll check on our stage up here, the head park, make sure the stage is where supposed to be, swing back down, maybe use a little marking paint on the streets, mark off where one more bar is.

We have a series of small bars around the festival where we stock the organizations with everything they need, the tents, the tables, the chairs, we pull all the liquor licenses, obviously the beer, the soda, the hurricanes, those cups, we put all those pieces they need in place then they come out and man the booth as our staff that day, and then we of course have a profit sharing.

So what that does for us, it gives us the opportunity to pay for dumpsters, and checkpoints, and port-a-potties, and bike rack barricades and what that does for those guys, it gives them the opportunity to raise money for their organizations.

- [Marc] Hi guys, thank you, all of you, for coming.

My name is Marc Mendolia, the not for profit beer booth program is my sole responsibility.

All of your organizations being a part of this this year, I wish everybody good luck, I know that we're going to have a great year.

Coming up is Nancy McGee, Nancy is the state liquor, we'll call her, the czar.

Please give her your attention, thank you guys very much.

- And our goal this year, as in any year, is to ensure that we have a safe and responsible event, so I could stand here for the next twenty minutes and give you all kinds of tips on how to spot a fake ID, but it does absolutely no good if you don't take the initial step of asking for the identification.

Make sure that the people on the front line, those who are actually serving directly across that table, are in fact strong willed people, okay, this is not a wine tasting, okay.

(laughter) Let's keep that in mind, these kids are in fact going to try and berate you, yell at you, scream at you and they figure the more that they yell at you scream at you, the more you will back down and just say "Okay, go away, here's your beer and leave me alone."

- [Marc] A lot of the groups that do this are return groups, they find it to be very successful, the new groups, and I've had a lot of them this year because we increased the number of beer booths that we had, the new groups are a little more difficult to manage.

- Let's just say he's buying a beer.

So we're both here, and you'll be the cash person, and I'll be the ID person, and he walks up, can I get two Bud Lights?

- So if they haven't done it before, especially at Mardi Gras, it's a whole different beast, the festival goer is much more creative, we'll say.

- [Nancy] These kids are very adept at text messaging, and using today's technology.

They're going to know very quickly whether it's the woman at the right end of the booth who's wearing the blue shirt, she is just militant about carding, versus the guy at the other end of the booth, in the orange shirt, he's not bothering to card anybody, they're gonna tell that to each other.

- So I'm checking this ID, I'm going through it, I can take my time that way, you're just doing cash, hey that's twelve bucks, I need two bud lights, and your support staff, which we're going to get to in just a sec, your support staff will spring around, pop them on the counter, you get his money, I've checked his ID, here you go, he takes his two beers and goes.

- Okay question, can we get stamps and stamp our people so we don't have to check them again and again?

- [Nancy] They know that they are going to be carded.

Numerous times during that event, when we stop 'em, we tell 'em, have your ID out and have your ID ready because you're going to get hit a by number of police officers during the course of the day, and if you look young, you're going to be carded a number of times, if you're selling to somebody who is obviously intoxicated, or B if you are selling to somebody who is under the age of 21.

Those are the two quickest ways to get yourself in trouble with us, now I hope I don't have to write anybody in here a summons, please don't make me do that, less paperwork I have the better off I am.

(group clapping) (machinery and jackhammering) (happy jazz music) - [Marc] Three days out, or four days out from the grand parade, tired, because we haven't slept much.

You know, it's constant, the phone will continue to ring, all day until maybe seven or eight or nine o'clock tonight.

Today I'm going to start doing some hurricane mixing, today I need to paint the streets for my not for profit beer booths.

- We'll have all this fenced, the main stage is gonna be back here -- - We're just gonna keep our head down, keep moving forward, and the festival will go on.

So we're excited about it, it's the festival time, and we'll sleep in March.

- Go ahead!

Can you come to the office in about 45 minutes an hour or so, I mean I'll be there until tonight until probably midnight or one am, all right, see ya.

It never ends.

Well right now we gotta go walk across the footbridge, where the metro links stop, and the metro buses stop off, rearrange the port-a-potties because I've got a business owner up there who doesn't like them on his property, they love the foot traffic so we're gonna rearrange the port-a-potties a little bit to a church.

- What's up Charlie?

- Marc!

- [Jim] This is what I get!

- I'm with ya, you know the cab company just wants to make sure that as these kids are coming off the bridge -- - But this is the best visibility, right here.

I'll do whatever you want.

- And his cabs will be lined up.

Just take and swing the last four port-a-potties, just swing 'em around.

I've got to make some concessions for County Cab, and I've got to make some concessions for the port-a-potty guys, I don't want them to move every port-a-potty like County Yellow Cab wants, so I did half of 'em, you've got to meet everyone in the middle.

Leave that one out, I can hook that one up.

- I may have people down here at four in the morning.

- At four am?

- Yeah.

- I'll be around here, somebody will be here.

- [Marc] Well I'm sure I'll see you guys shortly.

- [Jim] Okay!

- Undercover officers are going to focus mainly on underage drinking, fake IDs, things of that sort.

- So what's a word you have for, what's the best thing you have for people who come down here?

- If you're under 21, please don't come down and... - It's February 20th, it's the day before the grand parade, we're ready to go, so all rolling out.

- [Marc] Just putting on the finishing touches, everybody who has some infrastructure down here today is going to be loading in, so the neighborhood will be pretty closed with trucks.

Tents, trucks, Pepsi, beer from all the distributors here in town.

A whole gang of people just running around trying to get what they need done.

So, that's what's going on today.

- This is when it happens.

Everybody's all over the neighborhood, we're checking signs.

Everything's pretty well under control, honestly.

(funky bass music) - Here, I got us towels.

- Good morning!

(indistinct) - It's actually not cold.

- No it's not.

- Once it gets done snowing we'll be in great shape.

- When the sun comes up.

- Yeah.

- [Jim] I wanna say about three guys down there, with small trailers, at six, and let's just get out of here by seven, we should have everything completely done, and let the people party.

- We stay out of the way, we do not come down here, we do not move into this area until about 10 o'clock Saturday night.

(upbeat music) - What do I worry about the most?

(laughs) My worry of the day is that my checkpoints are set up correctly, that we get the checkpoints set up correctly and in time.

We want to make sure that the red zone is a safe area, that people aren't bringing in things that they shouldn't be bringing in.

- The checkpoints really prove to be beneficial, keeping our the cans, coolers, bottles and backpacks.

You know, we're always worried about any large scale incident, but I think we plan for them and have some contingency plans in place so we can address anything that would arise.

(saxophone playing) - It's cold out here!

- And I'll pull the tables back in here.

- Thank you.

Marco marco.

- We have 30 checkpoints in total, we probably have about 15 to 20 of the red zone checkpoints, so we'll put all those up, let's go!

Ain't got a lot of time.

- Coffee and Bailey's over here in the blazer, and breakfast if you want some.

- And breakfast?

We ever get breakfast?

Hey, move out of the way!

- Hey Charlie, Charlie?

Hey, we never got our dumpster at Lafayette and Broadway.

(indistinct) - We'll probably put that one over there... - [Lindsay] A little help here, people are coming through, and you're going to put this sign right here, right here, space for coolers and bottles and rack heads, anything they have, goes over there.

Nothing gets through.

Nothing.

You guys are doing a great job, thank you so much.

- [Speaker] Anyone have any questions or anything?

Aight, let's have a good one.

(crowd cheers) - Middle, middle!

- Thank you, Claire, I got a feeling you're going to be a deviant at two in the morning... (bucket sloshing) - Oh, that's a lot of hurricanes!

- Grenadine, OJ, two Jameson, for sure, probably another Bailey's.

- Yeah just go with the flow I did it four years and kinda get used to it, and the first year I was outside and past two I was inside, and I chose the outside this year on this freezing cold day.

- I have a ton of layers, it took me about 15 minutes to put my clothes on this morning, I have four layers on my bottoms and four layers on top, pair of gloves, hat, well prepared.

I've done it before so I know.

- And we know, we come here knowing that it's going to be here for a long day.

- Yep, we're ready, I'm excited.

- So you gotta do it, just gotta do it and -- - It's 12 to 14 hours.

- Yeah, yeah but it's fun.

- It's a little chilly, I think the high today is something around 30 degrees, we've had so far this morning we've had about a 20 mile per hour wind, it was snowing earlier, that stopped, looks like the clouds are breaking up a little bit, so if we get a little bit of sun peeking through by 9:30, 10 o'clock this morning, then we'll have a ton of people then.

- Well, we believe we are ready to go.

We do have a bubble machine, we have two actually, they're gonna be off the back of the float.

So we're really excited about that, hopefully it's not too cold for them to work!

And actually this is not the worst weather we've ever had, two years ago we had snow going sideways, so this is really pretty good.

We're happy, we love it, we don't mind!

It's Mardi Gras!

(laughs) We don't care!

(crowd cheering) - This kind of situation is normal this isn't too different than most years.

But this high wind is not helping a whole lot for our deal.

- [Leader] Hands up!

- [Crowd] Hands up!

- [Leader] Look left!

- [Crowd] Look left!

- But all in all it's like it all has holded, and it looks like it's going to get warmer clear enough.

You know, it's another grand parade, what can I say?

- It's a very challenging task, but our police officers do an excellent job on maintaining the peace in the neighborhood.

We'll have some peace disturbances, we'll have some fights between people, but the majority are the urinating in public and the underage drinking.

- Turnout might vary, but I've got a nice little strategy, so that one year we post this batch, before there were half a million people here for parade day.

Now, we have no way of knowing how many people come down here on parade day, now the police do some sort of estimate on their own, how exactly they do that I don't know, so every year after that, I've got to say well according to the press, we draw crowds of around half a million people.

- Well actually, we just had our role call detail, and we've got our agents out on the street, basically we'll be having two different enforcement efforts going on today, we have a group that's just going to be walking around, in an undercover capacity, checking individuals on the street who may appear to be intoxicated or under the age.

And if we encounter a situation we'll issue appropriate summons to those individuals to appear in court at a later date.

Our other group is going to be out doing compliance checks of the outside stands, and they'll actually be sending an undercover minor up to those stands to see when they're not checking that identification of that minor.

- It's not our favorite day of the year but it is our job, and we'll be out here doing what we're required to do.

Certainly since we have to be here regardless we always enjoy when it's a nicer day, as opposed to a cold and miserable day, but we'll deal with it.

- ID's, ladies?

- [Announcer] Please remember to keep your hands and feet inside the fence, your hands and feet inside the fence.

(vuvuzela blows) (laughter) (crowd happily chattering and cheering) (jaunty accordion music) - There you go, baby!

(crowd loudly cheering) (happy accordion music) - [Announcer] Dom Perignon's the Splendorous Campaign!

The Grand Sultans of Success, an actual avenue for supporting people wanting a break since '93!

And their awesome work has increased, with some champagne for the judges.

(crowd cheering) - I used to be in the crowd before I was invited to join this crew, there is nothing like being on a float.

The perspective is so much better, the people are anxious for you to be there, you get to throw the beads, you get to wave, there is so much more fun on a float.

I'm not gonna -- just listen, it's great.

I love it.

(laughs) (happy accordion music) (crowd cheering) - I just got started, it's early in the day, we were out on the street for probably less than 20 minutes before we had our first ticket.

As you saw, it was probably about one out of every four we stopped, there we probably checked around four groups before we had one ticket, and that's probably going to be the average that we'll see today.

And then right after the parade, as they filter back in to the neighborhood, it'll pick up even more and we'll have more in town with kids.

(crowd cheering) - [Mack] It's actually a national festival, we did market research for the first time this year, to try learn a little bit more about who our customers are, where they're coming from, why they come down, what kind of things keep them from coming down here, and about one quarter of the people who come for the grand parade will come from outside the St. Louis region, so I guess that's another standard of success, for us, we want to put heads on pillows in hotel rooms downtown.

(drumming and loud cheering) - [Announcer] Number twenty-six in the program, number one in your heart, let's hear it for the Lawn Chair Krewe!

- Well here's the thing, on a parade it's kinda cool, 'cause you're doing the same thing, but you're in front of a new crowd every every 30 seconds, you're in front of a fresh set of people.

So if you screwed up 30 seconds ago, it doesn't matter, you get it right the next time around, and then you're good to go.

(drumming and cheering) - Happy Mardi Gras!

Whoo!

(crowd cheering) - That's jambalaya, this side of New Orleans!

(crowd chanting in unison) Lawn chairs!

Lawn chairs!

- It was wonderful, weather kind of settled down, sun came out, and crowd was loud as ever, great energy.

- Oh, excellent attitudes!

- So, anyway, it was good, it was wonderful.

(plucky guitar music) - Yeah!

Mardi Gras!

- Yeah!

Mardi Gras!

(crowd chattering and cheering) (hand drums playing) (police sirens) - [Lindsay] Things are going fabulous, all of our checkpoints are in order, and we closed Lafayette very successfully, with a lot of help from interns, the police and security, we're going to take some cops to the Bud Light party tent, and we just pretty much help everybody out the rest of the day, and make sure our checkpoints continue to be set up right, until they need to be taken down, so everything is going really well.

(crowd chattering) - We've really taken into account the city ordinance on lewd and indecent conduct.

(crowd cheers) - It pretty much spells out that you have to have some kind of sexual gratification, or there has to be some alarm or affront, by the crowds that somebody would be exposing their breasts.

- We know what to expect here, our officers know to be a little more tolerant than they normally are on this day, and we haven't had any incidents, it's all about trying to be professional and everybody's been behaved.

(police sirens) - I think most people in St. Louis have always done a great job, and there's somebody that's ruining the good time for everybody else, and you show up on the scene, instead of joining in, you just ask all right, who's the guy causing the problem, there's twenty people that point right at him.

Or the two of 'em, and you go in and you get 'em, and most people are cheering because you got rid of them.

'Cause they don't want the good time to be ruined.

(crowd cheering loudly) - It looks, the crowd looks big to me.

So far at least the crowd seems like everybody's in a pretty good mood, and pretty well behaved.

- When it gets dark, cold tends to dissipate the crowd, and it's right at the good moment when it happens, 'cause usually it meant that they've had their fun, and it's time to move on.

- And when the sun goes down tonight, it's really going to be cold, and you got a little bit of a wind going, I think that's going to nudge a lot of people and make them say, we've had a good time, I think I want to go home and, right.

- Some place other than here.

(crowd cheering) - 5:30, 6 o'clock, the sun's going down, and without the sun shining on their backs they're pretty much done.

- You guys, I'm so cold.

My feet hurt, are just now getting cold, they were not cold all day long until now.

- Yes, thank you!

- No problem.

- So I think usually we're still pretty busy, but it's slowed down I think because people are cold.

- It gets dark, the tenor of things changes a little bit, but then that's one of the reasons why we close the streets early at 8 o'clock, if you're walking around with an open container of beer, you're allowed to do that by law because this is a festival zone.

Okay, at eight pm that privilege stops, so if you've got a beer in your hand, you need to get inside a bar.

What that does is it generally has the effect of either sending people inside one of the bars or sending them home.

That works very, very well.

And then the corollary to that is the bars and restaurants themselves close early on that night.

- I just got a couple more hours.

(funky bass music) - Spring break!

- Connection to the metro lane!

Clip extenders, connection to the metro lane!

Watch your step, step up, thank you.

- Thank you.

- All right, thank you.

(upbeat music) (bucket sloshing) - You know, we've been selling all day, the booth sold a lot of beer, or hopefully, I'll go start picking these things up, doing all the inventories, breaking down the booths completely, packing them in these trucks, pull the trucks in here one by one and pallet size this stuff as best as possible.

- Shrink wraps are right here.

- Is that pepperoni?

Okay.

- Gloria, I'm going to get out three more boots!

- [Gloria] What?

- I'm going to start some guys on 7th street here, our main thing right now is to get this stuff off the street, and then wait for the crowd to get out.

We don't like to work in a crowd, we can't work in a crowd.

- So far today we've had 105 arrests, most of those are minor in possession, we had a couple of arrests for providing alcohol to a minor.

The crowd's been fairly calm, course they get rowdy but they're all having a good time, no major incidents, excused minor fights, no large fights or serious injuries at this point.

- [Reporter] What's the trickiest time of night for you guys?

- Probably now when everybody starts closing down, and we try to get the crowds to go home.

- Last call!

- Closing the streets at eight o'clock, and closing the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood early, those two things I think have done more to address the immediate concerns of the neighborhood, and people who live in the neighborhood than anything else.

- Night guys, you gotta go, I'm sorry.

- Thank you!

- It's over.

It's over, I'm excited for my next day off.

(soft music) - We have our own standards, for how it should be, how it should be done, and part of that is, is that we feel like we have to clean up after ourselves.

We can't come in to this neighborhood and make a mess, and not clean up after yourself.

It's a Midwestern thing, probably.

Sort of the way people are raised.

- We got approximately fifty people out here right now.

We got 50 people, and they spread out throughout the stalls, and they all got rakes, bulls, blowers.

Doing pretty good tonight, we're having a good night except for the wind, wind's a little high but overall we're doing pretty good.

(machines whirring) - And then, when Mardi Gras is over, they don't want portable restrooms sitting around for a week or two weeks.

- All trucks, pump trucks started at 2:30, and then my pickup delivery truck started at 5:30, and right now we got roughly 200 stalls ahead, and 15 more filled.

They're full to the brim, they had a pretty good crowd.

These four trucks have 2000 gallons and then one has 2200, and they will dump roughly eight to 10 times, each truck, so what the math does, (laughs) that's all pee-pee.

(laughs) (upbeat music) - Sunday night, until Monday morning, after the grand parade, you'll never know we were here.

(indistinct) - I'd say it went very well, on basically all fronts.

It was wildly successful, I really believe that.

It was one of the best, if not the best, of the six years I've done it, clean up was stellar.

The neighborhood looked terrific.

- When it's all said and done I always like to go on a Sunday run, moving very slowly, (laughs) it's clean and they're all gone.

It's like, we got our town back.

- That's right, yeah.

- And all these people came here from some place else.

- Yeah!

- So we can enjoy this all year round.

- Yeah, right.

(happy light rock)