The floats look like they appear overnight. The beads seem endless. The routes feel like a natural part of the city.
But Mardi Gras does not happen on its own. It is built by over 100 private clubs in New Orleans alone, plus 80 mystic societies in Mobile and dozens more organizations scattered across the Gulf Coast. These groups plan for months, sometimes the entire year, coordinating logistics that rival small municipal operations.
In Part 1, we covered why Mardi Gras is a season, not a single day. Now let's look at who actually makes it happen and why the organizational structures behind Carnival are as fascinating as the parades themselves.
What a Krewe Actually Is
A krewe is a social organization that produces a parade, a ball, or both. The term originated with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, founded in New Orleans in 1857, which deliberately used the archaic spelling to evoke mystery and tradition. Some krewes are old and traditional, tracing their roots to the 19th century. Others are newer, built around a neighborhood, a cause, or a theme. Each krewe sets its own identity, membership rules, and style.
In practice, a krewe is part civic group, part production team, and part social club. The public sees the parade. The work happens behind the scenes: fundraising, meetings, float design, permits, insurance, and logistics. Members serve on committees year-round. Float lieutenants coordinate riders. Captains oversee entire operations. For many participants, krewe membership is not a hobby but a defining social commitment.
Today's krewes range from small walking groups with 40 members to massive organizations like the Krewe of Endymion, which fields 3,200 riders on 81 floats. Some remain all-male or all-female, preserving traditions dating back more than a century. Others, particularly those founded since the 1990s, emphasize co-ed, inclusive membership and welcome anyone willing to pay dues and show up.
The Old Guard: New Orleans' Historic Krewes
Understanding Mardi Gras requires knowing the organizations that shaped it. Three krewes, in particular, established the traditions that define modern Carnival.
Rex: The King of Carnival
Founded in 1872, the Krewe of Rex is arguably the most influential organization in Mardi Gras history. Rex, officially known as the School of Design, has held more parades than any other organization and remains the longest continuously parading krewe since Comus stopped rolling in the 1990s.
Rex gave Mardi Gras its visual identity. The krewe established the official Carnival colors of purple, green, and gold, which represent justice, faith, and power. They introduced the collectible doubloon coins in 1960. And in 1921, Rex pioneered what is now the most ubiquitous Mardi Gras tradition: throwing beads to the crowds below.
Today, Rex consists of 600 male riders who parade on the Uptown route on Mardi Gras Day itself, rolling immediately after Zulu. Their hand-painted floats and elaborate costumes remain a benchmark for Carnival craftsmanship.
Zulu: Satire, Identity, and the Golden Coconut
Early in 1909, a group of Black laborers belonging to a club called The Tramps attended a musical comedy at the Pythian Theater. The show included a skit about the Zulu Tribe, and according to legend, the men retired to their meeting place and emerged as Zulus, ready to parody the exclusionary traditions of white krewes like Rex.
Zulu's first big parade rolled in 1915, and it was deliberately satirical. Where Rex's king arrived via a Mississippi River steamboat, Zulu's king came on an oyster lugger. Where Rex's king carried a jeweled scepter, Zulu's first king ruled with a banana stalk and a lard can crown.
Over time, Zulu evolved from parody into one of the most beloved krewes in Carnival. Louis Armstrong reigned as Zulu king in 1949, cementing the organization's cultural significance. Zulu also invented the first signature throw: the hand-decorated coconut, now so prized that riders are legally exempt from liability when tossing them. Catching a Zulu coconut remains one of the most coveted Mardi Gras experiences.
Bacchus: The Modern Super Krewe
In 1968, a group of New Orleans businessmen led by Owen "Pip" Brennan Jr. decided the traditional Mardi Gras establishment had become too static. They wanted to attract national attention and make Carnival more accessible to outsiders.
Bacchus broke every rule. They paraded on Sunday night instead of traditional weekday slots. They built floats larger and more spectacular than anything seen before. Most controversially, they invited a Hollywood celebrity, Danny Kaye, to serve as king, replacing the tradition of crowning local society figures.
The innovations proved immensely popular. Bacchus replaced the traditional members-only ball with a supper dance open to anyone who bought a ticket. Today, the krewe boasts more than 1,700 members and 32 animated super-floats. Their celebrity kings have included Will Ferrell, John Goodman, and Anthony Mackie. Bacchus demonstrated that Mardi Gras could be both traditional and commercially accessible, a model copied by several future organizations.
The Real Cost of Riding
Krewe membership is not free, and the costs shape who can participate. Annual dues typically range from a few hundred dollars for smaller krewes to over $1,000 for established organizations. But dues are just the beginning.
Members pay separately for float positions, costumes, and throws. A rider in the Krewe of Mid-City pays $600 in annual dues. The Krewe of Excalibur charges $525 for the 2026 season. Higher-profile organizations like the Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale require $500 in membership fees plus $1,250 for a float position, costume, and ball tickets. Some krewes also require recommendation by a current member before you can even apply.
Then there are the throws. While krewes provide basic throw packages, many riders spend hundreds or thousands more on specialty beads, custom cups, stuffed animals, and signature items. In New Orleans alone, more than 25 million pounds of beads are thrown each season. Much of that cost falls on individual riders.
The expense creates tension. Historically, krewes excluded women, African Americans, Jews, Italians, and working-class residents. The high cost of membership perpetuated those barriers even after explicit exclusion ended. In recent decades, new krewes have formed specifically to broaden access, including neighborhood-based organizations, LGBTQ+ krewes, and groups focused on specific interests like science fiction, dogs, or running.
How a Parade Gets Built
Most krewes contract with float builders that operate year-round in massive warehouses across the New Orleans area. Companies like Kern Studios and Blaine Kern Artists have built floats for generations, storing hundreds of structures, refurbishing them between seasons, and constructing new ones to match each year's theme.
Float design is its own art form. Traditional krewes like Rex use hand-painted papier-mache designs that require months of work. Super krewes like Bacchus and Endymion favor mechanized floats with moving parts, lights, and sound systems. Some floats stretch more than 100 feet long and require multiple tractors to pull them.
Parades are a collaboration between krewes and city government. Routes are approved months in advance through a permitting process that involves police, public works, sanitation, and emergency services. Multiple parades often roll on the same weekend, requiring careful coordination of timing and routes. The city provides crowd control and cleanup. Krewes provide the show.
Mobile's Mystic Societies: America's Oldest Carnival Organizations
New Orleans may be synonymous with Mardi Gras, but Mobile, Alabama, got there first. The city was founded in 1702, sixteen years before New Orleans. And in 1703, Mobile hosted the first recorded Mardi Gras celebration in what would become the United States.
Mobile's Carnival is run by mystic societies, organizations similar to New Orleans krewes but often older and structured differently. While the two cities share French colonial roots, their traditions evolved separately.
The Cowbellion de Rakin Society: Where It All Began
On New Year's Eve 1830, cotton broker Michael Krafft and a group of friends stayed awake drinking and decided to parade through downtown Mobile at dawn, making noise with cowbells, hoes, and rakes. The impromptu procession became an annual tradition, and the Cowbellion de Rakin Society became the first parading mystic society in United States history.
By 1840, the Cowbellions had added costumes, masks, and themed parades. Their influence spread when members migrated to New Orleans in the 1850s and founded similar organizations there, including the Mistick Krewe of Comus.
The Strikers: Oldest Surviving Society
The Cowbellions were elite. Mobile's upper-class young men refused to allow dockworkers and nonprofessionals into their ranks. In response, cotton warehouse workers founded the Strikers Independent Society in 1842, named after the practice of marking cotton bales.
The Strikers remain the oldest surviving mystic society in the United States. Though they have paraded only once since the 1890s, they host what many consider the most elegant of Mobile's Carnival balls. Their emblem is the rampant goat, and membership remains exclusive.
The Order of Myths: The Final Parade
Founded in 1867, the Order of Myths holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously parading society in American Carnival. They also hold the final parade slot each year, closing out Mobile's Mardi Gras season.
The Order's emblem is striking: a jester named Folly chasing a skeleton named Death around a truncated pillar known as the Broken Column of Life. The imagery reflects Carnival's deeper themes of mortality, revelry, and the cyclical nature of life.
A 2008 documentary called The Order of Myths explored the complexities of Mobile's mystic societies, including their complicated history with race and segregation.
Breaking Barriers in Mobile
Mobile's mystic societies have a complicated history with exclusion. Like New Orleans, early societies barred women, African Americans, and religious minorities. The Comic Cowboys, founded in 1884, emerged specifically because Jewish men were excluded from other societies due to antisemitism.
Change came gradually. The Polka Dots, founded in 1949, became the first female parading society. In 2003, the Conde Explorers became the first racially mixed society in Mobile's history. Today, Mobile hosts approximately 80 mystic societies, and while some maintain traditional membership rules, others have embraced diversity.
Notably, Mobile's societies showed greater flexibility than their New Orleans counterparts when integration pressures mounted. When some New Orleans krewes voted to stop parading rather than comply with local ordinances requiring integration, Mobile's societies largely continued participating and eventually welcomed change.
The Economics of Carnival
Mardi Gras is not just a party. It is an economic engine that drives nearly $900 million in direct and indirect impact to the New Orleans economy alone, according to a 2024 study by Tulane University economist Toni Weiss commissioned by the Mayor's Mardi Gras Advisory Council.
That figure represents roughly 3% of New Orleans' gross domestic product. The final week before Mardi Gras brings more than one million tourists to a city with a population of only 378,000. Hotels sell out months in advance. Restaurants operate at maximum capacity. Airlines add flights. Every rental car disappears.
For the city itself, the return on investment is substantial. New Orleans spends roughly $10.6 million on Mardi Gras services, including police overtime, sanitation, and emergency services. The return? According to the study, the city generates $2.64 for every $1.00 spent. State tax revenues increase by approximately $14.3 million.
The economic impact has nearly doubled since Professor Weiss's previous study in 2014, when she pegged it at just under $465 million. That growth reflects both post-pandemic recovery and increasing international interest in Carnival as a cultural tourism destination.
But the economics also raise questions. Who benefits from nearly $900 million in economic activity? Krewes are nonprofit organizations, but their membership fees and throw purchases support a substantial commercial ecosystem. Float builders, bead manufacturers, costume makers, and hospitality businesses all depend on Carnival. Meanwhile, city services bear costs that ultimately fall on taxpayers, many of whom cannot afford krewe membership themselves.
The Civic Side of Carnival
Running Mardi Gras requires coordination that rivals municipal operations. Cities manage traffic diversions, street closures, sanitation for tons of discarded throws, crowd control for millions of spectators, and emergency services on constant standby.
In New Orleans, the city government negotiates parade routes, permits, and fees with dozens of krewes simultaneously. Police officers work extended shifts for weeks. Public works crews clean up through the night so another parade can roll the next day. Emergency rooms prepare for the inevitable injuries, accidents, and overindulgences.
That is why local debates about Mardi Gras often focus on equity and accountability. Who benefits from nearly a billion dollars in economic impact? Who bears the costs of cleanup, policing, and public services? Who gets to participate, and who gets priced out?
These questions do not have easy answers. Mardi Gras is simultaneously a public celebration that belongs to everyone and a private affair run by exclusive organizations. That tension is baked into Carnival's DNA, and it surfaces every year in debates over permits, parade routes, and public costs.
Why the Krewes Matter
For outsiders, krewes are the organizations that throw beads. For locals, they are something more: social networks that shape neighborhoods, traditions, and family calendars across generations.
Krewe membership often runs in families. Children grow up watching parents prepare for parades, then join youth auxiliaries, then eventually ride themselves. The annual cycle of meetings, fundraisers, balls, and parades creates a rhythm that structures the entire year. When locals ask what krewe you are in, they are asking about your social world as much as your parade plans.
Krewes also serve as informal civic organizations. They raise money for local charities. They provide gathering spaces for people who share neighborhoods, professions, or interests. They preserve traditions that connect the present to the city's past.
If Mardi Gras is a season, krewes are the infrastructure that makes the season real. They transform Carnival from a chaotic street party into a coordinated cultural production that unfolds over weeks, engages hundreds of thousands of participants, and generates nearly a billion dollars in economic activity.
And they do it year after year, generation after generation, keeping a tradition alive that stretches back nearly two centuries to a group of men with cowbells and rakes who decided to make some noise on New Year's morning.
Sources
- Mardi Gras New Orleans - Parade Krewes
- Krewe of Rex - Mardi Gras New Orleans
- Krewe of Zulu - Mardi Gras New Orleans
- Krewe of Bacchus - Mardi Gras New Orleans
- Mardi Gras History: Over 300 Years of New Orleans Carnival - Where Y'at
- Mobile's Mardi Gras - Encyclopedia of Alabama
- Museum & Carnival History - Mobile Carnival Museum
- Where Did Mardi Gras Start in the US? - Visit Mobile
- Mardi Gras Economic Impact Study - New Orleans & Company
- The Economics of Mardi Gras - Tulane University
