February 2016

Longtime resident Robert Bigelow once described Spanish Town to me as a “ramshackle-and-gingerbread, postage stamp-sized slice of the Bywater.” It’s the oldest neighborhood in Baton Rouge, dating back to 1805, and is certainly one of the most beautiful, with its climbing ivies and stretching oak trees, the patchwork of bungalow-style and Spanish architecture, and the adorable stray cat problem.

Sandwiched between I-110 and the Capitol, Spanish Town is a centralized pocket of residences, but it feels more like a Galapagos island, left to evolve in isolation. For all its aging beauty, Spanish Town is now the namesake of the state capital’s most cartoonishly vulgar—and most popular—Mardi Gras parade, which coils through the shady patch of one-way streets each Saturday before Mardi Gras. 

Equal parts raunch and satire, it’s a poor-man’s parade that glorifies debauchery while roasting the state’s ever-growing stable of elected crooks, often to an audience who may have voted for them. Together, paraders gripe, drink, and pay homage to body parts usually kept under wraps but unveiled in handcrafted detail on floats during the parade. There’s plenty of cross-dressing, sexual innuendo, and foolishness; and folks from all of Baton Rouge’s conservative corners come out in droves to revel in it. 

—from Christie Matherne Hall's "In the Pink," on the cover of our February 2016 issue. Read the full story here.