While you're admiring the view: The Saints have a longstanding track record of sucking. Horribly. But people love them. Incorporated in the late 1960s, they literally lost 20 straight seasons without a winning record. It got to the point that people began to wonder (we're a city of staunch Catholics, and Haitian Voodoo) if the Saints were cursed from the Superdome being built upon an old graveyard.
The Spanish, who expanded the city after purchasing it from the French, but before the US bought it via the Louisiana Purchase, had a habit of expanding right over hallowed ground so it wasn't a wild idea to wonder if maybe The Saints were cursed.
By 2005, Hurricane Katrina had ripped the Superdome to shreds, dashing any thought of the Saints ever recovering from decades of dreary football seasons.
By 2006, the Dome was rebuilt, and every seat in the Dome was sold out to see the Saints play. The trajectory continued until 2009 when they, against what seemed like all odds, won the Super Bowl and it is an event comparable to how people talk about Hurricane Katrina: there is a before, and an after, and that moment defines their life.
For what it's worth, researchers scoured Sanborn Fire maps, reviewed historical graveyard locations and determined that, in fact, the Super Dome was not built on hallowed ground.
I'm really doing a disservice to the cool Super Bowl pieces I have, but let's not kid ourselves - what's underneath is more appealing anyway.
I heard the other day that the NFL, unsurprisingly, has a tight leash on use of their name/image/etc. After some take down notices, people started referring to it as the Superb Owl and now I can't un-see that or un-hear it anytime anyone talks about the Super Bowl!
Alright, so the shirt I'm wearing is a rare cartoon character football tee and it's considered a wall-hanger but you can't even see what it says to be impressed.
Instead I'll tell you about some impressive facts about the upcoming game: LIX is the Roman numeral for 59, which is how the Super Bowl logo is typically portrayed. New Orleans was originally slated to host back in 2020 but it would've occurred right in the middle of Mardi Gras celebrations and we take our Mardi Gras seriously here, so New Orleans was passed over until a year when Mardi Gras would be held later (March 5th this year).
This year's logo was designed by a local artist, a Mardi Gras Indian (more on that neat part of New Orleans culture in another post) who designed the logo just as she would her costume - over months, hand-beading the design onto fabric which was then photographed at a high resolution for promotional materials. It's the first time ever in the history of the Super Bowl that a local artist has been selected to depict the logo.
This is a Sports Illustrated (featuring Pretty Sadie Reed) account from now until the Super Bowl!
❤️💚❤️💚❤️💚❤️ 🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈
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Okay, I've been remiss in my history lessons so for those of you still paying attention:
The first Super Bowl was held in 1967 as a "super game" between the top performing team of the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL). Eventually, the AFL merged with the NFL which was the older league (formed in 1920).
I had to fact check this but it's true: football (American football) is the single highest revenue-generating sport worldwide. Given the current ticket prices for a seat at the Dome for the Super Bowl game, I'm not surprised by that information!
The gear and red sweatpants are vintage football swag from a local sports team from way back when. Football has a long history in the U.S., with the first “official” game played between Princeton v. Rutgers colleges back in 1869. 💋
In case you didn't know, I did an entire series trying out historical sex toys, from wooden and stone dildos to 1950s vibrators. This was one of my first ever videos and one of my most popular - trying a stone dildo modeled after what was used in antiquity. 🤭🍆
The post was going to be about being gifted a vintage bar crawl tee from one of my favorite dive bars. I didn’t like any of the photos that showed off the whole thing but these ones weren’t so bad so you’ll just have to trust it’s a fun spot 😎
One of the next videos in my series on historical sex toys was trying out a SEX MACHINE. Yes, I have one. Yes, this was absolutely the first time I tried it and trying it on video was as intimidating as you'd think.
The Saints is actually the nickname for the full team name, “When The Saints Go Marching In,” which is a jazz standard popularized by Louis Armstrong’s recording of it from 1938! 💛🖤
Pretty wild that it's been an entire year since I started making videos. I did it as naughty but educational fun by demonstrating the sex toys used throughout history - I did an entire series trying out as many as I could find!
My second video was trying out a stone dildo. Used throughout antiquity, stone phalluses were a sign of wealth and if you had a really nice stone dildo, you'd proudly display it in your home where onlookers could see! There's a famous play (Lysistrata) where the women on either side of the Peloponnesian War denied men sex until the men ended the war and use of a dildo, until the war ended, is an accepted and encouraged practice! 🤭
While I wouldn't say stone was my favorite toy to experiment with, there was a certain weight to it that was really satisfying as it slid in and stretched me out. The women of Ancient Greece knew what was up.
A little Victorian top moment - colorful Victorian clothes are hard to find!
People from Alabama love to tell you that, in fact, the first Mardi Gras originated in Mobile, Alabama. They aren't wrong. The French originally settled there and celebrated Mardi Gras there before deciding New Orleans was a better spot to grow the new French colony.
So they took the tradition with them. By the 1870s (the Victorian era) is when you see the origins of the Mardi Gras we know today. Some of the krewes (parades) formed back then still parade today, including Rex!
This thing is paper-thin, holey, and lived a lot of life, evident of what was probably a wild Mardi Gras season.
"Surviving Mardi Gras" means a lot of things to people but for me it's something like trying to survive:
6 weeks of parade-going, fried-chicken-eating-cheap-drink-drinking, dancing and revelry on the weekends on the sidewalk side (not the neutral ground!) with people I only ever see at Mardi Gras parades but it's like excitedly seeing distant family and somehow they recognize me while I'm wearing glitter, a pink wig, an artistically skimpy outfit and you catch up on your life stories while trying to catch more go-cups and beads and everyone's in a great mood and wonder why doesn't everyone have a Mardi Gras?
Bourbon Street Beat: a sheer panty souvenir set from the 1970s 💕
With Bourbon Street being part of the news circuit lately, and criticism for why we even have a Bourbon Street, I thought it might be cool to share a little bit about it's history.
Bourbon Street is a 15-block-long stretch in the French Quarter neighborhood in New Orleans. The French Quarter was the original site of the then-French city of New Orleans way back in the 1700s. The streets of the Quarter (or, the Vieux Carre) were named after saints and predominant figures throughout history. Bourbon Street was aptly named after the then-ruling French House of Bourbon. The Quarter was a gritty, dynamic melting pot of cultures from Creole to Cajun to French and Spanish.
While the city expanded as the French sold the city to the Spanish, and then to America with the Louisiana Purchase, the Quarter remained a highly desireable area to live in well into the 1900s, surrounded by the culture and vices offered.
As Storyville (the red-light district) was built up in the adjacent neighborhood, live jazz music, dancing, drinking and so on became wildly popular despite being considered amoral. This spilled into the Quarter, with clubs opening up on Bourbon Street as a replacement when Storyville was shut down by 1919.
As the vaudeville culture evolved into pinup culture and burlesque, the demand for nightly shows continued to grow and Bourbon Street continued to grow in popularity. Famous nightclubs and restaurants moved in and Bourbon Street became an international spot for tourism.
Alright so I know Mardi Gras is synonymous with flashing a stranger and they throw you beads in exchange. That totally does happen but it's such a cheapened, small part of Mardi Gras that originally in the 1970s and kind of hung around as a Bourbon Street tradition.
Mardi Gras is a season, and most people wear costumes to parades for the entire season BUT it all culminates to a fever pitch on Mardi Gras day, especially in the French Quarter.
Everyone wears a handmade costume and some of the better ones look like works of art. Some wear complete coverage while others are in various states of artful undress leaving very little to the imagination. It can even be difficult to tell who people are - even if you know them - because of the wigs and makeup and glitter and body paint and so on. It's a wild day.
So sure, you can lift your shirt and show some beads and that's cool.
But, you could also just walk around on Mardi Gras day and see as much (or as little?) as your heart desires.
Pretty wild that it's been an entire year since I made my first video!
All of my videos started with trying out sex toys used throughout history - I did an entire series trying out as many as I could find!
My very first one was a hand-card, wooden dildo modeled after those found from antiquity! Watch my amateur self slide aside my lingerie and try out a historically-accurate wooden dildo and let you know just how much people knew what they were doing making those things way back when! 🤭🤤🍆
If this doesn't make me the queen of Mardi Gras then I don't know what.
Each parade (there are dozens during Mardi Gras) has a particular theme. There's King Arthur, Muses, Thoth, to name just a few. You've probably even heard of the parades that step off on Mardi Gras day (Rex, Zulu).
Each krewe has its own court leading the parade, typically sitting atop the most intricate/biggest/famous float in the parade. Those in the court have even more elaborate costumes that look like the one I'm wearing here.
This one is a vintage court robe, handmade of velvet and silk with sequins and beading down the sides. It weighs a ton.
While I'm totally naked underneath it, and Mardi Gras is a time for wild revelry, the actual court that wears these during parades is dressed enough. At least with pasties and panties 💋
Do Watch Wanna - Rebirth Brass Band is my second recommendation to get your Mardi Gras groove on for your king-cake-eating, costume-making, and general revelry.
I’m wearing a mid century silk jockey jacket that just happens to be in Mardi Gras colors 💜💛💚💋
Each Mardi Gras group (typically hosting the parade) is known as a “krewe” and they have their own designated costumes with specific colors. They’re based on the early designs of Carnival costumes of Europe, hence them looking a bit medieval.
This costume is a vintage one, handmade using the traditional pale purple and green silks associated with early Mardi Gras 💜💚
I make a lot of my costumes and typically they’re modeled after famous burlesque or vaudeville costumes from the past.
This kind of skirt is a two-panel skirt based on the burlesque costumes used in the 1920s. Basically you pick a flowy, silky fabric and cut it into two panels (one for the front, another for the back) connected by a thin ribbon. When dancing, it would sway just enough to give a tease to onlookers while still maintaining an appearance of faux modesty due to the length of the panels and the high quality of the fabric. 🌟
One of my favorite, well-worn costumes I made was inspired by the 1941 movie, Ziegfeld Girl starring Hedy Lamarr (also Lana Turner and Judy Garland) where she wears a headdress full of art deco stars.
The movie is set in the 1920s and was based off the early 1900s vaudeville stage acts of Ziegfield’s follies, which starred beautiful, scantily-clad women dancing and wearing delicate sparkly costumes.
For those of you not from Southeast Louisiana, tonight kicks off the first parade of Mardi Gras. It's a season of parades and revelry and goes until Mardi Gras day which is on March 4th this year.
I know what you typically see on the TV about Mardi Gras is people getting wild on Bourbon Street and while that does happen, 90% of Mardi Gras is about parades, good food, community, good music, and celebrating the love of life. Also, king cakes!
There is an entire schedule of parades, and they each have their own theme. Parades range from small, walking parades to huge floats and brass bands. Tonight's parade is Jeanne d'Arc which celebrates the life of Joan of Arc. It's a walking parade at night by candlelight, and has really elaborate medieval costumes. When the parade reaches the Historic New Orleans Collection building, a huge toast is made between a French delegate, Joan riding her horse, and the citizens of New Orleans. Google photos of it - it's pretty cool.
I'm getting longwinded here, but I'll end on this: everyone wears a costume, and it's usually handmade. They can match the parade's theme, or you can just do your own thing.
This is the one I made a few years ago, meant to look like a pastel-y medieval dream from the Rapunzel fairytale.
A song for you to get into the Mardi Gras mood: Hey Pocky Way by The Meters
