Phunny Phorty Phellows 2026
The
Heralds of Carnival ride again. The Phunny Phorty Phellows, the phirst krewe of
the New Orleans Carnival season and named after an 1800s satirical krewe
marching procession that trailed the Rex parade from 1878 to 1898, made their
annual street car ride around Uptown.
Phollowing about a century of the New Orleans Carnival's transformation into the Greatest Free Show on Earth, the Phellows returned to a very different Carnival atmosphere in 1981 as a streetcar ride to announce Carnival across the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line.
Opening Party at the Streetcar Barn
The PPP's owl mascot can be traced back to its 19th century incarnation, but it's oddly fitting that the owl's group meets at a barn (a barn for streetcars, but a barn nonetheless). Champagne is toasted amongst elaborate costumes with phriends, phamily, and onlookers of both the Phellows and their second-streetcar musical companions, the Funky Uptown Krewe. The streetcars can often be seen with their holiday decorations from the preceding twelve nights of Christmas (hence Twelfth Night), capturing a magical liminality between the waning holidays and the opening of the Carnival season. The holidays are allowed to wane gracefully; the January 6th arrival of Carnival is a hard line that the ancient city and her people refuse any tampering with.
The Krewe Rolls
The ceremonial ribbon is cut on Carnival with brass fanfare from the Storyville Stompers. The streetcars echo out onto Carrollton Avenue to crowds out to start the season. While the krewe is known for dispensing the phirst throws of Carnival, the logistics of the jolly streetcar entail that throws are handed out rather than hurled. Going all down Uptown, the krewe passes by the sleepy, fluorescent halls and classrooms of Tulane and Loyola, the beginning promise of Carnival perhaps salving the pain of the sting of a new semester.
Further down, the mansions of St. Charles Avenue are informed of the season. The night was pleasantly festive yet calm, while the streetcar was like a siren warning hotel and restaurant staffers of the tsunami of beads and booze soon to wash over the main parading thoroughfare of the city. The toasting near the upper edge of St. Charles Avenue, the moment at which the Funky Uptown and Phunny Phorty street cars candidly ride past each other to applause from the masked revelers, who themselves greet the krewe as the street car rides past. The Phunny Phorty Phellows is a group that prides itself on its many small, deceptively simple blink-and-you-miss-it moments. These kinds of moments are what Carnival itself is ultimately all about.
Phunny
Phorty Phellows is not "a parade" in the sense of the larger
celebrations that permeate the following weeks, and it doesn't try to be. It is
the midnight launch of Mardi Gras, and like any midnight launch, those it
attracts are among the most dedicated phanatics. Mardi Gras is back, and its
undisputed heralds have ushered in the Greatest Phree Show on Earth.
