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No parades, no problem: Mardi Gras still celebrated with ‘house floats’

A top-hatted dinosaur, shown Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, is among Mardi Gras decorations in the yard of a mansion on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. Because pandemic dangers from large and widespread crowds have canceled Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans this year, thousands of people are decorating their homes as floats.

NEW ORLEANS — Mardi Gras should be stepping off soon, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, there will be no parades rolling down packed streets.

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But the celebrations themselves will still happen in some form but will look very different.

New Orleans officials announced that there would be no parades for 2021′s Mardi Gras in November, The Associated Press reported.

And what started as a joke, to make homes into static floats and throw items to passers-by from attic windows, has become a reality.

The decorated homes are being called “float homes” are taking the place of the parades, the AP reported.

One Twitter user under the name @antirealism called it the Krew of Covid and the Krewe of House Floats, which has its own Facebook page. The group boasts 12,000 members.

Instead of throws, beads and the other trinkets normally tossed to onlookers will be handed out from a streetcar, or a drive-thru event or a virtual parade, the AP reported.

Krewe of Bacchus’ app has a virtual catch and trade section with a virtual parade being streamed on Feb. 14.

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