re: Jarvis DeBerry and Mardi Gras Beads

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The amount thrown at Endymion this year was obscene.

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jesus dude, if you ever go to a parade where they are stingy with the throws (yes, I've witnessed it in NOLA too) you will celebrate the liberal amounts you see now.

too hot
too cold
too wet
too dry
too early
too late
too many throws

Yeah, we aren't going to take over China in bead production.

I'm more interested in the idea of less beads, more music.

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I'm more interested in the idea of less beads, more music.

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Care to be more specific?

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I'm more interested in the idea of less beads, more music.

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Meh, I go to parades to catch stuff.

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Jarvis DeBerry

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race baiting piece of shite

as a rider, I'll tell you that people don't want beads any more...it's blinky stuff or plushies that go down well...

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Throw a lot less stuff off the floats

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frick that.

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instead take that money and use it to get more high school bands and out of state bands to perform in the parades

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Bands are filler between floats. Nobody comes to the parades to see them except maybe family.

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So what do you come to the parades to see?

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The floats and to catch stuff.

I'm in a Krewe. We throw a shite-ton of beads but nothing like the super Krewes in NOLA. Extrapolating our cost for beads-even at retail-and then magnifying it for the membership numbers in Endymion, Bacchus, Orpheus and even some smaller Krewe's like Thoth and Sparta, there is absolutely, positively NO WAY that every Krewe in the State of Louisiana spends $500,000,000.00 on throws on an annual basis. Whether the author or whomever got those numbers for him is using wholesale costs or even retail costs.

ZERO.

There are outfits here locally that produce and manufacture beads. I won't get into it, but ask the Krewe's that have been using them what they think of them.

Again though, the $500,000,000.00 amount is not even in the same solar system of reality for what Krewe's spend and I'm lumping them all together throughout the state, not just NOLA. There's simply no way that number is in the same star system as reality.

ETA: I'd love to watch the author listen in on the calls made to the marching groups and bands every year. The amount of ridiculous add-on expenses and annual inflation of costs for bands to appear is a time-honored tradition. Oh and before we just try and act like they're underpaid, why not ask those kids exactly how much of the money they're paid makes it way into their music programs at school, or what % covers the cost of their travel and participation and what % goes into the music director or band director's pockets?

BTW-if Jarvis had done some research, I can tell you that the Archdiocese here in BR has a program where disabled folks (mainly blind and some folks with developmental disabilities) take recycled and/or donated beads and clean and recondition them and then resell them.

100% of the proceeds from those profits goes to the folks who worked on those beads.

So the "community," has already had this idea, and had it long ago, and while I am enthralled to work with programs like this, the economic realities of supply and demand simply don't seem to warrant folks using this avenue on a scale large enough to make their for-profit version viable economically.