Saints Marching in New Orleans, at Last

This citys two simultaneous parties Mardi Gras season and the unending Saints Super Bowl victory celebration came together in one big blowout on Tuesday evening, as the returning football champions paraded through the downtown streets amid an ecstatic, swaying throng of black and gold.

Through chilly temperatures in the mid-40s prompting an endless stream of hell froze over comments among the faithful on the sidewalks the Saints players, coaches, cheerleaders and staff members tossed beads from a dozen prime floats lent for the occasion by the regions top, and often competitive, Mardi Gras krewes, making it a sort of mega-Carnival parade.

This has never, ever happened, said Barry F. Kern, president of Blaine Kern Studios, the citys big float maker, which is overseeing the parade. Never happened. This is a once in a lifetime deal.

The procession the Saintsgiving Day Parade, Lombardi Gras, whatever one prefers was made up of the huge floats, high school bands, military bands, marching clubs, the Budweiser Clydesdales and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, elected mayor on Saturday and riding on an old-fashioned horse-drawn fire engine. Saints fans watched from balconies, parking garages, trees and the tops of cars, but despite the chill, they mostly stood up close. New Orleans parades, with beads and doubloons raining down on the crowd from the floats, are not the same from a distance.

It began at the Superdome and snaked through downtown, passing along the traditional parade routes of St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street, and ending about a half-mile beyond the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center along the Mississippi River.

Four and a half years ago, in the days after Hurricane Katrina, the convention center and the Superdome became notorious as squalid evacuation centers for desperate and hungry refugees from a town under water. On Tuesday they were the start and end markers for one of the biggest parties this hard-partying town has seen.