Phat Tuesday

Journal

San Diego’s Mardi Gras celebration ranks as one of the nation’s biggest. How in the world did that happen?

MARDI GRAS is a big, freaking, worldwide, historical deal. The French phrase translates to “Fat Tuesday.” It’s a Christian festival that precedes Lent but has pagan roots that honor Greek and Roman spring fertility rites. Wink, wink.

Perri Spiller has a few good yarns about how a pagan fertility festival evolved——or devolved, depending on your sense of humor and sensibilities——into the annual shindig held in the Gas lamp Quarter each year since 1992. “We’re not an X-rated event,” begins Spiller, manager of Dick’s Last Resort, a restaurant that has nonetheless institutionalized debauchery and proudly lists pork bonerz on its menu.

Spiller has been with the company 20 years and started at Dick’s in San Diego as a waitress. She vividly recalls opening the restaurant before 8 a.m. a couple of years ago, the Wednesday morning after Mardi Gras. Groggily, she put the key in the door and stepped inside. Flicking on the lights, she discovered one of the Mardi Gras parade floats had been pushed inside. It was a prank. It was also a 10-foot-long, papier-mâché sculpture of a distinctive component of the male anatomy. Spiller notes it was about 6 feet wide at the base and during the parade shot confetti onto exultant revelers.

“I couldn’t exactly open up Dick’s with this thing sitting there,” she says. “Imagine me, bleary-eyed at 8 in the morning, cutting it up into pieces to get it out of there.”

ON FEBRUARY 5, Maria Tinnan and Lawrence Filo will reign, as always, as queen and king of the Gaslamp Mardi Gras celebration. Both are former Dick’s employees who have moved on professionally. They still come back each year to strap on the headdresses and don colorful, elaborately designed gowns befitting their honorary titles.

I ask the 6-foot-7 Filo, who is finishing an office-professional training program at Grossmont College, if King Lawrence is his alter ego. “No, actually the king is me,” he says. “All the other days of the year I’m in my alter ego.”

In ’92, San Diego’s first downtown Mardi Gras took place inside Dick’s. The next year, a wooden boat hull was affixed to a couple of ATV trailers and pulled around by a mini-pickup. This was the first local Mardi Gras float. The king and queen were joined on it by a jazz band. They cruised the Gaslamp for a few hours before being cited by police for a moving violation.

The next year, more restaurants——including now-defunct Bayou Bar & Grill and Johnny M’s 501——joined in. In ’94, a horse-drawn Cinderella carriage was added to the parade. After that, the Gaslamp Quarter Association (GQA) took over, and 10,000 people flocked to the streets. It was 1998 when Spiller found herself videotaping the Dick’s float driver——who was wearing a gorilla suit, of course. He let out a “holy s--t” as he first glimpsed the waiting crowd. Spiller panned out to the throng, 25,000 strong. It was then she realized they’d created a monster.

The crowd soared to a conservative estimate of 80,000 in 2001. The following year, fencing was put up around the Gaslamp, and an admission price was charged. Since then, attendance has ranged between 25,000 and 45,000. People travel from all over the country to attend, says Patricia Tellier, member services manager and parade manager with the GQA. By no small coincidence, Tellier is also a former Dick’s waitress. She recalls being duped by the king one year——he told her an elephant was going to join the parade. It’s become a running joke. (Note to neophyte Dick’s employees: If they tell you your Mardi Gras job will be to follow the elephant with a broom, they’re yanking your chain.)

YOU CAN’T THROW a Mardi Gras party without beads, says Tellier. She says the GQA buys more than a million green, gold and purple plastic necklace strands. Most are tossed from floats. The king estimates he hurls about 100,000 beads each year during the parade.

The GQA likes to downplay one incentive factor behind the beads. “Our goal isn’t to get everybody naked,” says GQA senior marketing manager Dan Flores. “I don’t want to be the wet blanket, but you can be cited by the police for public exposure during this event.”

What’s Flores talking about? Well, Queen Maria likes to say that to get some beads, “All you have to flash is a smile.” Tell that to the on-leave Marines who pay 20 bucks at the gate looking to experience Bourbon Street–style revelry. Everyone knows beads go to those women willing and daring enough to lift up their shirts.

But ladies, don’t let reckless abandon take over if you happen to land a spot on the Dick’s float. “Any female who does that will not be asked back again,” says Spiller. “Same for any men who yell for a woman to ‘Show us your t-ts.’ ”

The Dick’s boobs ban doesn’t mean racy fun is verboten. Last year, the float’s theme was “Dick’s: The Greatest Place to Go.” Glued to the sides were 7-foot-tall papier-mâché urinals. One of Spiller’s other favorite float themes was “Mardi Bras: A Dick’s Chicks Salute to Support.”

THE GASLAMP MARDI GRAS celebration is a money-maker for the GQA. “The best thing about us, though, is that we’re the community making money for the community,” says Tellier. “This isn’t Rob Hagey making money off Street Scene. We give back to local charities.” She says over the past two years, $50,000 made from Mardi Gras went toward the purchase of 11 new bicycles and new headsets and radio equipment for downtown bike police teams.

It’s good to hear the event makes money——even if my own entrepreneurial efforts didn’t exactly pan out. I honestly don’t remember the year, but it was before the fence went up and a camera ban was put into effect. My buddy told me he made thousands of dollars selling beads. His new idea was to huck beads and disposable cameras as a package deal. The plan might have worked——had buckets of rain not poured all night. Instead of roaming the streets, I spent the evening tucked under an overhang next to Jimmy Love’s. (Side note: I spent the following three years taking pictures with, and giving as gifts, those cheap cameras made of plastic and cardboard.)

“It does seem to rain nearly every year,” says the GQA’s Flores. “But amazingly, it has never rained on us during the parade.”

This year, the parade will circle the Gaslamp twice——a first. Weather and publicity will again dictate turnout. It didn’t hurt the event’s image when USA Today put San Diego in the company of New Orleans as one of the top spots in the world to celebrate Mardi Gras. Our outdoor gala is believed to be the biggest such U.S. celebration west of the Mississippi.

The king, for one, is in awe of what has been wrought in his kingdom. “I’ll see beads the next couple of days hanging from somebody’s rear-view mirror,” he says, “and I’ll wonder, ‘Did I throw them?’ ” Indeed, February 5 is December 25 for the king, and he is Santa Claus for the day.

The king laughs at this notion. He sighs and recalls how his Mardi Gras day is a nonstop flurry of media picture-taking and public hand-shaking. He threatens to not come back each year, but you have to believe organizers will have to peel the beads from his huge, wizened hands before he’ll relinquish the throne.

Asked to provide a final thought, the king just shakes his head. “Look at what we did,” he says. “Just look at what we did.”

Say what you want about the raucous but grounded founders of the San Diego incarnation of this celebration. Their success proves big ideas can come from anyone or anywhere——even Dick’s.

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