![]() Many of those slides depict the Bourbon Street Awards.Įventually, the Crews collection of over 800 original color slides came into the possession of Sean Dillard. Recently, the Louisiana State Museum acquired a large and historically important group of photographic slides documenting the LGBT+ community in New Orleans from the 1950s to the 1970s. Unfortunately, most of those memories have been lost to history. Southern Decadence was years away and Mardi Gras was the premiere day each year for gay revelry in the Quarter. In the 1960s, when closet doors were firmly shut and New Orleans was much more homophobic than it is now, Mardi Gras was the only day of the year people could legally cross-dress. The show soon took on a life of its own and is now in its 60th year. Because the Clover Grill was located in the “gay” section of Bourbon Street, directly across from Café Lafitte in Exile (the city’s oldest gay bar), the contest drew a mostly gay crowd and featured mostly gay contestants, many of whom wore costumes from the tableau balls they had attended just weeks earlier. He would host a costume contest on Mardi Gras, late in the afternoon after the Rex parade. In 1963, Arthur Jacobs came up with a great idea to drum up business for his Bourbon Street diner, the Clover Grill.
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