The Backstreet Museum

The backstreet museum is one of those places where you can smell history and tradition. It is a small house at the Treme, but is full with customs, photos and other interesting things from the African American culture.One of those things are the Mardi Gras Indians.

The Mardi Gra Indians are one of the most important traditions in New Orleans. It is all about people in customs who go out to the streets and dance, but what a customs! The customs are handmade since the year before with feathers, beads, stones and a lot of things that make of these customs really art objects. These customs can cost an average of 60,000$

There are also different types of customs and each one represent a character in the group. There is The Big Chief who always wear the biggest suit, then comes The Queen who is the Chief's wife, also is the flag boy and his job is to go ahead from the group looking for other Indian's Families and avoid their encounter, and is also the wild boy, his custom have horns and his job is to put away the crowd to give space to the Chief and his group to pass trough. All the representers from a group wear the same color and each group have a different color

There are also The Baby Dolls. These are woman dress up whit fancy customs and umbrellas and dance with the parades through the Treme. The history behind this tradition is that these Baby Dolls where in fact “ladies of the night” who where used to stand on the corners of the Treme and wait for the customer to satisfy their carnal desires.