Mardi Gras in The United States - Missouri - St. Louis

St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri has a large Mardi Gras celebration. Although founded by French settlers in 1764 the city doesn't historically have a significant French Catholic population. The St. Louis Mardi Gras was started in the early 1980s by bored, drunk patrons of Hilary's bar in the Soulard neighborhood adjacent to downtown, when they decided to march to another neighboring bar. Over the years, what started as a private party has grown in size and scale, attracted major corporate sponsorship, and is a huge part of the tourism economy of St Louis. The event sometimes attracts hundreds of thousands of revelers, with 200,000–250,000 estimated in attendance in 2011. The size of the crowd varies considerably from year to year, with the weather being the biggest factor in determining crowd size. On the second Saturday before Mardi Gras, there is a family-oriented "Krewe of Barkus" pet parade with corporate sponsorship by Beggin' Strips. Participants consist of anyone who dresses up their pet in costume, and walks their pet along the parade route. The parade is followed by the informal Wiener dog races. Then, on the Saturday before Fat Tuesday, the more adult-oriented, flesh-for-beads parade occurs, although there have been various attempts to reserve a family section at one end of the route. People from all over storm the streets with beers and bead necklaces after the Saturday parade. The streets of Soulard, Geyer, Allen, Russell, Ann, Shenandoah, and others are crowded with people from 7th to 12th Street. The Fat Tuesday parade occurs in the evening. In recent years it has been moved from just north of Soulard to downtown St. Louis. The majority of the overall Mardi Gras festivities have corporate sponsorship, primarily from Anheuser-Busch and Southern Comfort. In 2006, this led to an investigation by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control into the legality of Mardi Gras Inc.'s sponsorship deals.