The Half-Fast Walking Club is a New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe led by Pete Fountain. Originally all on foot, in recent decades it has also featured one or two small floats. Fountain and other local jazz musicians play through much of the parade. The krewe's current route, basically unchanged since the mid-1970s, starts very early on Mardi Gras morning, at world famous Commander's Palace Restaurant on Washington Avenue in the Garden District. The krewe then proceeds downtown on St. Charles Avenue and after a brief interlude on Canal Street, enters the French Quarter at Bourbon Street winds around the Quarter and eventually ends up at the New Orleans Riverfront Hilton in the early afternoon.
The "Half-Fast" is one of the best known marching Krewes that parades in New Orleans on Mardi Gras. The original name was "The Half-Assed Walking Club" and was an excuse to take a "lubricated" musical stroll down the parade route. Pete changed the name under pressure exerted by the parade organizers. On Mardi Gras Day 2007 Pete once again joined his Half Fast Walking Club, having missed the event in 2006 due to illness.
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Famous quotes containing the words walking and/or club:
“I was walking along and I’m looking at the tall buildings. And I got to thinking about what Thoreau said: “They created a lot of grand palaces here, but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in them.””
—Robert Riskin (1897–1955)
“The adjustment of qualities is so perfect between men and women, and each is so necessary to the other, that the idea of inferiority is absurd.”
—“Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 204 (August 1866)