Fat Tuesday, Chez Les Canses Style

 

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

 Let the Good Times Roll!

Just because Kansas City–known lovingly by our early French settlers as Chez Les Canses (translated as “among the Canses or Kansas” River)–ain’t located on the bayou or down south, doesn’t mean we don’t have our own rollicking roots. We are storied with masquerade balls, extraordinary floats and parades that erupted into all-night soirées. Kansas City has always been synonymous with a good time, but you knew that. Read on to learn some quick facts about our  industriously boozy past, Mardi Gras, and how we once aimed to rival New Orleans.

 

 Fat Tuesday & Boozy Funtimes Trivia

 

1. In 1703, a group of French explorers and mystics celebrated the first Mardi Gras celebration in what southeastern city?

-Mobile, Alabama. The first recorded Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans wasn’t until 1837. The city’s first parade with floats was in 1857, after assistance from the Cowbellian de Rakin Society, a Mobile-based group.

 

2. What festival did Kansas City create to rival New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebration?

-The Priests of Pallas Festival.  It all began when the local Flambeau Club (a civil organization) concocted the Pallas idea to bolster the city’s visitorship with a spectacle to rival Mardi Gras. The debut festival in 1887 boasted an impressive crowd with figures like then-President Grover Cleveland and future Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. The many horse-drawn floats shone with adornments, and the first in line carried a woman festooned as Queen Pallas Athena herself. A goddess of many talents, Athena (often referred to as Pallas or Pallas Athena) embodied the festival in Greek mythology. As the yearly Priests of Pallas festival continued, the decorum and themes grew even more ostentatious. The costumes, the streetcars, fireworks, the elephant-drawn floats, electric lights – it must have been truly striking.

 

3. True pagan origins of Mardi Gras can be traced back to what two ancient cultures?

-Greece and Rome

 

4. In 1908, the Kansas City Star stopped advertising what, for fear that it was “encouraging readers to endanger their health and happiness”?

-Liquor

 

5. In 1927, what entertainment complex opened in Kansas City, equipped with a 14,000-sq. ft. dance floor built with 7,000 hidden springs designed to give the dancers a lift?

-Pla-More Ballroom at 3142 Main Street

 

5. The KC Pils, a popular Boulevard Beer, owes thanks to which beer baron-turned hotel proprietor who popularized the Pilsener beer in 1879 at his own namesake brewery located at 18th and Main Streets?

-George Muehlebach

 

6. What type of vintage brewery is Boulevard modeled after?

-A Bavarian Brewhouse

 

7. What restaurant was the first to receive a keg of Boulevard’s flagship beer, the Pale Ale?

-Ponak’s Mexican Kitchen & Bar located at 2856 Southwest Blvd.

 

And did you know…

-According to Kansas City: An American Story, 80 saloons were listed in the city directory for the year 1878, triple the number of churches and four times the number of schools, colleges, libraries and hospitals combined–this gained us the nickname of “Modern Sodom.”

 

-“Whisky, by the way,” writes Francis Parkman in 1846,”circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket.”

 

-In 1905, officials forced the closure of all city saloons on Sundays.  This meant that the saloon owners had to stop serving by 11:59 p.m. on Saturday evenings or they could lose their licenses. In some instances, patrons would threaten the barkeep if he refused them another drop.

 

-After the Civil War, and into the late 1800s and early 1900s, the United States drank up to 140 million gallons of liquor a year.

 

-We went from drinking 140 million gallons of alcohol a year to 14 a year during Prohibition.

…but don’t worry.  The Sugarhouse Syndicate, a mob-run organization, supplied alky cookers with enough corn syrup during Prohibition, that Kansas City’s washtub masters stayed in business and plenty of us suffered Jakefoot because of it.  Look out for rogue Jamaica Ginger in your Hurricanes, folks!

Bottoms (and tops) Up! Salut!

Bottoms (and tops) Up! Salut!