{"id":2360546,"date":"2026-04-06T09:07:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2360546"},"modified":"2026-04-06T09:07:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T09:07:53","slug":"in-new-orleans-easter-draws-lgbtq-community-and-tourists-entertainment-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/in-new-orleans-easter-draws-lgbtq-community-and-tourists-entertainment-life\/","title":{"rendered":"In New Orleans, Easter draws LGBTQ community and tourists | Entertainment\/Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you ask any bartender in New Orleans which day of the year they love to work most, Toby Lefort says they\u2019ll likely have a quick answer.<\/p>\n

After 13 years tending bar at Bourbon Pub and Parade, a popular gay bar in the French Quarter, Lefort\u2019s is surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve it or not,\u201d he said, \u201cmy favorite day to work here is Easter Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that hard to imagine once you\u2019ve experienced an Easter in the French Quarter, where you\u2019ll find bunny ears as far as the eye can see and outfits that elaborately exaggerate the holiday theme with eggs, chicks, spring flowers and more. It\u2019s a thumping street party akin to Mardi Gras \u2014 except bathed in pastel.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one place in the world where you\u2019re as likely to find drag queens parading through town via horse-drawn carriages on Easter Sunday as you are to find kids on the hunt for eggs and processions of locals headed to church for Mass. Only in New Orleans will you find bartenders who complain annually that bonnets are impossible to work in and tourists who visit specifically to celebrate Easter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Gay Easter Parade rolls in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Staff photo by Enan Chediak, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m really amazed with the amount that Easter has attracted people now,\u201d Lefort said. \u201cEaster has become a destination weekend for the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 25 years since its inception, the Gay Easter Parade has become a staple among the Crescent City\u2019s many eccentric celebrations, drawing visitors from out of town, spawning days of spinoff events at gay bars across the city and emerging as one of the biggest events of the year for the local LGBTQ community \u2014 bigger to some than Christmas and even Pride and Decadence.<\/p>\n

Even this year\u2019s dreary weather couldn\u2019t stop festivities, as hordes of revelers braved the rain Sunday to don floppy hats overflowing with colorful eggs and watch the short-but-sweet parade in the late afternoon, the third and final procession<\/a> to roll through the French Quarter each Easter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Gay Easter Parade rolls in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Staff photo by Enan Chediak, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n

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Tony Leggio, a board member for the Gay Easter Parade and who has been involved with the event for the past two decades, said it\u2019s been heartwarming to watch his hometown embrace the unexpected celebration of such a holy day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been wonderful to watch how the community has accepted this parade and made it one of their favorites,\u201d Leggio said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s a testament to the people in the parade and the organizers of the parade since its inception in 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advocacy, but make it fashion<\/h3>\n

Like so many things in New Orleans, the Gay Easter Parade is ultimately about costuming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about dressing up, being flamboyant, being colorful,\u201d Leggio said, \u201cwhich kind of falls under the gay purview a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Leggio said the parade was originally founded simply as a way to showcase family-friendly Easter fashion and costumes. When else might you wear a vintage tweed suit or giant plastic egg purse?<\/p>\n

Costuming was the forefront of the parade\u2019s mission when the late Rip and Marsha Naquin-Delain, editors at local LGBTQ publication Ambush Magazine, took the reins early on. But as its popularity has grown, the event has also come to mean so much more to so many.<\/p>\n

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Sister Mary Pat McCooter marches in the Gay Easter Parade in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Staff photo by Enan Chediak, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n

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The annual procession is the public face of a yearround fundraising effort on behalf of Crescent Care\u2019s Food for Friends program<\/a>, which makes hot meals available to people living with HIV. Leggio said the Easter Parade\u2019s charitable events \u2014 annual cocktail receptions, drag shows and other soirees \u2014 have contributed a total of $400,000 to the cause over the years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And at it\u2019s core, the Gay Easter Parade has become a way for people who have historically been left out of traditional religious Easter festivities to enjoy the spring holiday.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the gay community doesn\u2019t really have family that they hang out with,\u201d Leggio said. \u201cSo this is, for the community, a wonderful opportunity to be around our chosen family.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a boon for business in the French Quarter each year between crowded Carnival and spring festival weekends. Attendees often arrive early in the morning for Mass or the Chris Owens parade and stay out all day until the Gay Easter Parade.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s crowd included all different types of people \u2014 young and old, tourists and locals, religious and not \u2014 all intermingling to cheer for rubber duckies and candy throws from the parade. Children played catch with a rainbow football on St. Ann Street as crowds of drunken carrots and geese and Peeps danced outside Good Friends Bar just a few feet away, and the colorful costumes brightened the gloomy day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Gay Easter Parade rolls in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Staff photo by Enan Chediak, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n

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Dressed head to toe in rainbow colors and handing out rainbow flags and stickers to giddy passersby, Meaghan Dorn said she\u2019s been coming to New Orleans for Gay Easter for the past four years, ever since she and her husband stumbled on the event while visiting for their April wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we are in rural Pennsylvania, you don\u2019t have this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

They come back every year around this time, both to enjoy all the food and culture the city has to offer and to salute Easter the New Orleans way.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can just be yourself down here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Good friends and good strangers<\/h3>\n

Inflatable eggs were already hanging from the ceiling of Good Friends on Dauphine Street the Wednesday afternoon before Easter weekend, but days of intermittent rain had foiled manager Kory Poole\u2019s plans for house bunny-themed decor outside the bar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Poole said he\u2019d been preparing for the onslaught of Easter revelers \u2014 which he described as a \u201cSt. Ann situation\u201d \u2014 for days, putting up decorations and planning events and staff costumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets bigger every year,\u201d Poole said with a tinge of weariness in his voice, as \u201cI\u2019m Just Ken\u201d blared through the mostly empty bar.<\/p>\n

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The crowd gathers around Good Friends before the Gay Easter Parade in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (Staff photo by Enan Chediak, The Times-Picayune)<\/p>\n

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Still, Poole was clearly excited, pulling up photos of Easters past and the cropped polo shirts his staff planned to pair with fluffy bunny ears, tails and cuff links on Sunday. He hired drag queen Lexis Redd D\u2019Ville to host the bar\u2019s annual bonnet contest, which brings crowds of paradegoers to Good Friends shortly after the main event.<\/p>\n

By Sunday, the exterior design plan and staff costumes had both come to fruition and all was well at the packed neighborhood bar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Poole said this year is his first Easter back in New Orleans since the COVID-19 pandemic, when he moved back home to Texas to help take care of his family. His eyes welled up with tears as he described the joy he feels watching people of different backgrounds and beliefs blend in the French Quarter on Easter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a happy and supportive day in New Orleans, one that he missed dearly while he was away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in Houston, and they have nothing like this. Nothing like this whatsoever,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 I think this city is just full of different avenues \u2014 I think it\u2019s awesome.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you ask any bartender in New Orleans which day of the year they love to work most, Toby Lefort says they\u2019ll likely have a quick answer. After 13 years tending bar at Bourbon Pub and Parade, a popular gay bar in the French Quarter, Lefort\u2019s is surprising. \u201cBelieve it or not,\u201d he said, \u201cmy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2360547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2360546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/In-New-Orleans-Easter-draws-LGBTQ-community-and-tourists.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2360548,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360546\/revisions\/2360548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2360547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}