Southland Ready to Let Mardi Gras Roll

Somehow, the motto of Mardi Gras seems to say it all: Laissez les bons temps rouler! (Let the good times roll!) And Southlanders will be able to do just that at festive celebrations today and Tuesday in Hermosa Beach, Santa Monica and San Luis Obispo and on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles.

In French, Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday. The annual celebration falls on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a Christian period of penitence and fasting that concludes on Easter Sunday. The idea is to have a rip-roaring good time before Lent starts.

But it’s not just for Christians. The good-humored fun is there for anyone to enjoy. In fact, the origins of Mardi Gras are hazy, but it probably began in the Middle Ages and may have been a way of giving religious significance to ancient festivals celebrating the rites of spring. Today, it is celebrated in much of Europe and the Americas.

The French brought the seeds of Mardi Gras with them when they colonized Louisiana in 1699, but it took a while for the idea to catch on. The traditions of Mardi Gras as it’s now celebrated in New Orleans began in the 1880s and have come to encompass a month of parades and parties culminating on Fat Tuesday, which this year is Feb. 27.

In Latin America, this celebration is known as Carnival, which is believed to come from the Latin phrase carne vale, “farewell to flesh.”

In some countries, Carnival is celebrated on the three days before Ash Wednesday, while other countries indulge in a monthlong revelry. The Rio de Janeiro Carnival is perhaps best known, but Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico also celebrate. In Mexico, part of the celebration includes bidding farewell to Senor del Mal Humor, an effigy symbolizing bad feelings and evil spirits.

Mardi Gras celebrations this year include:

* Hermosa Beach--Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band bring their special brand of music--a mix of Cajun, Creole, reggae, calypso, country and blue grass--to the Hermosa Beach Civic Theatre, 710 Pier Ave., tonight at 8. Queen Ida won a Grammy in 1983 for her album “On Tour.”

Concert-goers are asked to come in costume to this Mardi Gras-themed event, sponsored by the Hermosa Beach Community Center Foundation. A post-concert reception featuring Cajun food from Jeanette’s Classic American Cuisine is included in the price of the concert tickets, which are $40 each. Tickets are expected to be available at the door. For information, call (213) 318-3452.

* San Luis Obispo--”It’s Magic” is the theme of the annual Mardi Gras celebration in San Luis Obispo today in the downtown area. Daytime events include a gumbo cook-off and other New Orleans-style food, when Garden Street becomes Bourbon Street West. A parade with bands, elaborate floats and costumed characters starts at 7:15 p.m.

“It’s not like a parade you’ve seen anywhere else,” says Don Koberg, a professor of architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He launched Mardi Gras there about 12 years ago because he missed the celebrations of his native New Orleans. “It’s like a neighborhood Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans.”

Koberg suggests parade-goers plan to come early and stay late and enjoy the many parties being held in downtown eating establishments.

For those truly into the spirit of the event, there’s the Mardi Gras Ball, which will be held at San Luis Veterans Memorial, Monterey and Grand streets, after the parade. Tickets for the ball are $20. Some tickets will be available at the door, but only to those in appropriate costumes. The ball, Koberg says, helps pay for the parade each year. For information, call (805) 543-0223.

* Olvera Street, Los Angeles--The burning of Mal Humor is part of the festivities planned on Olvera Street Tuesday starting at 6 p.m. There will be dancing to the Latin rhythms of Los Marischal and a parade. Special performances are also scheduled by Embrasamba, a Brazilian band, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. and Soul of Brazil, a dance company, at 7:30 p.m. Olvera Street shops and restaurants will be open until about 10 p.m. For information, call (213) 687-4344.

* Santa Monica--Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica, is presenting a parade, carnival and dance on Tuesday starting at 5 p.m., when the members of the procession will gather on the grass meridian at Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. The parade, which will proceed to Highways, will include performers from “Sex, God & Politics,” an intercultural festival that plays there through April 14; 85 children from Edison Elementary School for whom Hugo Sanchez, a Mexican artist in residence at Highways, helped create costumes and masks, and walking murals and large movable puppets, also created by Sanchez.

Linda Burnham, co-director of Highways, says the parade will be “small, but colorful and interesting.” The carnival, which will be held in a warehouse next door to Highways, includes African food booths, mask-making booths, mural painting and a display of murals by Sanchez. There is no admission charge for the carnival. A dance at 8:30 p.m. is $5 per person and features the music of San Andreas Fault, a band from Tijuana. For information, call (213) 453-1755.

You may well have also heard of the UCLA Mardi Gras, planned for May 18, 19 and 20, or the premiere of the Long Beach Mardi Gras due Oct. 13 and 14.

Actually, the UCLA festival has little to do with Mardi Gras other than the name. The event, a fund-raiser for UniCamp, a UCLA charity for underprivileged children, is actually a carnival with rides, food booths, games and crafts, mimes, clowns and magicians. Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for children.

Then how did it get the name Mardi Gras ? Karla Johnson, public relations and promotion director for the event, says it began as a masquerade ball in 1941 when a Mardi Gras theme was chosen. The event evolved into a carnival, but the name was maintained because of the recognition it had acquired. UCLA Mardi Gras is held at the UCLA athletic field at the corner of Sunset and Westwood boulevards. For information call (213) 825-8001.

The Long Beach event will try to recreate the atmosphere of Mardi Gras, but it was scheduled in October for two reasons. First, holding it in late February would place it too close to the Long Beach Grand Prix, according to Linda S. Wall, president of Mardi Gras International, the firm presenting the festival.

Also, she says, it wasn’t desirable to be in direct competition with the annual Mardi Gras in New Orleans, because her firm hopes to build the Long Beach event to one of national stature.

The Long Beach Mardi Gras will include a golf tournament, a cruise; Mardi Gras ShoreFest with entertainment, Cajun food and international music; the “Wanna-Be Parade” (participants are encouraged to be whoever or whatever they “wanna be”) and the Mardi Gras U.S. Western Regional Kinetic Sculpture Race, where people-powered vehicles that are also works of art traverse terrain obstacles such as mud and sand. For information, call (213) 433-2400.