I'll get you and your pile of trash, too. (AP Photo/Derrik J. Lang)

We're off to see the Bacchus parade. (AP Photo/Derrik J. Lang)

Read the latest dispatch from former Gulf Coast resident DERRIK J. LANG, who's returned to New Orleans for Mardi Gras to see if the party he remembers is over or still kicking.

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6:03 p.m., Feb. 27

I trek outside the French Quarter and Central Business District. In those places, business is booming. In the Garden District and Uptown, businesses are closed because, in New Orleans, Carnival is as much of a holiday as Christmas and New Year's Day.

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8:01 a.m., Feb. 27

I awake in total darkness. I remembered to pull my curtains shut last night.

After doing some work in my hotel room, I saunter down to Cafe Du Monde for some coffee and beignets. Touristy, yes, I know. But you cannot deny they are delicious. It's Monday. Lundi Gras. The day before Fat Tuesday. The city feels different today. The streetcar is running. There aren't people camped out along St. Charles. It feels calm. Tomorrow, it will be very different.

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Midnight, Feb. 26

People say you can't imagine the devastation from the hurricane unless you see it with your own eyes. That is true. The same can be said for all the trash -- beads, beer cans, doubloons, pizza slices -- that's accumulated on the street during Mardi Gras.

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11:12 p.m., Feb. 26

The parades are over and I'm starving, but I can't find anything open except for a nameless place on Camp Street serving goopy gumbo, sausage, colder-than-cold beer and po' boys that are making my mouth water. I have to have one. "Dusted?" the guy behind the counter offers. I have no idea what this means but I reply, "Sure." Apparently, it means with Mayo. I pay for my po' boy and beer and sit down at one of the establishment's teetering tables.

This is the kind of place that serves what they have until they run out. The walls are covered in wood paneling, which are covered in RC Cola advertisements. Outside is revelry. Inside is nothingness. It feels like purgatory. But as I sip my beer and eat my po' boy, I am content.

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7:04 p.m., Feb. 26

I find some prime real estate next to a barricade a block away. An hour goes by and the parade hasn't started yet. And I gotta go real bad. A sweet couple behind me saves my spot while I fork over $1 to use a nearby portable toilet. When I arrive back at the barricade they relinquish my spot back to me and joke about all the tawdry things they had to do to keep it. We laugh. I am forever in debt. And they have renewed my love of the locals.

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6:31 p.m., Feb. 26

Wow. These parade-goers can be very territorial people. I stood in a two-foot wide open spot in front of an encampment of folding chairs and coolers to see the Bacchus parade. Then this dude from one of the chairs leaps up and forces himself in front of me, gripping the barricade and passively aggressively "talking" to his cohort about how he's been sitting here since 3:30 p.m. and he's not gonna let anybody get in his way. Thanks, but no thanks. Is this how the locals treat all the out-of-towners? Yeesh.

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