The Family Feud That Almost Killed Mardi Gras

For decades, New Orleans's legendary Blaine Kern ran the company that makes the grandest Mardi Gras floats. Then it came time for the next generation to take over.

- Paul Keegan, photographs by Brian Finke

BLAINE KERN SR., 88 years old, sporting a sharp black-and white tracksuit and chunky Ralph Lauren eyeglasses, bounces into a suburban New Orleans restaurant at lunchtime flashing his megawatt smile. “Hi,everybody!” he says, and is immediately besieged by waiters, managers, and customers eager to greet the local legend who calls himself Mr. Mardi Gras. In a city famous for larger than-life characters, Kern occupies a unique place in the pantheon. Not for his physical stature—he’s small and wiry—but for his outsize ambition, which for nearly seven decades made him the biggest parade float impresario in New Orleans and a P.T. Barnum of the bayou.

“I did a carnival for Fidel Castro after Batista was out!” Kern says after settling in at his table, reeling off tale after tale seemingly straight out of Twain, but all true— founding a company that strung a gondola across the Mississippi River, acquiring a decommissioned aircraft carrier to convert to a tourist attraction, catching Walt Disney’s eye with a huge King Kong that crashed a Mardi Gras ball—and often digressing into bawdy asides about his many romantic conquests (“My nicknames were Pretty Boy and Honey Boy!”), which have led to four wives and five children.

Most of all, Kern wants to talk Mardi Gras, the event that still defines New Orleans, where parties are a sacrament and Kern a high priest. “Michelangelo and da Vinci, all of them were float builders, so I’m in pretty good company,” he says, with characteristic humility. Listening to the monologue is Barry Kern, Blaine’s 52-year-old son, who does not share his dad’s propensity for self revelation. Asked about some outrageous antic of his father’s, Barry usually shrugs and says, “That’s just Blaine being Blaine.”