Bubble Gun Pickup Truck
Part One in "A Rolodex of Strangers: Mardi Gras"
This is Part One in an ongoing series leading up to Shrove Tuesday, 2026, chronicling the little ways people I met at Mardi Gras 2022 changed my life.
There is an endless number of open galleries and craft markets littering Frenchman and the Quarter in the lead up to Mardi Gras.
I was surprised how many of the vendors were locals, most grinding their art throughout the year in the hopes of a Fat Tuesday windfall. While standing outside of one such market while waiting for a friend to finish their purchases, I got to chatting with a woman sitting in a pickup flatbed.
She was hard to miss, sitting two or three heads above the rest of the crowd. Her hair was a shade barely more silver than the white pickup truck she occupied. She held a bubble gun aloft, gently spraying it over the passing throngs. She wore a sundress, her legs crossed in front of a fold out stool. She swayed gently, the bubbles flowing with her movements.
My friend and I complimented her bubbles, and we wished her a happy Mardi Gras.
“Happy Carnivale! But I gotta tell ya, it’s a hard Carnivale for me this year,” she said, her trigger remaining firmly depressed.
I expressed a cordial amount of dismay on her behalf, but I admitted that her troubles felt incongruous with her current state.
“That’s the mushrooms.” A matter of fact. “Someone stole my bicycle! Right out the courtyard. You can’t enjoy Carnivale without a bicycle.”
It turned out she was a local, who had been part of the New Orleans art scene for decades. While she waited for someone to kindly return her bike—she had put out a call for it to be returned; she didn’t even mind if they really needed it for a little while as long as she got it back—she decided to visit her friends showing at this market.
She explained that she often took this perch in their truck, and she herself was somewhat a fixture of the markets her friends host: a mobile piece of art herself.
“So I get here, and I set up my chair, and I’m hanging out. Someone just handed me this bubble gun! And I’m not just gonna let it sit there.” The soap glinted in the mild February sun before popping. “And then my friends came over, and they asked what I was doing.”
She gestured at her current position. It was self-explanatory.
“They said, ‘Who’s truck is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s yours,’” she giggled.
“‘No, it’s not.’”
She lost herself to laughter. But whose truck was it, then?
“I have no rightly idea,” she shook her head and smiled.
We spoke a little while longer, then left the happy woman in a strangers pickup bed to her bubbles and mushrooms. I thought of her often that trip, and I still do. Her approach to things was laissez-faire, in a way, but kind. Sure, her own party was interrupted by losing her bicycle, but maybe it was with someone who needed it even more had it now. Besides, she was co-opting the truck. Who was she to criticize?
No, it was much better to sit back, blow bubbles, smile, and chat. I wonder if she got her bike back. I hope she did. She deserved a stress-free Carnivale. And if she didn’t, I hope it is the hands of someone who can also take a moment, laugh at the world around them, and blow some bubbles.