Mardi Gras brings festival atmosphere to downtown Mount Pleasant

• Tweet
• 

The Central Michigan University fight song filled the streets of downtown Mount Pleasant Friday evening.

Community members gathered on the streets enjoying the sights and sounds of the annual Mardi Gras parade, which starts off Mount Pleasant High Schools homecoming. These types of events are what make Mount Peasant such a welcoming community, said city resident Amy Ramsdell.

“I always enjoy the parade and I always try to make it out every single year,” she said.

Residents, students or friends from neighboring cities came together during the festival.

One of the hot spots is the foam party.

“We get kids coming out to play in the foam pit anywhere from ages 4 to college seniors,” said foam party Organizer Charlie Cline. “You can dive into the foam and hide, everyone always has a ball.”

Cline has been coming back to Mardi Gras for the last 5 years to see kids sing and dance along with the parade.

Jose Delcastillo’s phrase is “De mi familia para tu familia” from my family to your family.

“Family is important when coming out to parades and celebrating being together,” said the owner of Jose’s Pig Gig. “Every year we look forward to Mardi Gras, it’s nice to see all of the locals and students coming together.”

Setting up and taking everything down is an important task, helping out the community is just a start to everything you can do, said Kyle Karczewski, a National Parks and Recreation intern.

“We’ve been out here selling shirts and helping set up for a few hours now. I’m so glad this is fun work,” Karczewski said.

Mount Pleasant resident Mike Meakin came to the festival dressed in a Darth Vader costume hoping to gain some attention from the audience.

“I came out here to show off my costume and so far I’ve had at least a hundred people take pictures with me, it’s so entertaining and such a good time,” he said.