Fat drops of rain are pelting down on the small crowd gathered outside Purple Rain Lounge in New Orleans’ Central City. It’s Easter 2016 and the Original Pigeon Town Steppers are about to erupt out of the bar and sashay a few miles further uptown to their eponymous ancestral grounds.

We’ll all be making a joyful noise, and dancing alongside these men and women who are by some accounts the hottest parade group in New Orleans.

That is what we call them anyway.

We’ve been to hundreds of second lines but none is as fine as Pigeon Town.

A whistle sounds, two men grab a pair of ropes to keep the crowd at bay, and the doors to the barroom are flung open as the celebrants come strutting out of the drinkery.