We took a nice long walk across New Orleans’ Central City neighborhood this morning to roll with the 2017 VIP Ladies Second Line Parade. The old neighborhood is experiencing an upheaval as folks with fat bank accounts are buying up lots and building oddball architect-style homes next to old-school Creole cottages and tumble-down shotgun shacks.

Remember what the upper 9th looked like 5 years ago?

This was the 14th edition of the VIP Ladies annual parade, and the showmanship keeps getting more outlandish. Here’s what we saw: