(February 20, 2007)—As many as 700,000 revelers are celebrating Fat Tuesday in New Orleans as the city’s annual Mardi Gras celebration winds down.

Earlier Tuesday crowds roared for the Zulu parade floats and a celebration of jazz led by the legendary Pete Fountain.

It was the 46th time the 76-year-old Grammy-winning clarinetist had made the march from Commander's Palace restaurant in the Uptown section to the Mississippi River.

The city is celebrating Mardi Gras in style just one and a half years after Hurricane Katrina.

The first Mardi Gras parade of the day was staged by the 1,250-member Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a predominantly black group that wears grass skirts and blackface makeup in parody of stereotypes from the early 1900s, when it was founded.

The celebration is always raucous in the French Quarter, as revelers swapped flashes of flesh for beads tossed from balconies.

Costumes are a big part of the event for spectators as well as parade marchers, the outfits range from the glamorous to the satirical.

Tuesday is the climax of a Carnival season that began on Jan. 6.

The celebration of Mardi Gras is the last big party before Ash Wednesday and the somber religious season of Lent.

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