<P> Women showing their breasts during Mardi Gras has been documented since 1889, when the Times - Democrat decried the "degree of immodesty exhibited by nearly all female masqueraders seen on the streets ." The practice was mostly limited to tourists in the upper Bourbon Street area . In the crowded streets of the French Quarter, generally avoided by locals on Mardi Gras Day, flashers on balconies cause crowds to form on the streets . </P> <P> In the last decades of the 20th century, the rise in producing commercial videotapes catering to voyeurs helped encourage a tradition of women baring their breasts in exchange for beads and trinkets . Social scientists studying "ritual disrobement" found, at Mardi Gras 1991, 1,200 instances of body - baring in exchange for beads or other favors . </P> <P> The formal end of New Orleans Mardi Gras arrives with the "Meeting of the Courts," a ceremony at which Rex and His Royal Consort, the King and Queen of Carnival, meet with Comus and his Queen, at the ball of the Mistick Krewe of Comus, New Orleans' oldest active Carnival organization . The Meeting of the Courts happens at the conclusion of the two groups' masked balls, which in modern times have both been held at the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium . Following Hurricane Katrina, the ball has been held in the Marriott Hotel . </P> <P> Promptly at the stroke of midnight at the end of Fat Tuesday, a mounted squad of New Orleans police officers make a show of clearing upper Bourbon Street where the bulk of out - of - town revelers congregate, announcing that Carnival is over, as it is the start of Lent, commencing with Ash Wednesday . </P>

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