LULING,LA-

Thanks, Asia. I got the chance to speak to the Chairman Emeritus of the Lundi Gras Festival, who is also a long participate crew member of Zulu.

“My name is Lester Pollard Jr and I’m the Chairman Emeritus of the Lundi Gras Festival.”

Lester Pollard Jr  has been riding in Zulu since the 1980s. He says it’s been an amazing experience.

“I’ll tell you it’s nothing more exciting, you can’t really sleep. We get up about 3 in the morning, we usually go to the hotel,  breakfast and we start our dress process. We put on our grass skirts, black face.. It’s tiring but exciting.” says Lester Pollard Jr

He has many fond memories over the decades, but he spoke to us about one of his favorites.

“Now we come to the club,which was alway a dream of mine that we bring the parade by our clubhouse and I’ll tell you the first time i saw it, it was like wow so you know it get kind of emotional cause it was so many of guys who wanted this but didn’t live longer enough to see it… I been around 40 years so you know I thank god I was able to witness our parade passing by the clubhouse.”

We mentioned things such as Zulu Ball and what the significance behind it was.

“Well the zulu ball is the coordination of the king and queen. It’s really a coordination ball this is where the reigning king crowns the incoming king, so they meet and it’s like passionate parts it becomes a past king moment on stage and incoming king becomes the reigning king.”

We discussed things such as prices and the value of preparing everything altogether.

“Because we’re an African American club, these guys look for economic ways our community members could participate in what we do. so they generally have ways to payment plan and all that so make it affordable, for a person to be apart. To answer your question there there is an expense to it. I wouldn’t say it’s exuberant i mean cause if it’s something you wanna do, you can you know take care out it for over time. We have several float captains who have these pay plans and they work without their riders to make sure they could participate.”

From Press-Play News this is Brooke Whitaker.