Baton Rouge is home to a myriad of traditions and customs: Saturday nights in Death Valley, stumbling into Louie’s Cafe after midnight and chasing albino squirrels, to name a few.

But one boggling, unique tradition is homes and businesses proudly displaying Spanish Town flamingos. 

A Spanish Town flamingo is a fairly large plywood cutout in the shape of a flamingo, which is then painted that familiar pink hue. These fluorescent birds can be spotted all over the Red Stick, from Northgate to the Garden District, but they’re the mascot of the downtown district, Spanish Town.

Bill Brumfield, president of the Society for the Preservation of Lagniappe in Louisiana, said the curious birds became a symbol of Spanish Town during the infancy of the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade. 

“When the original parades started, the residents of Spanish Town had taken some decorations from their yards, which were pink flamingos, and attached them to their wagons that they were pulling down Spanish Town Road, and it stuck,” Brumfield said.  

Brumfield said the flamingos have become a comical               representation of the mantra that “poor taste is better than no taste at all.” 

One peculiar tradition of the Spanish Town krewes is the annual placement of the plywood flamingos into Capitol Lake. This custom is performed every year to announce the coming of the Spanish Town parade ball and ball.

Brumfield said this ceremony started around 1980 as a way of attracting publicity and garnering participants for the fledgling parade.

Dedicated fans of the flamingo will either swim or take a boat into the lake and “adopt” one of these oversized birds. 

Greg Jennings, kinesiology junior, recently braved the waters with his girlfriend to give one of the flamingos a new home. 

“The water was disgusting. The lake water is really dirty, but it’s a small lake,” Jennings said. “It was really shallow. I had to float so I wouldn’t sink into the mud.” 

Jennings said the flamingo was attached to a cinderblock and had to be broken in order to extract it from the lake — one possible reason many of the flamingos around town are not fully intact. 

Brumfield said what makes Spanish Town different from other parades is the absence of commercially made floats. He said the floats are always a surprise because they are handcrafted by the individual krewes. 

Brumfield promises Spanish Town parades are “like nothing you’ve ever experienced.”

To catch the krewes in action, head downtown at noon Saturday.

When the original parades started, the residents of Spanish Town had taken some decorations from their yards, which were pink flamingos, and attached them to their wagons that they were pulling down Spanish Town Road, and it stuck.”