NEW ORLEANS — The first thing you notice in Nick Broussard’s house is the shelves packed with Legos. Then the lineup of Pelicans bobbleheads.
But it is his bathroom that makes him one of the city’s most unique collectors. Every wall, fixture, and countertop is covered in throws from 20 years of Krewe of Muses parades. “People will come back after ten minutes and be like ‘what is going on in there?’” Broussard said, laughing.
Some of the throws date back to the first Muses parade in 2001.
Broussard likes the krewe’s unique and high-quality throws, something that sets it apart in weekend of beads and cups. He showed off a box of Muses band-aids, a deck of playing cards with custom suits, and a comic book where a hero named Super-Muse saves the city from Hurricane Katrina.
The throw is ironic, considering the storm may be partly responsible for the collection. When the levee broke, Broussard’s family’s home in Lakeview was destroyed. They returned a few months later with few belongings. Broussard began collecting Muse throws the next Mardi Gras. He thinks the impulse was “definitely some sort of psychological attachment to items and tangibility.”
But why the bathroom? “In an ideal world, all of this would be behind glass and sorted by year,” Broussard said. For now, though, the bathroom is the right size and location to display his treasures, and “the signature float of Muses is the big bathtub float, so the bathroom looked like the perfect place to store all this stuff.”
The result is the city’s most unique museum. In the past, it has even caught the attention of Staci Rosenberg, the founder of the Krewe of Muses. But she had never gotten a good look around, so WWL Louisiana called her on Zoom so Broussard could give her a tour.
“It’s wonderful to have a superfan like you,” she told him, adding that she has never seen a collection like his. “If you know of anything you’re missing, we would love to make that happen for you.”
This year, the parade rolls on Feb. 8 at 6:30 p.m. For Krewe of Muses 2024, Broussard is planning his usual strategy of seeing the parade twice, so he can grab as many throws as he can. And no, that is not a typo.
“I see it at the very beginning of the route at Magazine Street, and I hop in the car as soon as the parade is done and race downtown,” he said.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.