Hey y'all! I'm Charmaine, I'm 41, I've lived in the Seventh Ward my whole life except two years I don't talk about in Houston, and there is nothing, nothing, I love more than a Sunday afternoon behind a brass band. I made this page because every fall somebody new to town asks me "what is a second line, exactly, and can I come?" and the answer is yes you can come, and here's what it is, and here's how to do it right so the people who put the parade on are glad you did.

Down at the bottom you'll find the fall 1999 calendar as far as I know it, and a little bit about my own club, the Lady Sophisticates, whose parade is coming up in November. If you only read one part, read the manners. Please.

Okay. Picture a parade with no floats, no beads, no Mardi Gras. Just a brass band playing loud, a club of forty or fifty people dressed to the nines and dancing in front of it, and then everybody else, hundreds or thousands of people, walking and dancing along behind and beside them through the streets of a neighborhood for three or four hours on a Sunday afternoon. That's a second line.

The name comes from the parts. The first line is the club that's putting on the parade and the band they hired: they're the ones with the permit, the matching outfits and the route. The second line is everybody who falls in behind. Used to be that meant the folks who followed a brass band home from a funeral, and it still does at a funeral, but nowadays when we say "a second line" we mostly mean the whole Sunday parade, club and band and crowd together. When you "second line," you're dancing in it. There's a step, sort of a strut with your knees up, and an umbrella or a handkerchief in the air. You'll pick it up. Everybody does.

These aren't for tourists and they aren't advertised, mostly. They happen in the neighborhoods, Uptown, Treme, Central City, the Seventh Ward, the Ninth Ward, Carrollton, and they stop at bars and houses along the way for the band to get a drink and the club to catch its breath. The season runs from around now, late summer, through June, and most Sundays there's at least one somewhere. In the fall there might be two.

The parades are put on by social aid and pleasure clubs. To understand the name you have to go back over a hundred years. In the 1800s, Black folks in New Orleans couldn't get insurance or much of anything else from the companies downtown, so neighborhoods formed benevolent societies: everybody paid dues, and the society paid for the doctor when you were sick and for your funeral when you passed, with a band to walk you to the cemetery. That's the "social aid." The "pleasure" is the other thing a club does, which is have a good time together, and once a year, on its own Sunday, put on its parade and show the whole city how sharp it looks.

Today the aid part is smaller (though clubs still help their members and their neighborhoods, and don't let anybody tell you different), and the pleasure part is the annual parade. Every club has its own Sunday, its own route through its own neighborhood, its own colors, and its own outfit: matching suits or dresses, hats, shoes, sashes, and hand-decorated fans and umbrellas and baskets, all of it in colors that were a secret until the club walks out the door that afternoon. Members work on those outfits and pay for them all year. A club's parade day is the proudest day of its year and it has cost every member a lot of money and a lot of Saturday nights. Remember that when you're in the street with them.

A brass band for a second line is usually eight to twelve people, all on their feet, all walking: trumpets, trombones, a saxophone or two, a sousaphone (that's the big tuba you wear; it holds down the bottom), a snare drum and a bass drum. No stands, no sheet music, no amplifiers. They play old hymns and old jazz numbers and new tunes and whatever the crowd hollers for, and they play them for four hours straight with breaks at the bar stops, and if you've never stood six feet from a sousaphone playing full out on a Sunday afternoon with the whole street moving, well, I can't describe it, that's why I'm telling you to come.

The band gets paid by the club. That's important for the manners part.

Everybody's welcome. I mean that. But you're a guest in somebody's neighborhood at somebody's party, so:

1. Don't cut the band. There's the club, then the band, then everybody else. Do not walk between the club and the band, and do not walk in the middle of the band. Stay behind them or off to the sides on the sidewalk. Some clubs rope off their space; respect the rope.
2. Respect the club members. They are the parade. Don't grab their fans or umbrellas, don't get in their pictures, don't ask them to pose, don't step on those shoes. Tell them they look good, because they do. Applaud when they come out the door. That's the moment.
3. Let the band play. Don't stand in front of the trumpets, don't try to play the instruments, don't request songs unless you're buying a round at the stop. The band is working.
4. Buy from the folks selling. There'll be people along the route with coolers of cold drinks and beer, and folks grilling on the corner. That's neighborhood people making a little money on parade day. Buy from them, not from a store two blocks away.
5. Mind the cars, mind the kids. There's a police escort but it's a big crowd in the street. Keep an eye out for the little ones, and if you brought little ones, keep them close.
6. If a fight starts, go the other way. It's rare. It happens. It isn't your business.
7. Don't be a tourist about it. A camera's fine (I have one). Sticking it in people's faces isn't. Ask before you take a picture of a club member up close. Most will say yes and strike a pose that'll make your day.
8. Dance. Honestly the rudest thing you can do is stand there with your arms folded looking like you're at a museum. Move something. Nobody's judging.

• Good shoes. You are going to walk three or four miles on pavement and dance most of it. Not sandals. Not new shoes.
• Water, and cash for the coolers. It's still hot in September and October here. It'll be hot in November, too, some years.
• A hat for the sun. A handkerchief to wave (you'll want one, trust me).
• Small bills. Drinks, a plate from the grill, and a dollar for the band's bucket if there is one.
• A friend who's been before, the first time. If you don't have one, e-mail me; I might be that friend.
• Patience. Start times are, let's say, approximate. If the sheet says 1:00 and the club comes out the door at 1:45, that's on time.

This is what I've got from the clubs, the barbershop and the grapevine as of the last week of September. Routes and times change, sometimes the morning of. If you're going to a club's parade, find somebody from that club and ask. I'll update this when I hear things. Starting points are given by neighborhood and the general area; the club's own route sheet, which they hand out and post in the bars along the way, has the streets.

I'm not affiliated with any club but my own, I don't speak for any of them, and if I've got somebody's date or neighborhood wrong, please e-mail me and I'll fix it the same night.

We're a ladies' club, 32 members this year, founded in 1988 by a group of women from the Seventh Ward who'd been second-lining behind the men's clubs their whole lives and decided it was time to be in front of the band for a change. I joined in 1993. We meet the second Tuesday of every month at a member's house, we pay dues, we've paid for two funerals and a whole lot of groceries for members going through a hard time over the years, and we've helped with the school supply drive at the elementary school every August since I've been in.

And once a year, on the second Sunday in November, we put on our parade. I have been working on my fan since July. I will not tell you the color. My feet already hurt thinking about it and I would not miss it for anything in this world.

Sunday, November 14, 1999. Seventh Ward. Around 1:00. Come out. Wear good shoes. Stay behind the band. And when we come out the door, holler.