The Maestro of Mardi Gras

Portrait by Andri Tambunan

FFirst comes the suave, polished Sacramento State marching band. Next, the Sacramento Soul Line Dancers shake and shimmy down Capitol Mall, drenched in spangles and bangles. Then comes the Pet Parade brigade, a charmingly rag-tag phalanx of DIY-costumed pugs and pitties. As daylight wanes, Sacramento’s lowrider community represents, their Buicks and Monte Carlos bouncin’, thumpin’ and bumpin’ with their underlit carriages. After twilight descends, LED fire spinners dance by, then the crowd gasps at one of the real showstoppers—Burning Man-stye art cars like last year’s Sepia the Cuttlefish, a huge, pulsating cephalopod lit from within, or one of this year’s additions, Torch the Dragon, a neon-lit, fire-breathing, music spilling behemoth that’s a darling of the festival circuit.

If you’ve never been to Burning Man, this might be your first time seeing an art car. This year’s fourth annual City of Trees Parade will introduce you to a brave new world of wonders, thanks to the man behind the curtain, Wes Samms, rocking the master of ceremonies duties in a purple and gold sequined tailcoat and top hat.

“Our parade is an all-Sacramento cultural experience,” Samms tells us in November, when he’s thick in the planning stages, herding figurative cats and, as we’ve seen, actual dogs as he assembles a schedule of some 1,500 rowdy parade participants—from volunteers to paid acts. The Feb. 22 procession will take around an hour and a half to move from the Capitol to Old Sacramento. The parade begins near twilight and fades into darkness with the arrival of illuminated art cars and floats, like “Pirate Ship Fun,” brimming with figures like a skeleton Santa Claus and a giant octopus, in addition to a bevy of pirates. The crowd, primed by an afternoon of fun activities at the pre-parade festival on the Mall, is ready to catch the 1,300 pounds of recycled Mardi Gras beads thrown from floats, and spill into the streets after the parade or return to the festival grounds (between 5th and 7th streets on the Capitol Mall) for a joyous, all-ages bacchanalia with music played from atop the night’s art car stars.

Revelers beckon for beads as floats roll down Capitol Mall during last year’s City of Trees Parade. Photo by Marc Thomas Kallweit

The event is the brainchild of Samms, 39, who attended Loyola University in New Orleans, where he first caught Mardi Gras fever. He happened to be studying abroad in Costa Rica when Katrina hit, but returning to the aftermath, and witnessing the resilient, resurgent community utterly changed the direction of his life.

“Before Katrina, I had intended to be a philosophy professor,” Samms says. “Philosophy, I think, is really important, but if you don’t have a roof over your head, food to eat, and health care, it’s hard to indulge in deeper questions.” So even before graduating in 2006—with that philosophy degree—he went to work for the Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, and has been in the nonprofit sector ever since, working around the world and eventually earning a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Kansas. He first moved to Sacramento in 2012, and for the past seven years, he’s been working as the development director for United Ways of California—a statewide partner of the global United Way organization—living a car-free, climate-friendly lifestyle in midtown.

Samms drew inspiration for the parade from his New Orleans experience, but also from a source closer to home—Sacramento and Northern California’s own diverse arts culture. And it wasn’t long before he met the devoted “burners” behind Burning Man, the California-born and bred annual celebration in the Nevada desert. Mardi Gras and Burning Man go together like peanut butter and chocolate, combining the best of the best of both celebration styles—with a little bit of homecoming parade mixed in for good measure—and makes for a unique celebration that is unlike anything else you’ll find in California.

“It is very much a reflection of Sacramento in a really authentic way,” says Scott Ford, deputy director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, an eager collaborator on the parade since day one. “One thing I really like about it is that it’s put on by the people, for the people. When you hear the music, when you see the mosaic of colors and costumes, it’s just a beautiful event to be a part of. It’s celebrating the creative culture that is Sacramento.”

A turtle float created by Elk Grove’s Craig Nelson is an homage to Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade. Photo by Marc Thomas Kallweit

Samms didn’t come up with the idea for the City of Trees Parade overnight. It was a process. In 2017, after climate-skepticism and anti-science rhetoric in the U.S. government sparked an outcry, he participated in the Sacramento version of a series of worldwide protests called March for Science. In 2018, he took over the reins of the event’s local nonprofit, organizing protests over the next three years until the pandemic hit, and future outings were abruptly canceled or put on hold. By the time things started to open up in 2021, Samms says he was wondering what to do next.

“I suddenly realized that I actually had everything needed to start a parade,” he says with delight, “because a parade is exactly like a protest, except that it’s happy, and people want to go to it.”

At his urging, the March for Science nonprofit reorganized as the Curiosity Collaborative, with a mission of “supporting diverse community initiatives that encourage curiosity, sustainability and creative expression.”

The first City of Trees Parade in 2022 drew 600 participants. By 2024, 1,300 celebrants marched or rode the route, and 2025 promises to be even bigger. While the lineup will continue to morph through final preparations in January, some regulars you’re likely to see again include the 110 member Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus, Nevada City’s Connection Dance Project, Rancho Cordova’s Peter J. Shields Unicycle Club, the Sacramento Ghostbusters, the Sacramento Steampunk Society, and a contingent from the Sacramento Juneteenth Festival. New this year will be a self-organized troupe of “Helens” dressed in red wigs and mumus in honor of Mrs. Helen Roper, the free-spirited landlady from the ’70s sitcom Three’s Company. Hopefully making a reappearance will be the diminutive yet dazzling snail and turtle floats an Elk Grove man meticulously crafted by hand (as an homage to Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade), with enough personality and charm to compete with splashier entries like the Deco Fish—twin flame-spewing, LED-lit art cars with a thumping 40,000-watt sound system.

Party pirates toss Mardi Gras beads from a float. Photo by Marc Thomas Kallweit

The authentic Big Easy vibe comes courtesy of the NolaCal Second Liners, formed in 2019 by a member of the post-Katrina diaspora who settled in the area. “As soon as we started doing a real Mardi Gras parade, they were the first people to sign up,”Samms says.

In New Orleans, Mardi Gras “Krewes” work on their costumes and floats year-round and hold neighborhood parades. That, Samms says, is starting to happen in Sacramento too. Louisiana Sue’s Krewe of Gumbo is doing it in Oak Park, while the Del Paso neighborhood has Mardi Gras on the BLVD.

While drawing spectators is nice, Wes Samms would much rather have you in  the parade than standing on the sidelines. The goal, besides throwing one of the most diverse parties in all the land, he says, is “to inspire wonder in everyone and to encourage people to want to take part, to join a dance group, to make an art car, to make a costume, and to do anything that expresses themselves creatively.”

TriLeene the Peacock lights up Capitol Mall last March. Photo by Marc Thomas Kallweit

Samms’ next goal is to have the parade’s diversity mirror that of the city. “Anybody who wants to show off what their community has to offer, please reach out to us and be in our parade,” he pleads. “The Muslim community, Eastern European, Indian, Pakistani communities—none of these groups are represented yet in our parade and they are huge  in Sacramento.”

Samms is living proof that doing good will put a spring in your step. In addition to his full-time non-profit gig and masterminding the parade, he still finds time to sing jazz at open mic nights at Jet’s American Grill & Bar and SacYard Community Tap House, and recently started teaching yoga at Yoga Shala near midtown. And every few years—often between jobs—he travels abroad. The last trip to Thailand in 2022 is when he had his fabulous, signature sequined jacket tailored. And Samms’ thinking about basic needs vs. higher needs has evolved a lot since Katrina.

“It is a hierarchy,” he says. “You do need food and housing and health care before you’re able to sing and dance in the streets. But if you have those things, and there’s no singing or dancing, then what have you accomplished? What is a world without music? Without celebration?” Thanks to his efforts, we may never need to find out.