The annual Artvoice Mardi Gras festival turns 12 years old on Tuesday, February 20, and we’re celebrating it the way we always do: with a massive party that encompasses much of downtown Buffalo, featuring a parade and a bead-strewn lupercalia to which thousands of revelers are invited every year. It is one of the biggest philanthropic Mardi Gras events in the country—and, despite also being one of the coldest, grows in size each and every year. Our parade begins promptly at 5pm at the Albright-Knox, from which dozens of floats snake their way down Elmwood to Allentown, then down Pearl to the Chippewa strip, then back up to Allentown to Kleinhans Music Hall. (See the map for the precise parade route.) Mardi Gras beads are passed out by friendly volunteers at all 48 bars and nightclubs that take part in our festival. A mere $5 donation—every dollar of which goes to the Center for Hospice and Palliative Care—buys you a bracelet that entitles you to admission and a string of beads at every joint you enter. The Mardi Gras Central station (Starbucks parking lot at Chippewa and Delaware) features live radio remotes, giveaways, admission bracelets, beads, masks, t-shirts and an assortment of glowing accoutrement.

Every place has beads. Every place has drink specials. Everywhere is fun. Your $5 wrist band gets you into 48 bars and nightclubs, including these, which also offer live music and entertainment:

Chevon Davis—the official hostess of all Artvoice’s Fat Tuesday proceedings—and her ladies-in-waiting travel in two limos, occasionally dividing to conquer, arriving at very approximate hours, with as-yet-to-be-determined stops in between:

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast on the morning of August 29, 2005, New Orleans musician Sammy Naquin was riding out the storm at his fiancée’s house in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, about a hundred miles to the north.