BATON ROUGE — The Krewe of Southdowns lit up the neighborhood for their 38th Mardi Gras parade in the capital region. The parade is one of the oldest parades in the capitol city and residents say it is the community that helps this parade continue to grow every year.

"In all these years, we get great support from the neighborhood. We feel like we want to be a part of the community, and they want to be a part of our parade, and it's wonderful, it's all lit up," Angus Wilkes on of the board directors of the parade said.

This year's theme is Southdown safari, with jungle floats, bikes, lawnmowers, and dancers like the golden grannies.

"It's electric, the crowd is right on top of you, and you thrive on their energy, there are no street lights here so we glow very well," Camille Lindsey, one of the dancers who was a golden granny, said. 

Dr. William Gladney, who started the parade, says the growth the parade has had since its inception was not always the original goal.

"We also tried to keep it a certain size, so we never intended to be a giant parade, and we kind of kept it a comfortable size, we haven't thrown it away yet and people still like to come and watch us do our parade," Gladney said.

Gladney told WBRZ he is glad that the parade has spanned almost 40 years, pulling the community together.

"We are going to see if we can hand the tradition down, 38 years is a long time for me to run it, there's going to be someday I let somebody else run the ship I hope".