This ex-Yat knows what it means

dimsum dreams (excerpted):

I have lived in many parts of the country, and I can say from personal experience, y’all are pretty much all the same whether you want to believe it or not. A Los Angelian is not all that different from a Chicagoan, controversial I’m sure, but true: the food may be a little blander here or there, the accent a little harsher, but the basic lifestyle is the same. Being from New Orleans is like being in another ethnic group, no matter the color of your skin, we are all creole. In the 80’s and 90’s frat boys “discovered” Mardi Gras and brought back their stories of how “Dude, you can get to go cups of beer!” or “Chicks’ll flash you!”. As they “grew up”, they even managed to get Mardi Gras paraphernalia in their suburban bars and Applebee’s and grocery stores and became armchair Yats. It always made me pissed when it would come up in conversation where I was from and almost always the response was “I LOVE Mardi Gras”… fuck off. I wasn’t so much surprised that Joe Average just sat around bemoaning the loss of his beloved street party as I was by the callousness that most Americans showed towards those who, for whatever reason, had to stay behind. I am still angry, my mother is still angry, all of us ex-Yats are still angry. You want your “cajun” food and your crawfish boils, you want your zydeco (we call it Jazz) music and your Mardi Gras and your JazzFest, but you don’t care.