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backstreet cultural museum

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New Orleans Tourism

Sylvester Francis was walking home at the end of Mardi Gras when he saw a part of someone’s costume lying in the street.

30 years later, it became the first official piece in the Backstreet Museum's collection when its doors opened to the public.

"He saw someone take the suit off and discard it, without even looking back," Bruce Barnes, current president of the Backstreet Museum, says about the founder's impulse to nab the garb.

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