New Year’s Day Parade in Chinatown Part 2
Sunday’s parade was sort of fun and had a number of interesting moments. Being in the tight confines of Chinatown with a million or two or three close up against you can bring out some interesting issues.
During the crowding time, some girls came up behind me. I never saw them, but they didn’t sound Asian and I doubt they were. They talked like any teenage girls in America, with the exception that they wanted to GET THROUGH the crowd and were doing everything they could to do it. Mostly by being obnoxious and saying they needed to GET THROUGH. At least one of the two (or maybe three) of them ended up directly behind me and kept pushing at me. It wasn’t as if I could have moved very easily but the poking and prodding was enough to get me to stand my ground. After a while they drifted off, although they may have been picked up by the crowd and carried away for all I knew.
What everyone wanted to see was the dragon dancing. To do the dance, you create/buy an elaborate head of a dragon and then get a bunch of your friends to line up behind you with the “body” of the dragon being a long line of fabric. Another bunch of compatriots start banging away on drums and cymbals in a rhythm and you twirl all about. In the best of the displays, there are two or more dragons doing fake battle against one another.
We had those. All types, combinations, and quality of dragons. Below is one of the times that there were multiple dragons. Unfortunately, they were usually pretty low to the ground and fade into the background a bit.
But they did rise up at times.
During the parade, there was one time that I think there were four or six dragons in front of the reviewing stand at the same time. But they were just too low for any sort of decent photo on my part.
But there was one dragon that was superb. Just wonderful.
The dancers went around in circles several times showing the dragon coiling and uncoiling.
Until they straightened out and went down Mott.
At the very end of the parade, a view came that I had not expected. I don’t think anyone expected. Heck, even the people in the display were probably dumbfounded by it. Cowboys! Or, rather, Caballeros!
The music sounded Mexican to me, but the last display identified their country of origin as Columbia. Maybe they just like a good party.
After the parade ended, I went back down Bayard and saw some of the participants posing for pictures.
-H
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