Famous Ankles

To start off my second part of the parade coverage, I’m gonna show the “big flag” picture. Every parade seems to have one. Last year it was really cool. The crowd had thrown coins onto the big flag and when the marchers waved it, you could see the coins flying up several feet. This year, nothing.

The parade had a lot of cars being shown off. I’m not that big of a fan, so I’ve excluded a lot of them. But the one below was a nice car with a beauty queen.

The press was everywhere. Right next to me, El Diario had an impromptu interview with a neighbor. She then asked if I wanted to contribute, but I don’t speak Spanish and declined. I ducked that bit ‘o fame. Now, had they wanted to see my ankles…

After seeing Weiner and Schumer (not to mention Diaz and Bloomberg), I knew Congressman Charles Rangel wasn’t going to be left out. And there he was in a really nice red convertible.

I loved this group. The stilt dancing was pretty professional. I was impressed and I think the crowd was, too.

An ambulance company sent in a beauty queen. And why shouldn’t they?

Next came some pretty enthusiastic and good dancers. I enjoyed them, but don’t know how they handled the heat.

If you’re a healthcare company (I don’t want to bother looking up the name) and you want to be in the parade. How do you do it? Well, sending in bunches of dancers is not a bad way to go.

Politics, gotta have some. These were protestors wanting the release of the “Cuban 5”. They are the group that helped kill some from “Brothers to the Rescue“. They were also convicted of some spying related charges. A bunch of them.

I have no sympathy.

A car dealer sent in a car…with a beauty queen.

A float from Dorado. Another, I presume, district within Puerto Rico. Or maybe the fabled city of gold sent some representatives…

A truly practical float. A float you could get your teeth into. A lady on the float was cooking BBQ and handing it out to marchers. Not to attendees, though.  The guy in the foreground (right) had just picked up his lunch when I snapped the picture.

From “NuLife Entertainment”, came a float. And the float had two dancers. And it was good.

Some beauty queens from Salinas (I guess another area of Puerto Rico; and probably not from Salinas, Kansas, where I’ve been before).

A genuine celebrity spotting. And I did it myself. A float for Walt Disney’s upcoming movie “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”. I looked at the float and didn’t recognize anyone. But then I saw this guy and the light of recognition came on: Luiz Guzman. I’ve seen him in a bunch of stuff.

The most amazing part of it? IMDB doesn’t have him in the cast of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. He apparently just jumped on the float.

I guess these are celebrities. They’re from MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL3). I haven’t the foggiest idea of who they are.

I was a bit mystified by the next group. I’m well aware of high school and college marching bands. Even professional groups. But this marching band was from…the New York Department of Education. Say, what? Not a school, but an entire department of State government?

This little lady stood apart. Very poised and closely attended by a relative (I presume). She never faltered in how she held herself. She was actually, I suppose, to be the first in a line of others. But they were well back from her and I couldn’t get a good picture of them altogether. So, two pictures.

And the below ladies were trailing our tiny beauty queen. I like to think of them as her beauty-queens-in-waiting, but that’s just me.

The dance group from StarLite Dance Studio was pretty good.

I told you in my first post that there were zillions of beauty queens. Here’s another of the zillions.

The Univision TV network sent in a float.

It had been a while since we had cheerleaders. So, Morovis (presumably another Puerto Rico district) sent us some.

Unique? You want unique and maybe a little strange? Take a look at this guy. He was attached at the feet with this doll and spent his (their?) time dancing around the street. Oh, and he was sponsored by Jet Blue.

I kind of had to see it to believe it. In NYC. The Puerto Rican Day Parade. Why not find beauty queen Adriana Rosato from Indiana to represent the Puerto Rican Indianans. Actually, she was fine. Why didn’t other states send in their representatives?

It was a pretty good sized crowd. Not as big as last year (at least from my standpoint).

Just one of many car pictures I took.

Apparently, the Luiz Jiminiz Show is very popular and well-regarded.  They pushed this show in the parade at a number of points.  One thing I saw a lot of was hand-fans that were of Luiz Jiminez’s face, sort of in a Che sort of look.  You can see it below.

-H

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This entry was posted on June 10, 2008 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Celebrity Points, Events, Manhattan, Parades. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.