Famous Ankles

This is the second of several posts on last Sunday’s Greek Independence Parade.  Where were we….oh, yeah:  marchers in costume!  As I said, it’s one of the really nice parts of the NYC parades and I do enjoy the Greek native costume.

The next group was a little odd, but not really.  It’s the Olympic Dancers from Pittsburgh, PA.  The only thing that’s odd is the name.  The Olympics have been trademarked like crazy and I understand that they are really big on protecting it, but “Olympic” goes way, way back.  I don’t really know if they protect the name as much as the interlocking rings symbol.

Here’s a closer picture of the Olympic Dancers. They were dancing, but my picture doesn’t quite do it justice.

One of the interesting things about the Greek Parade is all of the Greek Schools that are represented. The next is St. Basil’s Academy.  (And all of the schools had one or more priests walking with the group.)

More fraternity action…or in this case, I guess, it would be sorority action. This float was the Association of Hellenic Societies.

And the Greek Parade also had a lot of bank floats. The below is Atlantic Bank. I don’t know their link to the Greeks, but I imagine there is a distinct one.

Another school marching group. They identified themselves as “The Cathedral School”.

And the next group called themselves “The Cathedral After School”. Well, they did come after The Cathedral School, but I’m sure they’re just identifying the time they meet. (But I like to think that they should have transposed it and called it “After The Cathedral School”, but I’m just a guy struggling with the new WordPress editor so my judgement is a bit clouded.)

Continuing in the scholastic vein, next came AHEPA – the American-Hellenic Educational Progressive Association. That is not a particularly euphonious name so I presume it was chosen to match up with the acronym, which isn’t a bad ‘un.

Yet more AHEPAtarians! AHEPAites? AHEPAtonians?

Followed by the Daughters of Penelope. Now, I like that name and the historical/mythological reference.

Right next to me was a raucous group of young men with…paint job faces. They attracted the attention of the Aktina TV reporter who came by for a quick interview.

After they finished the interview, the reporter and cameraman stood about 15 feet away for at least five minutes, probably more. They were just oblivious to the crowd watching the parade…and mostly to the parade. I don’t know if they were discussing what to do next or whatever, but I kept waiting for them to move on. In the meantime, the Boy Scouts came by.

Well, that’s fine; but what about the Pan-Arcadian Federation, you ask? Where were they? Right behind the scouts.

They were followed by a pretty nice group from St. Demetrios Church of Jamaica. This is New York. “Jamaica” is a neighborhood in eastern Queens, not the island nation.

Cathedral High School, which I presume is the same thing as “The Cathedral School” had a marching band.

And where you have Greeks, you can expect to find Macedonians. There were a lot of political references to Macedonia during the parade. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, the name Macedonia was taken and used by others that the Greeks don’t accept as Macedonians. I don’t know the history of it, but I am well aware that there’s a fair amount of bad blood between the Macedonians and the “Macedonians”.

St. Demetrios Church was all over the place. Lots of separate marching groups in the parade. In this float is the mysterious message that their history is for everyone but it isn’t for sale. Kids, this is NYC and everything is for sale. But I don’t know what they are referring to.

Another academic group. In this case, the Hellenic Times Scholarship Fund. I presume the Hellenic Times is a local Greek newspaper.

For my final picture in today’s post, this is a taste of a large group of Ikarians. That is, folks associated in some way with the myth of Icarus.

Of course, the thing I find interesting is that Icarus died in the story.  They did name a small sea for him, but he did ignore his father’s wisdom and flew just a hair too close to the sun and paid the price.

-H

On Sunday, April 6 there was the annual Manhattan Greek Parade down Fifth Avenue (okay, up Fifth Avenue) starting in the 50s and going up to 80th Street or so. And Famous Ankles was there, as usual.

I do enjoy the parade. It was actually at last year’s parade that I found myself next to two adorable twin girls in Greek peasant costume. The sat next to my feet and being very young and very cute, attracted a lot of attention. My legs got photographed so much that I joked with people that my ankles were famous in Greece, and a few months later I named this blog in honor of that day.

Nothing quite so great happened this time though. But it was good parade. It was well attended.

Once the parade started, the dignitaries were in close proximity to the head of the parade. They would get to go to the end and then go into the reviewing stands, I presume. I think Mayor Bloomberg was somewhere in the crowd, but I didn’t spot him this time.

Excuse me Assemblyman Mike Gianaris, but you can pay a little more attention to your constituents.

Senator Chuck Schumer was there with his bullhorn. Most of these politicians just loooooovvvve their bullhorns.

Anthony Weiner had his bullhorn! He didn’t do his prototypical “run” where he goes and shakes hands and then “sees” people across the way and then dashes to them.

As usual, lots of kids in native costume.

The NYPD made its traditional show of strength.

I guess I was on the wrong side of the street if I wanted my ankles photographed again. Nah, I was on the right side. These kids were very photogenic, though.

A Greek military band, I think it was their Navy Air Force band, was in the parade. [Thank you Vassilis for the correction in your comment!]

The below is a Greek military honor guard that is one of the highlights of the parade. The key to their walking is their right foot. They would raise their leg on each alternate step and then slam down that foot.

Getting ready to slam that foot…

Yeah, those are poms on their shoes.

Honest, the NYC City Council is bigger than this!

Being Greeks, there had to be fraternities. I don’t know anything about the Kalavritan Fraternity of the Lavaron 1821, but they had a contingent. (No success in google, although it does have references to “Kalavrita” in Greece.)

More of the mysterious fraternity. This time “Kalavritan” is spelled “Kalavrytan”.

Speaking of “Kalavrita” and the like, there was a lone calvary man…(I don’t know if that qualifies as a pun.)

History and culture? Hey, the Greek-American Folklore Society has it covered.

The parade got delayed and this woman was near me for quite a while. I can’t tell whether she’s ready to bust out laughing at all the photographs being taken of her or because she can’t believe she’s wearing that costume.

Lots and lots of Greek flags. That’s one thing you learn in NYC parades: the USA has nothing on the prevelance of flag waving by other cultures. At these events, you discover that people absolutely love to wave their native flags. You can also see a bit of the crowd. This is a pretty well-attended parade.

More flags and natively costumed flag-bearers.

My last picture for today: more costumes. That’s something that I can never forget about the Greek parade. The native costumes are very important to the participants. Of course, every parade has it; just look at the Scots in the Tartan parade and their love o’ the kilt.

This was a really long parade and I can’t imagine it will take fewer than four posts to cover it all.

I’m still having trouble with the editor but I’ve found a way to speed stuff up a little.

-H