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Easter Parade in NYC Part 1 of 3

March 24, 2008

Every Easter, at least every Easter for the past three years, I’ve been out to the “Easter Parade”.

It isn’t a real parade. Or, if you prefer, it is the most democratic parade there is. Everyone is part of it. And anyone can be a star. That isn’t any sort of exaggeration. If you want 15 minutes of fame and the attention of thousands, just join the parade. The only qualification: wear a hat.

The bigger/grander/wilder/cooler the hat, the better.

People without hats are desperate to find and look at people with hats. Heck, you can even buy them there and change from the hatless anonymous one to a famed hatted one. But those aren’t the really great hats. But you can borrow a really great hat. Just for asking.

A typical hat brought and worn by a typical wearer.

From about 46th Street up to around 57th Street, Fifth Avenue becomes a mass of hat-searching photographers and voyeurs. And Famous Ankles is proud to be one of ’em again this year. I’ve never worn a hat to it, but it was a pretty cold day with a touch of wind. Not enough to make me wear a hat, though.

Generally, the hats are not on the expensive side, as you can note.

Photographers are everywhere. The woman below was being interviewed when I walked by, you can see the cameraman in the foreground.

I was down there at around 11am to 1pm. The event generally lasts until 4pm or so.

People just mill about on the street. When you see a hatted person, take your picture ASAP.

And the crowd was biiiiiiiiiigggg!

One thing I saw more of this year than usual were men in hats.

Dogs in hats are…old hat. Ouch. I know I’ll catch some grief for that one.

It’s generally the friendliest crowd you’ll ever see. Wanna pose with someone? Just go and pose. Wanna take someone’s picture? Just point your camera. If they spot you, they’ll pose or they’ll grab their friends and all will pose.

The woman above in the big hat was everywhere. After 2 hours, I knew every hat in the place, but I kept seeing her posing alone or with others. She’s a real trooper.

There were other attractions besides people in hats. Below was a gospel duo singing some Easter riffs.

Another thing I spotted more of this year were people doing more of a dressy hat rather than a funny hat.

The first year I went to the Easter Parade, I saw one person with a formal hat. This year, dozens. I really like the trend.

But it was mostly mock-pretention type hats.

A puppetteer…with a hat out for donations.

A group saw me point my camera…

Below are some hats made from discarded “metro cards” (used to go on the subway and buses in New York).

People were lined up to pose with them on. I don’t know if there was a charge or “donation” to use them or if they were there as a promotion or community service. They were pretty popular, though.

Tibitan Protest on 2nd Avenue

March 22, 2008

I’ve been under the weather recently and was recovering nicely, but still hadn’t stepped out of my place all day today. And then I heard whistles and shouting coming from the direction of Second Avenue and 42nd Street. I have a very minor view of the street from my window and peered out, knowing I’d see something.

And I did. Cops. There was a protest afoot. I left as quickly as I could and, by the time I hit street level, the noise volume was very high and my doorman was trying to figure out what was going on.

It was a protest. It looked a bit “thrown together” with minimal planning, but the cops were cooperating.

It wasn’t tiny though. Okay, it was relatively tiny, but it was a fairly good protest march. It was the Tibetans protesting the Chinese. (It’s always a little strange when I see a protest where one nationality is protesting another and the US is sort of left out of the equation. But that’s neither here nor there.)

The cool part; where else are you gonna have enough Tibetans to have a good protest? These aren’t your college students who sign petitions several times a month. These were mostly Tibetans in exile or just otherwise here.

The cops were leading them down 2nd Avenue on a single lane. The group was perhaps four blocks long. I didn’t try any sort of count, but I’m guessing less than a thousand. It sounded louder though.

As you can see, the cops were out in force, but mostly to make sure they stayed in their designated lane. The cars in the side streets weren’t being let in and you could see them backing up.

The Tibetans did have people on both sides of the street handing out literature. Their protest was centered on the Chinese crackdown to protests in Tibet and they were calling for the release of prisoners there and an international investigation into what is happening.

Of probably more import to the Chinese is their call for boycotting the Olympics.

-H

Categories: Events, Manhattan, Mid-town, Parades

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New Year’s Day Parade in Chinatown Part 2

February 11, 2008

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

Categories: Chinatown, Events, Parades

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New Year’s Day Parade in Chinatown Part 1

February 10, 2008

Yes, I finally found another parade. It’s been a while.

I left late for the 1pm parade and knew it would be tough getting a good viewing spot. Chinatown’s tiny little streets and people’s fascination with dragon dancing and the like meant I wasn’t going to find a nice vantage point.

When I got there, here’s my initial viewpoint of the parade.

I was at the corner of Bayard and Mott Streets, right where the reviewing stand was. That meant a great place, but lousy positioning on my part. First, I was way too far away and, second, I was across the street from the reviewing stand which meant that the paraders were facing them, not me.

But Famous Ankles has his ways. Over time, I got a lot closer as you’ll see from the pictures’ varying vantage points. Last year when I came to the parade, I discovered that no one manuevers the crowds better than older Asian women. I simply started following a couple of them and ended up getting much closer. A corrollary to that fact: don’t get in their way. (Perhaps the high moment of the parade was when the crowd parted to let an angry and screaming Asian woman through without impeding her in the least. It then instantly closed up around behind her.)

The parade itself isn’t one of the impressive ones that NYC can generate. Instead, it has a much “homier” feel despite the fact that there are a lot of politicians and a lot of sponsors to the event. The one item that you can’t ignore in a Chinatown parade is the confetti. It’s everywhere. Near the reviewing stand, they had some fan-like devices that occasionally would shoot it into the air.

It didn’t happen all that often, but it did thrill the crowd when it went off.

Usually, the confetti was sent out by people in the parade using a variety of handheld launchers. The fact that it was a windy, windy day meant it was terrific. I don’t think there was a moment that the sky wasn’t filled with the stuff. It doesn’t come out too well in the photos, but here’s a taste.

It was wonderful. And at times a bit disconcerting. Sometimes the confetti was more in the form of streamers and you’d find two and three foot strands floating down. At one point, some fell around my neck and I was getting ready to pull it off when it tightened on my neck (not particularly tight, but noticable). I couldn’t figure it out, but it turns out the guy behind me was draping it and some other around his own neck and he was pulling mine in a way that it pulled at my throat. No, I wasn’t almost throttled or anything. Just one of those moments that you don’t expect.

The place was jammed. It was beyond jammed. It was one of those NYC crowds that, at times, you can’t even move your arms. Just a sea of humanity with each and every one of us trying to get just a slightly better view.

In the above picture, you may notice the guy has a cigarette. It just seemed so out of place. But later in the parade, of all things, some guy next to me started smoking on a pipe. I haven’t seen that in years.

The parade itself lasted a little around 90 minutes or so. There were a number of floats.

There was the occasional odd character. The bearded guy in a dress showed up, but this time his outfit was definitely Chinese in character. (No picture this time as I only caught a quick glimpse of him.)

About midway through the parade, the crowding became extreme. And not in a good way. I don’t know what was going on although I saw a larger than usual stream of people behind me at one point. Nevertheless, the press of the crowd more than doubled. It was to the point that I couldn’t push back with more than a little and I was almost being forced off my feet from the swell of the crowd. The cops started shouting out for people to move back and not to press forward. But they weren’t anywhere near me. In fact, I wasn’t sure what the meant by “back” at that point. I had to re-plant my feet at least three times as I was pressed into the people in front of me. After a few minutes, the pressing lessened significantly…and I pushed forward to a better spot than I had before.

So, the parade had three things of interest to me: the crowds, the confetti, and the dragon dancing. This post hasn’t had any of the dragon pictures.

That’s for another post.

-H

Categories: Chinatown, Events, Parades

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I didn’t go to the Ticker Tape Parade.

February 5, 2008

I seem to go to all of the parades, but today’s celebration of the New York Giants Superbowl victory is one I missed. It’s too bad. I’d have really gotten into it as ticker tape parades have perhaps the greatest visuals of any parade anywhere…despite no one actually using ticker tape on Wall Street anymore. I know, I know. I’ve let down my readers who expect even the tiniest of parades to be covered.

Unfortunately, the need for cash on a regular basis through the mechanism of “employment” made it disadvantageous to go. In other words: I had to work. Woe is me.

I was down in the Financial District yesterday and actually walked part of the parade route. I was at a business meeting and rued the idea that the meeting was a day early. Of course, there’s no way on earth that I could have gotten to the meeting on time, had it been today.

I did hear that the crowds were lining up before 7am (for an 11am parade). I heard stories of the traditional wild-eyed football fans painted blue and of parents taking kids out of school to go. Those seem a bit extreme.

-H

Categories: Parades

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