Dear Shaded Viewers,
Yesterday my friend Rupert and I celebrated Chinese New Year’s with dim sum near East Broadway (not as good as in Flushing, but a bargain) and the parade on Mott Street.
I love the homemade DIY feel of this parade. Some cut-up cardboard boxes, colored chalk, a 99-cent bag of balloons, and maybe a few wigs from Ricky’s. New Yorkers keeping it real!
We were all a bit confused by this bedazzled gaggle of cute Latinos–their costumes reminded me of a Rio Carnival contingent. I heard this morning that they were Ecuadorians who didn’t get the memo that it was a Chinese parade.
The mass of brown “dragon scales” and red stripes is actually a giant chocolate cake, accompanied by a small orchestra of Peking opera performers. Unfortunately, their music was being drowned out by the disco music from the float in front of them.
A glimpse of Chinatown’s underground fashion scene.
And here’s the cake again–at the end of the parade, people swarmed around it and devoured it like it was the body of Sebastian Venable. I passed on that, as I didn’t want to eat something that had been paraded for hours through the open-air streets of grimy Chinatown.
Rupert gave me this sticker that he found on 23rd and 8th avenue. Leave it to the Maoists to bring some wry commentary to the Occupy movement!
Love,
