Mermaid Parade 2008

It glitters. It spangles. It dazzles the eyes and ears. It's funny, it's naughty, it's socially relevant, and it's phantasmagoric. It's Halloween and the Mardi Gras in June.

It's the Mermaid Parade!

The 26th Annual Mermaid Parade stepped off on the first full day of summer, June 21st. Bruce, Jason and I were there by 12:30 and found a spot on the barricades by a few minutes after 1. We met up with Ferdinand and wriggled into the bit of space beside him.

Ferdinand felt the parade would not start until at least 2:30, but I said it would begin earlier. We made a gentleman's bet. Said Ferdinand, "You have nothing to lose but your dignity."

"No problem," I answered, "I haven't any!"

So, Ferdinand suggested we go for double or nothing. He lost the bet; the first floats and antique cars crossed in front of us at about 2:17. Close to the front of the parade, our Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was celebrating, too. Marty is a true party animal; he never misses a parade! Now he was shouting, "Hello all you Brooklyn meshuggeners! Don't worry, the half-naked people are right behind me!"

There must have been a good thousand marchers. Some that stand out in my mind were the protestors, trying to save Coney Island from being turned into Yuppie Island, paved over with luxury condos and complete with overpriced lattes at Starbucks. The possible encroachment of Thor developers may have explained the contingent of Marie Antoinette's (male and female) and the huge fake guillotine. Let 'em eat cake!

Another protestor wore a pot for a hat and had huge golden dollar signs on her glasses. Greed personified. But as usual, most of the marchers had at least some passing resemblance to sea creatures, real and fanciful.

There were hundreds of mermaids, many of them scantily clad in bikini tops. Others went even farther and heeded the advice on the windshield of an antique convertible, "Go Topless." Women wore seashell pasties, or substituted body paint for clothing. Many of the men were topless and a few were showing off their rear cleavage as well.

I picked up on a bit of a Hawaiian theme, with many marchers in grass skirts and wielding hula hoops. There was a group dressed as Carmen Miranda, with baskets of fruit (and fish) on their headgear. We saw King Kong and the Mermaid, French Mermaids with seashells and sea stars on their black and white uniforms, plenty of sea jellies, lobsters and octopi.

The Polar Bears, those characters who jump into the ocean on January 1st each year, were there, as were some deep sea divers whose slogan is "Wetter is Better." Brooklyn for Peace was represented, as was the Cyclones, and many other groups, including the Mermaids' Civil Liberties Union!

Some of the zaniest folk from last year made a re-appearance: the Parrot Man, who wears a sequined and spangled dress, dyes his beard light green, and carries his gray parrot on his head. Then there's the bearded man who wears a bridal gown of salvaged items and called himself Miss Use of Recycled Materials 2008. Every year there's a new official King Neptune and his wife Queen Mermaid, but there were also plenty of imitators in the parade. Penis Man, the dude who dresses in a pine-colored velvet suit equipped with a phallus big enough to do the Jolly Green Giant proud, was back, too. He came up to us and whacked Ferdinand and me over the head a number of times with his absurdly oversized "member." Afterwards, Ferdinand said, "I don't know about you, but I feel violated!"

Ferdinand brought his new DSLR and we both snapped photos like mad while several men behind us yelled out suggestive and lewd remarks at every bare-breasted woman who marched by. By the end of the parade, I found that I'd taken over 1,000 photos. I had a little trouble zooming in and zooming out, and consequently had to delete quite a few photos of armpits. But with ruthless, and I do mean ruthless, cutting, I narrowed it down to 372 pictures. Now I'm thinking about trying to sell some of them.

Every year, the Mermaid Parade outdoes itself. I'm still hearing "Dancing Queen" in my mind, and seeing the whole cheerfully outrageous crew cavorting by. Let's keep Coney Island weird!