Parading in the Chinatown Street for the Year of the Horse [PHOTOS]
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Lunar New Year Parade 2014, view from the bridge;
Since 1999, the Better Chinatown Society has been organizing the annual Lunar New Year parade in the streets of Chinatown. Yesterday afternoon was the fifteenth year running and crowded as ever. The attendance estimate usually hovers around the half-million mark, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the number was higher this time. After all, it was unseasonably warm.
The whole lot participated in the steady march – truck-pulled floats, dragons, Chinese opera singers, Boy Scouts, gay activists – set to a constant drum-and-symbol syncopation. Our journey in chronicling began on Elizabeth Street, just outside headquarters of the 5th Precinct. The entire spit of roadway was easily covered in a half-inch of confetti and streamers. Kids slid and showered themselves in the discarded bits and pieces; quite a sight.
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However, the perch from the Manhattan Bridge is always the best view of the action. Only a handful of enterprising photographers set up camp here to get the bird’s eye view of the parade snaking eastward on East Broadway. Just don’t tell your friends…