![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Everybody's parade
Aug. 22nd, 2011 12:16 pmOn the way home from writing group yesterday, I stumbled into the city's Puerto Rico day parade. I love parades, so I stopped and watched for awhile.
I really hope there were no emergencies in our city yesterday.
I knew we had a big Puerto Rican population, but man, the city really turned out for this one. (We have ethnic pride parades every other weekend in everything but winter, it seems. We have a really diverse population, which is pretty cool.) It started with the police cars. Then then police motorcycles. Then the walking police. The police color guard. The police cadets. The police van. The sheriff's cars. The county police cars. The K-9 unit car. The correctional facility truck. The correctional facility prisoner transport van. The customs and immigration truck. The SWAT team armored transport.
The fire trucks. The walking firefighters. The firefighter color guard. The Civil Air Patrol. About six vans from the substance abuse hospice. The mayor. The city council. People not on the city council but running for city council. Our congressman. An entire float dedicated to our congressman.
This all interspersed with the usual dance squads, classic cars, church-built floats, bicycle fleets, community groups, random dudes driving with a random flag stuck somewhere. And one old guy with a bright yellow bicycle labeled "taxi" wearing a beer helmet filled with pepsi and a Groucho Marx fake nose.
After about 40 minutes, I was hot and thirsty, so I continued on home. But I could hear them still going for at least another 20 minutes. Impressive.
I really hope there were no emergencies in our city yesterday.
I knew we had a big Puerto Rican population, but man, the city really turned out for this one. (We have ethnic pride parades every other weekend in everything but winter, it seems. We have a really diverse population, which is pretty cool.) It started with the police cars. Then then police motorcycles. Then the walking police. The police color guard. The police cadets. The police van. The sheriff's cars. The county police cars. The K-9 unit car. The correctional facility truck. The correctional facility prisoner transport van. The customs and immigration truck. The SWAT team armored transport.
The fire trucks. The walking firefighters. The firefighter color guard. The Civil Air Patrol. About six vans from the substance abuse hospice. The mayor. The city council. People not on the city council but running for city council. Our congressman. An entire float dedicated to our congressman.
This all interspersed with the usual dance squads, classic cars, church-built floats, bicycle fleets, community groups, random dudes driving with a random flag stuck somewhere. And one old guy with a bright yellow bicycle labeled "taxi" wearing a beer helmet filled with pepsi and a Groucho Marx fake nose.
After about 40 minutes, I was hot and thirsty, so I continued on home. But I could hear them still going for at least another 20 minutes. Impressive.
