Parade Man
2/5/2012
Parades occur in New York City on a very regular basis. It has become a source of street photography for me. This man shows up at about as many parades as I attend. Here he has a dragon hat for the Chinese New Year. Otherwise his threadbare clothes and colorful beard are pretty standard. I think his beard is permanently this color. And his poor little dog dresses too. This year there was a grey parrot. It was cold but the bird seemed nonplussed. I guess I’ll continue to see him as long as I go to parades.
Maybe it’s time ‘parade man’ went viral. He looks like quite a character. I wonder is the pigeon any relation to the one on my post – ‘Pigeon de Paris’?
February 5, 2012 at 5:47 am
Grey parrot. It’s easy to mistake. But we all thought it was a parrot. And so cold, I thought parrots were tropical.
February 5, 2012 at 6:37 am
You are a great writer.please keep it up.I like image in your blog
February 5, 2012 at 6:20 am
Thanks so much for your comment. I cannot read Arabic. So I cannot read your website. All the best.
February 5, 2012 at 6:36 am
Very nice photos! I love the topmost one.
February 5, 2012 at 10:47 am
When you said New York City, that said it all. I grew up upstate and occasionally went down, and once when I was still just a kid I saw a man dressed like an Egyptian Pharoah, with a cut out garbage can chariot and a team of stray dogs as his personal ‘horses’. He was making his way through the Bowery with a very haughty air. When I asked this woman nearby who he was, she shrugged and said, “Ramses II”.
That same day I came to an intersection which had an unusually long traffic signal. After a minute or two I turned to this old lady and asked, “Have you been waiting here long?” She snorted and without looking at me said, “All my life.”
On that same occasion I was in our host’s apartment lobby (and we’re not talking the Upper East Side here) waiting for the elevator. Elevators were kind of a novelty for me, so when the doors opened I said to a very old woman inside, “Is this going ‘up’?” She was wearing a bathrobe and had a towel wrapped around her head and was smoking a cigarette. She looked me up and down and then said, “No. I thought we’d go sideways this time.”
I love your stories and love your photos so much, doctor.
February 5, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Victor – I saw this guy at Chinese New Year! I was at East Broadway when he was wheeling his pram though I didn’t see the parrot. Great images!
February 5, 2012 at 6:24 pm
What marvelous images and story. The bird is an African Grey. It really was too cold for him out there. Tropical birds acclimate if they are kept outside in a protected area for most of the Winter, but this little guy could not survive for long in freezing temperatures. What an eccentric and colorful character you’ve captured here! Thanks for sharing.
February 5, 2012 at 10:53 pm
BTW, I shared your page on FB: http://www.facebook.com/glweaver.
February 5, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Victor wonderful back story about greenbeard. I will keep my eye out for him during my next NYC parade.
February 7, 2012 at 12:29 pm
He apparently calls himself the “First Lady of Coney Island.” I’ve heard his name is Jose.
September 11, 2012 at 1:36 am