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The Grand Chinatown Parade
Mar. 2nd, 2010 03:01 amSan Francisco's Chinese New Year parade is an Event, and this year I lucked out: A friend had tickets for the bleachers near the reviewing stand. (That's the tent with the red lanterns.) It was a chilly evening, even though it had started out sunny -- or rather, I was stupidly a little under-dressed. Still, it was a lot of fun. There were slithering serpentine dragons, being danced by kids and adults. There were many lions leaping. There were richly embroidered costumes. There were the Eight Immortals.
I was surprised and charmed to find, for an Event billed as one of the top parades in the world, that it felt like a hometown affair. Local schools, mainly ones that had Chinese immersion programs, fielded scores of children aged 5 through 18. The San Francisco Police Department had a Lion Dance team.
Local politicians showed up sitting on the backs of open-top vintage cars, often with kids and friends in tow. The Fire Department was there, with a fire-truck. And Sunset Scavenger, our local trash-removal company, came complete with a dragon built out of recycled trash...
The kids had the adorability factor. Where we were was at the end of the parade route, and they were clearly tired. But they gamely carried on, bewildered and enthralled.
We left towards the end, and walked back down the parade route, watching the last event: a 100-person dragon dancing energetically in circles as it moved down the street, amid loud strings of a thousand fire-crackers.
I was surprised and charmed to find, for an Event billed as one of the top parades in the world, that it felt like a hometown affair. Local schools, mainly ones that had Chinese immersion programs, fielded scores of children aged 5 through 18. The San Francisco Police Department had a Lion Dance team.
Local politicians showed up sitting on the backs of open-top vintage cars, often with kids and friends in tow. The Fire Department was there, with a fire-truck. And Sunset Scavenger, our local trash-removal company, came complete with a dragon built out of recycled trash...
The kids had the adorability factor. Where we were was at the end of the parade route, and they were clearly tired. But they gamely carried on, bewildered and enthralled.
We left towards the end, and walked back down the parade route, watching the last event: a 100-person dragon dancing energetically in circles as it moved down the street, amid loud strings of a thousand fire-crackers.
