New York Moves to Shorten Street Festivals
Source: New York Times
New York parades are known for their flamboyance and bombast, and whether it’s the Macy’s balloons, the outlandish Puerto Rican Day, or the Carnival celebrations, tens of thousands of residents turnout for them in high style.
But now, the Police Department is demanding that parade marchers take it down a notch.
On Monday, the department announced that starting on April 1, the city’s parades must cut the distances they cover by 25 percent — and also not be more than five hours long. The scaled-down celebrations will cost $3.1 million less for police presence, the department said, and will help it avoid cuts in “essential police services,” like investigating crime and terrorism threats.
Citywide, parade organizers quickly did the calculations while digesting the news.
Would Macy’s have to ax the Dora the Explorer balloon? Would Carnival organizers have to hold back throngs of bikini-clad women from shimmying down Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway? Would marching bands have to take up speed walking?
None of the answers were immediately clear. Actually, one was. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade may be the city’s biggest, in terms of national recognition, but it already clocks in at under two hours, according to a spokesman, Orlando Veras.
Mr. Veras said that it was too early to determine a possible new or shortened route for the parade. But he said that Macy’s would work closely with the police to hew to the new rules.
Last year, he said, the Macy’s parade bypassed Broadway for the first time in its history because portions of it are now closed around Times Square. “Like I said, we’re used to change here,” Mr. Veras said.
But other parade organizers wondered just how the police would put the new rules into effect. All parades in the city must receive permits from the police, which specify the route and start time of the event.
“I personally was wondering, how are they going to do this?” said Arthur Finn, co-chairman of Heritage of Pride, which produces the LGBT Pride March, traditionally a six-hour event. “If it’s 5 o’clock and ten of thousands of people are on the street, are they going to say, ‘O.K., you’re going to have to go home now?’ ”
Madelyn Lugo, a spokeswoman for the Puerto Rican Day Parade, said her organization had already shortened its march by two hours, starting at 11 a.m. and now ending at 5 p.m., at the Police Department’s behest. Before that, she said, each marching group or organization could invite hundreds of marchers. Now, she said, the cap is 50 people each. “It’s going to be hard because of the amount of participants we have,” she said. “I don’t think we can accommodate those people in five hours.”
Norman Siegel, the civil rights lawyer, said the new restrictions should be challenged in court. “New York City should not be balancing its budget by cutting historical First Amendment activities,” he said.
Hidden losses
New Yorkers love their parades. The sexy costumes and music are only one part of the festivities. But it’s also the attendees who make up part of the energy, even if they are bound by miles of crowd control barricades for some events and do nothing more than stand on the curb and be good solid spectators.
Shorting the parades will mean a few things to a lot of people, namely, less mesh railing in some neighborhoods, fewer post-parade cleanups, and of course a lot less hoopla.
Several city officials, however, said cuts to parades made sense, given the dire financial times.
Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler noted that his boss, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that New Yorkers could not afford a tax increase and that “we can’t take our eyes off the ball when it comes to keeping crime low.”
He added that whittling the size and duration of parades was preferable to downsizing the Police Department.
Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., the Queens Democrat who is chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said, “It sounds like a reasonable attempt to cut overtime costs at an agency which has no place left to cut.” And Councilman James Vacca, a Bronx Democrat and the chairman of the Transportation Committee, said it was “something we should talk about” as long as the cuts were “implemented with some sensitivity.”
But Mr. Vacca also suggested that the city show some flexibility, rather than applying a blanket 25 percent cut — perhaps 10 percent for some, and 30 percent for others, depending on the significance of each parade.
One major marching event that will not be immediately affected is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which takes place on March 17, before the new rules take effect. The parade has a particularly eminent grand marshal this year: Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner.
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My Take: I’ve got nothing attached to the idea of shortening New York’s street festivals and parades. We’ve got our own version of them out here in Los Angeles. There’s the Rose Parade and it’s miles of city barricades and drunken New Year’s Even revilers that over the streets of Pasadena each year, and, on the opposite end of town, the impossible traffic jams caused by the throngs of crazies in outrageous Halloween costumes walking the streets of Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s all madness, but it’s the best part of our madness and shortening the length of these events, whether they are in L.A. or New York, probably won’t make them any less exciting or maddening, depending on how you view the.
Personally, I’d like to see the city of New York do more about it’s traffic problems as a way to cut costs. If more people were to learn to drive NY streets a little more efficiently, it would be faster to get from one end of town to another. Even a boost in motorcycle driving school NY courses would be helpful, because perhaps more people would ditch the cars and put smaller “vehicles” on the road, like mopeds and fuel efficient street bikes.
By the way, a lot of these festivals and parades are getting so exclusive and expensive you need the best concert tickets scalper in America to get a couple of seats. Some sport tickets to the best games in town are easier to get than Rose Bowl seats after a certain time of year, and many buy their seats on a mark up of some $40-$100 dollars from face value.
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