Mermaid Me

The annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade on Saturday was A-MAZING! If you are unfamiliar with the Mermaid Parade, it is an annual event to celebrate the official beginning of summer, and people sign up to march dressed as mermaids, often in groups with themes. This year, our group was the Rydell High School of Fish (Grease, that is). We had Pink Salmon Ladies, we had Sea Birds, we had Bad Sandy, we had Frenchy, we had Beauty School of Fish Dropouts. And then we Grease Lighteninged and Hand Jived our way down the boardwalk and back up Surf Avenue, cameras everywhere, and people in the crowd singing along with our sound system. My favorite group was the Marie Antoinette Mermaids, complete with guillotine float. Here are a few pictures of our group:





The only decent picture of me was taken by some anonymous type A anal retentive on Flickr who reserves absolutely every single right to his or her photos and I have not been able to steal it. Yet. Though I'm in the process of hiring a detective to track this person down, break into their apartment, and steal their hard drive, just for being difficult. Seriously, what's the point of taking pictures if other people can't use them as MySpace profile pics? I'd even be willing to give this person the photo cred. But whatev, here i am, in all of my mermaid glory.

I put up some more on the MySpace, and everyone else looks great, but I mostly just look like a cross between the wicked witch of the west (at some point, green body paint really did seem like a good idea) and a slightly psycopathic weirdo with a hat made out of curlers.



HOWEVER, there were SO MANY amazing, beautiful, crazy, colorful costumes. Though it is hugely biased in favor of the naked/pastied women at the parade, if you search on flickr for "2008 Coney Island Mermaid Parade" you can get a pretty good idea of what i mean. Fantastic! God, I love this city!

Still, though. So. Fun. After the parade, we spent the next several hours drinking beer on the beach, and then the next several hours after THAT drinking beer while walking around and riding the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone. BTW, the Cyclone is the oldest, most rickety, most amazingly terrifying-because-you-are-afraid-its-going-to-collapse-under-you roller coaster in the history of the universe. If you are within 1000 miles of Coney Island and you have any love for roller coasters at all, you MUST DO IT.