CARNIVAL DREAMS
Carib fest nixed again, but spirits still soar in B’klyn
What’s Labor Day in Brooklyn without oxtails, roti, sugar cane and coconuts, says Evelyn Cooper, a Trinidadian native who sells the popular fare every year at the New York Caribbean Carnival Parade.
And just because this year’s parade is canceled — again — over coronavirus concerns, don’t expect Cooper to stay at home with her specialties.
“We’re not happy about it at all,” Cooper, 72, said Thursday. “But people are still going to come out.”
When Cooper isn’t at the parade, she sells her wares at the corner of Utica Ave. and Eastern Parkway. She also travels to festivals in other states. A festival in Boston is coming up in a few weeks, which she plans to attend.
“After Boston, there’s Labor Day,” she said, shrugging. “The city makes money from this festival. I love to do it.”
The West Indian American Day Carnival Association announced last week that it was cancelling its parade, commonly known as the West Indian Day Parade, for the second year in a row, offering, instead, a reduced three-day festival of virtual and in-person events, adhering to COVID-19 precautions.
That’s all well and good, said merchant Patrick Snagg, 60, but the better-safe-than-sorry decision is taking money out of his pocket.
Snagg said he normally sells his bracelets and necklaces from a table along the treelined divider of Eastern Parkway, where he says he makes about $50 on a weekday and $100 on a Friday or Saturday.
But Snagg said he makes anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 over Labor Day weekend at the parade, where he has been selling for almost 30 years.
“I took a big loss last year,” Snagg said about the cancellation. “But there’s a reason. We can always make money, but we don’t always have lives. Life comes before everything.”
The cancellation comes amid a series of New York City “homecoming” concerts to celebrate the Big Apple’s recovery from the pandemic.
Mayor de Blasio was asked why some events have been allowed to proceed while organizers pulled the plug on others.
“Every organization had to make its own choice. And we respect the choices,” de Blasio said Wednesday. “Some organizations have said they want to have their events again. Some want to do a modified version. Some are postponing it to 2022. There’s not one way of doing things. When it comes to the concerts, they are outdoors. They are for vaccinated folks only. We are definitely encouraging mask use. But I really want to emphasize that the whole key here is vaccination.”
Even without the parade in Brooklyn, the spirit of carnival is in the air. Patrick Bailey, 45, who is from the Virgin Islands, will have to find another venue to sell his assorted gemstones, but not even the pandemic can dampen the Caribbean vibe.
“It’s just the energy, the vibe, the people,” Bailey said. “You always run into somebody that you haven’t seen in the past 5, 10, 15 years. Always. Never fails. So it’s more about the spirit, it’s about the feeling of oneness — fleeting feeling though. It doesn’t last for long, but at least on that one day, that one weekend, it feels like a community.”
Still, Bailey said it won’t be the same without the parade.
“I miss it, I do,” he said. “You can smell Labor Day coming. You can see the activity in the stores, the different bands. You see the costume making taking place. You see everything becoming a little bit frenetic. You see the energy building up, and then Labor Day is like the crescendo of everything. So I miss it.
“It’s been two years, two miserable years. So hopefully next year it will be back bigger and better. It’s just going to be like a big release, people will be so happy. But people are still going to come out. They’re still going to observe. They were here last year. People were still up and about last year, so this is going to be the same.
“They’ll be hanging out, having parties, like tailgate parties, lighting up the barbecue grill, just having fun.”