People protesting something going on in Turkey.A crazy guy dancing with the molding from a van window, I think. He usually does this by the large black cube at Astor Place.This guy was taking a break from dancing to the tune of a nearby Buddhist meditation group. Shortly after this, he took a bag of trash from the public bin and walked away with it.This is Francis Virella. He wants to make it big as an artist.
Today, there were all sorts of things going on in Union Square. We just happened to be walking through and saw a crazy guy dancing, another crazy guy stealing a bag of garbage from a public trash can, had a conversation with a guy that wants to make it big as an artist, and then wandered into a dance parade. It was a lot of fun, and the random, amazingly entertaining things that you can just stumble into is one of the reasons I love New York City.
For the first time since I was a kid, I was able to check out the Chinese New Year celebration in New York City. It didn’t quite live up to my memory, but I have a feeling that we missed the best part of it. There was already confetti all over the ground. Next year we’ll have to go check things out earlier in the day. I must have gotten bad information about the start times of the events.
We wandered around Chinatown for a while but didn’t see much. At first, we only found one lonely dragon dancer.
Then, we passed through the Roosevelt Park area. There were some booths set up selling Chinese New Year decorations. There was also a stage where performers were singing traditional Chinese songs. I don’t understand Mandarin, so I have no idea what the songs meant, but it sounded pleasant.
We were about to leave Chinatown when we stumbled onto Mott Street. It seems as though that’s where all the fun was. The place was packed with crowds of people shooting off tubes of confetti and generally having a good time.
Like I said, I’m pretty sure we missed most of the festivities due to bad information, but it was still a lot of fun to go down to Chinatown and look around for a few hours. We managed to get in some shopping while we were there too!
