Photo Essay: Mermaids on Parade

If asked to consider the home of a mermaid, the immediate vision of a twinkling undersea utopia where doe-eyed Disney-esque creatures cavort with their animal playmates likely springs to mind. Any New Yorker, however, can tell you that a mermaid’s natural habitat is a paradise of another kind. It is greasy and gritty, cluttered with the clamor of the F train overhead mingling with neighborhood childrens' shrieks and the whirr of carnival rides. The mermaid herself is tattooed and bawdy, waving to admirers from her perch atop a classic convertible. She subsists for this one glorious day on hot dogs, corn dogs and every imaginable battered and fried delectable. She dances with her sisters and children to the music of ragtag sequined marching bands and the roar of a wooden Cyclone. Pirates, underwater gods and floatloads of frolicking sea creatures trail in her wake as she leads them onwards past the judges to the Atlantic coast. The true home of the mermaid is Brooklyn's Coney Island, where they parade once a year in a deliciously vibrant celebration of the summer solstice.

The Mermaid Parade has always been my favorite New York event. It marks the beginning of summer and is always a riotously good time, not to mention a day ripe with photographic opportunity. Though sadly, the environment of the mermaid is threatened. Not by global warming or pollution or wayward comets, but by developers. Soon the familiar kitschy amusements of Astroland and the Coney Island boardwalk will be cleared away to make room for a more clinically commercial realm. One which will most likely be far less exciting than the imperfect urban mermaid-dwelling world we have come to know and love.

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