Ragamuffin Parade coincides with Glad-Handing Parade for 51st Year in a Row
*Satire Ahead!*
Celebrating it’s fifty-first “year of smiles” along Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the adorable Ragamuffin Day Parade has yet again been accidentally booked on the same weekend as the Political Glad-Handing Parade. The Ragamuffin Parade is an adorable event in which local tykes dress in fanciful costumes and march down the avenue to cheering parents and families. Conflicting with the event’s innocence yet again, however, is a series of jogging politicians and their staffers known locally as the Glad-Handing Parade.
Said Deborah B., a parent who was putting the finishing touches on a unicorn costume for their four-year-old daughter, Elouise: “We’re about 10 minutes away from starting. Ellie is so excited to be marching again this year, she was a Doughnut last year, she loved doughnuts. This year it’s unicorns.” Reacting to cheers emanating from down the street, Deborah explained, “That’s not for the kids. That’s for the politicians. They already set off in the first wave.”
“Who are all these grown-ups without kids?” — Natalie D., age six, dressed as Wonder Woman
Two Parades with a Long History
Ragamuffin Parades come from Thanksgiving ‘begging’ traditions at the turn of the 20th century. The Bay Ridge version was spearheaded by local church and community organizers as a way of taking the edge off the stress and fear that came with having to deal with beggars and crime in the late 1960s. It also provided a convenient gathering filled to the brim with good-cheer and plentiful throngs of voting-age parents mere weeks before a general election. It has been traditionally held as a sister-event to the equally storied Third Avenue Festival. The Ragamuffin Parade is an avowedly non-political event that is administered by multiple politicians.
The Glad-Handing Parade, on the other hand, is rooted in a much older and more deeply entrenched tradition of politicians enjoying meeting constituents without any clear benefit to themselves. The Bay Ridge variant originated in the 1960's as a way of taking the edge off of having to door-knock and canvas for the votes of engaged parents, who are notoriously hard to pander to without blatantly co-opting children. The Glad-Handing Parade officially celebrates the establishment of “family-values politicking” in the 1960s and is traditionally (and accidentally) held at exactly the same time as the Ragamuffin Parade.
While some see the Glad-Handing Parade as an unwanted nuisance, it has its charms. It hearkens back to a simpler time of pre-internet civic grandstanding (literally involving a grandstand). Even today, donors of $2,000 and up are given charmingly old-school perks (literally involving schools).
One example is the sale of prominent advertising on sign-up forms. These are then freely and generously delivered by public and private schools to over 25,000 attending children. Entire hospitals have used the parade to sway parents into preferring their services. Fundraising is often robust: at least $14,000 dollars has been raised this year for the parade by major sponsors alone. The parade often involves such expenses as free chairs, free property usage, free sanitation and police presence, (probably) free use of the catering hall Colleen Golden manages, etc. However, fundraising is still too low to qualify for reporting anything in non-profit disclosure forms.
Fifty-One Years of Photo-Ops
“I love coming down here to the Glad-Handing Parade,” said a local political staffer who wished to remain anonymous. “I’m too old to march in the Ragamuffin parade, but for the Glad-Handing parade, I’m perfect. I need only recite two or three scripted lines of small talk with the parents, figure out what costume their kid is wearing and compliment it, and then invite them to come back tomorrow for the 3rd Avenue festival where I can really hit them with the campaign [literature]. Fish in a barrel.”
“It’s so great to have a parade that’s totally free from all the ugly parade politics that goes on in this city,” said Alex Smithe, a member of the local Policemen’s Benevolent Association Marching Band, which was donating it’s time to both parades simultaneously. “For one, it’s about the kids. For the other, it’s about the kids of important donors who get to win bicycles for Best Costume.”
Said local photographer and freelance journalist Clementine Lane, “Honestly, I’m just here for new photos. I’ll just change some sentences around from 2015’s article and post that when I get back to the office. Nobody reads it. It’s a fifty-year tradition, but parents just want to see their kid in the paper.” Continuing another local tradition, the Glad-Handing parade has purchased a full-page ad next to the Ragamuffin story in local papers, with photos of all the local politicians prominently featured.
“I had to explain my costume to four different men in suits today. Really they just wanted to talk to mom though.” — James M., age nine, dressed as a Jawa from Star Wars.
From their perch at the rented grandstand at 74th street, Colleen Golden and her husband State Senator Marty Golden oversaw the festivities of the Ragamuffin and Glad-Handing parades, respectively. Marty Golden, who seemed to be suffering from an unusual skin rash, congratulated the participating politicians who shook the most hands by awarding them free unusually-heavy empty briefcases.
Colleen Golden, who was helping to oversee the entirely unrelated Ragamuffin Parade, awarded brand-new bicycles to the most inventively-dressed kids. She was sure to thank the donors. “What a lovely unicorn costume!” Colleen beamed. “Please enjoy this age-appropriate hundred-dollar bicycle, made possible by our generous, five-hundred-dollar tier supporters.”
