Brooklyn’s annual West Indian Day Parade preserved Monday, with masquerading revelers in colorful, eye-popping costumes turning out to Eastern Parkway despite the pouring rain.
“I’ve been waiting for this all year,” said Keiandra Blair, 18, of Brooklyn who marched in the parade for the first time.
“Rain or sun, I’m still dancing. Nothing is going to stop me. That’s our culture,” said Blair, who is of Guyanese descent and wore a bikini-style ensemble with blue and white-feathered wings and a blue and white headdress.
Raindrops started to fall shortly before the parade kicked off to smaller-than usual crowds at 11 a.m., and continued throughout the day.
At some moments the downpour was so bad floats had to halt their processions. Vendors huddled together under their tents to keep dry and warm as gusts of wind pushed fat drops of rain sideways onto their tin-foiled and plastic-wrapped offerings. Dismayed marchers were seen carrying their costumes for fear of getting them soaked in the rain.
Sanitation trucks on clean-up duty made their way down the Parkway around 4 p.m. — two hours before the parade was scheduled to end.
“I have never seen it this empty before. It’s a bust. It’s a washout,” Crown Heights resident Lenore Gyton, originally from Trinidad told the Post. “The costumes will get wet. They will get heavy. You won’t even get see the beauty of them.”
But the gloomy forecast could not deter parade die-hards.
“It got soggy, but I’m still standing,” Sarah Samuel, 23, of Philadelphia said of her homemade costume — white angel’s wings, one of which was so wet it was folding into itself.
“No one is going to rain on my parade. I’m still having a good time,” Samuel said.
“The environment is electrifying – it’s on fire,” said 27-year-old Mischa Clarke who was set to march in the parade along the two-mile route, which started at Ralph Avenue and Eastern Parkway and ended at Grand Army Plaza.
Clarke, a Brooklyn resident, donned an elaborate pink, yellow and purple-feathered costume during the parade that celebrates Caribbean culture.
“I love it, it’s fun,” she said. “When the music starts I’m in another zone…I love dressing up in costumes.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio and wife Chirlane McCray were similarly undaunted by the rain. De Blasio even ditched his umbrella partway through their procession.
“We’re not worried about a little rain right? Rain’s not going to stop us!” de Blasio said to attendees during a breakfast at Lincoln Terrace Park ahead of the parade.
“Dance between the rain drops and celebrate this beautiful culture,” the mayor said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo also marched in the parade and told reporters “it is one of my favorite parades.”
“New York wouldn’t be New York without the West Indian community,” Cuomo said, adding that the rain was “God’s way of blessing the parade.”
The governor also took the opportunity to remember his former aide, Carey Gabay, who was fatally shot in 2015 when he got caught in gang crossfire during J’Ouvert – a yearly street fest held at dawn before the West Indian Day Parade.
“We announced five scholarships today in his honor,” said Cuomo.
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh and Natalie Musumeci
