Here’s a couple of wenches. I’m not exaggerating. There were hundreds of burly, beer drinking sports fans dressed up in satin and ruffles marching in brigades down Broad Street. They started at 10:00 a.m. And by evening, when the parade was over, when we were coming out of the South Street restaurant three miles away, they had broken rank, but in threes and fours they were still walking around, drinking beer, festooned in wench garb. So many men in drag with three-day stubble. (Photo: iriskh, posted on flickr, some rights reserved
FINALLY, we made it downtown on New Years Day for the Mummer’s Parade. Seven hours of eye candy. I’ve never seen so much satin. So many feathers! So many work boots spray-painted gold. So many straight men in drag.
It makes the Gay Pride Parade in New York look like a procession of bankers. Our friends, Robin and Tom, jaded Brooklynites, told us it topped the Carribbean Day parade, with the added bonus that there were no assaults with deadly weapons. At least not this year. But the Mummers Parade is affectionately known as The Two Street Brawl.
It starts on Two Street and ends on Two Street. I’ve heard they’ve cleaned it up a lot. No more curbside peeing, no firearms, women show up in the string bands now — a few. There were viewing stands, lunch trucks, porta-potties, and about a hundred twenty-five thousand people came out on a breezy, COLD New Years Day to watch 20,000 costumed mummers strut their stuff. (Photo: anjan chatterjee, anjan58, flickr, some rights reserved)
It’s called the gayest straight event in the country. (photo: anjan chatterjee, anjan58, flickr; some rights reserved)
I snapped some photos with my phone, and of course they came out looking like photos an ungifted photographer would snap with her phone. So I went on flickr and found some images that did the parade justice. I am so grateful for the people more gifted than I who are willing to let me share their images.
Eyeballs buzzing from long exposure to the eye candy equivalent of Jujubes, we headed toward South Street, in search of quintessential cheesesteak sandwiches for our Brooklyn friends. Jim’s Steaks had a line out the door and around the block. So we settled for a pub across the street. Sub-standard fare. I got a chicken cheesesteak — one of my favorite culinary oxymorons — that reminded me of the last time I tried to chew cardboard. (Don’t ask.) Robin and Tom don’t know any better, and they didn’t complain. But Jack and I wanted to do something to rescue this New Year’s celebration meal. That’s when I remembered a little place just down the street, where we stopped in one night and found three things on the menu: butterfly chips (look at the ruffles on those wench costumes and imagine they’re one long frilly potato chip), cheese fries, and funnel cakes. That’s where we headed for dessert. Lo and behold! The menu had expanded. We closed out Mummer’s Day with a perfect dessert:
Fried Oreos.
What more fitting way to cap off the Mummer’s Parade that with fried Oreos. I want to say they made me gag. But I’d be lying. They were aMAZing. (Photo: foodistablog, flickr)
It’s beginning to feel a lot like Groundhog Day. I’m premiering two new fractured fairy tales at the Folklore Society of Greater Washington Mid-Winter Festival, which takes place on Saturday, February Two. Look for the Groundhog Edition of What Snoo! in your inbox in the days to come. If you’re not signed up for my newsletter and you want to be, shoot me an email to that effect and I’ll take care of it: megan@meganhicks.com
Megan, where does this happen? How fantastic! What a boon for the satin and sequin industry. Makes even giant puppet parades seem a bit tame.
Lila Henry
Lila — It’s every New Years Day, smack up the middle of Broad Street, to City Hall. The Mummer’s Museum is on South Second Street, and I think that’s the neighborhood where most of their club meeting rooms are, too. They’re already practicing and designing their costumes for 2014. In Philadlephia, it’s been a tradition, since colonial times, to raise hell on Broad Street on New Years Day. 1901 was the first parade that was formally organized, offering prizes. It’s been canceled three or four times — once because World War I was going on, once in the Depression because there was no money for prizes. In 2003, I think, it was cancelled because of weather. But usually, it happens, come rain or shine, hell or high water.
For one teeny moment you made me want a fried oreo.
Must see Mummers Parade…….
Bill would attack it with gusto. You would have “just a nibble” of his, and then you’d demand your own. That’s what I’m betting.
The few pictures you showed were amazing! What costumes.
Norris, if Cirque du Soleil were kitsch, they still wouldn’t be as over the top as the Mummers. And the sheer VOLUME of sequins and frou-frou and flamboyance. Just thinking about it, I can’t help grinning.