Camels in Brooklyn...

I awoke Sunday afternoon to an unusual clammer coming through the window. It was just slightly more noisy than usual, slightly more crowded in the air. It was pushing one o'clock and I writhed in bed, sleep still tightly wrapped around me. I had brunch plans with our manager, Ami, and nothing, not even the possibility of sleeping through a hangover, can keep me from brunch and chit-chat. I texted her that I was up, slithered out of bed, into last night's clothes, contacts lenses, shoes, keys phone... and out the door.

The sidewalks felt unusually busy as I walked to her apartment, and in my stupor I began to notice that the streets were blocked off with police barricades. NYPD stood guard at each intersection, and though I casually assumed that I had slept through a terrorist attack (something I was not prepared to digest emotionally pre-coffee), few on the street seemed phased. A father with gold chains around his thick neck threw a football to his pudgy son, elderly Italian women were asking an officer something, and people were very calmly waiting at the entrance to Ami's building. She came down and we continued toward the restaurant. Before I could inquire about what the hell was happening, it all became clear before us: Crowds, Flags, Banners, Floats, Marching Bands, Goats, Sheep, Llamas, Motorcycles, the borough president, Miss New York, white haired women in lawn chairs, kids in church clothes, impatient fathers with the game on their headphones... It was the starting point for the Three Kings Day (Día de los Reye) Parade... and the best part, the best fucking thing... is that right behind the staunch bearded men dressed as the three wise men, right there on the concrete in Brooklyn beside the freeway overpass, stood three Camels! Three big ass camels casually chewing their cud...

Confused hipsters wandered through with laundry bags, trying to make sense of everything, taking pictures with the camels (hipsters dont smile when photographed with camels! - how can you not smile at a camel???)... Ami and I happily stood there for a long while and watched the procession. I debated running home and grabbing my camera and I'm sorry to say I didn't, but it was one of those things that seems lost from American culture, where a community actively participates in something together... and it felt natural and genuine, like the parade was covering some very well worn ground. It was a relief to see such a thing, I'm so glad it still exists somewhere.