Tenants and workers peered out of the windows in their buildings to gawk and shout at a river of marching bands, youth baseball players, Girl Scouts, and artists flowing through the streets of Bushwick during the third annual Bushwick Day Parade.
“This is my favorite day of the year,” said Nadine Whitted, District Manager of Community Board 4. Whitted and members of the board’s Civic and Religion Committee helped organize the event. “It is a parade to show that our children are positive. Our community is united and we’re committed to doing positive things.”
More than 200 Bushwick residents gathered at Noll Field for the start of the festivities celebrating Brooklyn-Queens Day. Student musicians from the P.S. 274 Kosciusko School Marching Band kicked off the parade, which featured members of the Quebradillas Baseball Organization, the 83rd Precinct Youth Officers, the Hope Gardens Community Center, Mothers Against Gangs and the Audrey Johnson and Horace Green Day Care Centers.
“I don’t miss any of the community programs,” Reverend Michael Clarke, said President of the 83rd Precinct Clergy Council. “This is very important, a once a year thing.”
The parade, drawing a larger crowd than the previous two years, was also longer, cutting across Flushing and Irving streets before snaking back on Hancock Street and Bushwick Avenue and ending at the Hope Gardens Community Center on 422 Central Avenue.
A number of artists living in Bushwick and East Williamsburg participated in the parade for the first time as well to promote Bushwick Open Studios, a three-day arts festival held every June.
