New York City was the Palermo of America on Monday, as Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and other luminaries marched up Fifth Avenue for the annual Columbus Day Parade.
People lined Midtown Manhattan streets to watch floats, marchers and Florentine flag-wavers. The parade, which celebrates Italian heritage and culture, is organized by the Columbus Citizens Foundation.
Prominent Italian American politicians including U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli headed up parade groups, while a singer on a box truck belted out American classics such as “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond and “Smooth” by Santana and Rob Thomas.
At the parade, A/V technician Mac Tolliver watched idly while taking his lunch break. He’s lived in New York his whole life but had never attended the parade, he said.
“[Mayor] Adams was out there? I’d like to get a little ‘boo’ in,” Tolliver said, laughing. “That guy’s in deep trouble.” Adams was charged with wire fraud and bribery in September.
The Columbus Day Parade on Oct. 14, 2024.
Tolliver observed that most of the crowd seemed to be tourists, and that vendors selling hot dogs and Italian flags were doing brisk business. Outside of Rockefeller Center, the crowd waiting in line for the Lego Store rivaled that waiting at the barricades to watch the parade.
Delivery worker Aaron Thomas stood glumly behind a hand truck loaded with quickly-thawing frozen seafood, contemplating how to cross the avenue.
“I’m supposed to be delivering seafood to a restaurant one block away,” Thomas said. “I knew this was coming but I didn’t think it was really going to start on time.”
Tolliver, the A/V worker, said he’d made sure that his day’s assignment and his train stop were both on the same side of the parade.
He said he was already aware of the new DNA analysis claiming that Christopher Columbus was not Italian, as previously believed, but in fact Spanish and Jewish.
“I believe it! But he’s not accepting it,” Tolliver said, gesturing at his colleague. “He’s Italian, so he’s not going to accept it.”
New York City's Columbus Day Parade route goes up 5th Avenue, passing St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
New York City officials and agencies also refer to Columbus Day as Italian Heritage Day. The second Monday of October is also called Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and many U.S. cities have adopted it as a replacement for celebrating the explorer. In New York City, Indigenous Peoples’ Day was marked with an event on Randall’s Island.
The New York Post reported that after City Council Italian Caucus member Justin Brannan expressed support for changing the holiday to Italian American Heritage Day, his colleague Robert Holden said Brannan should be “more focused on preserving our rich heritage, not diluting it with the trendy flavors of wokeism.”
In response, Brannan tweeted that he was enjoying the trendy flavors of wokeism, underneath a picture of a spumoni.
