Fortunately, in New York City, there is no shortage of ways to thaw out when the mercury dips below the freezing mark. Though Starbucks has pretty much taken over the city, there are still plenty of cool independent coffee shops downtown, serving up steaming hot beverages. Theaters are great places to cuddle up. And if you’re really, really cold, you can try to do what I did yesterday, which is to sit in front of a 2,000-degree furnace full of molten glass.

Yesterday was open house day at UrbanGlass, which is a very large glassworking studio in an unassuming building on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn. During open houses, staff members take the public on free guided tours of the facility, which includes areas for making glass beads, neon signs, lamps, mosaics, fused pieces, stained glass panels, sandblasted pieces, and, of course, blown and kilnworked glass. Each tour concludes with a glassblowing demonstration by professional artists in the very toasty “hot shop,” where the furnaces and glory holes (or superheated gas chambers, used to keep the glass hot while manipulating it) are located.

The tour was a very warm, and yet very cool, way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I learned so much about glassworking, and the studio environment made me feel creative; I sort of want to take a class at some point in the future, though UrbanGlass’s education programs are, at least for the time being, pretty far from fitting into my budget. Maybe I’ll return sometime for a weekend workshop when I have a little money to spend, and make a paperweight or a mug. There’s something so appealing about the idea of making a functional object completely from scratch, from raw — and super-hot — materials.

UrbanGlass also has a few objects for sale from its resident artists — also out of my price range, but certainly beautiful. I browsed the selection before the tour.

The tour began in a small room with a few tables and propane burners, like the ones that I used in high school chemistry class. The burners are used for crafting small pieces of glass into beads. The molten glass is wrapped around a stick-like tool and rotated in a gas flame until surface tension causes it to adopt a spherical shape. After only a few seconds away from the flame, the glass cools and stiffens enough to be removed from the tool (which leaves a hole in the center, for stringing the bead). Color can be added to a bead by using small tools to attach blobs of differently colored molten glass to the outside of the bead, then returning it to the flame, where surface tension again comes into play as the blobs melt seamlessly into the surface of the existing bead, creating spots of color. Highly experienced glassworkers can create very elaborate, precise beads using these and other techniques.

Our next stop was the “flat shop,” where we lingered for only a minute because a stained glass workshop was in session. We saw students hammering out precisely shaped pieces of glass to fit the designs that they had sketched out for their panels. The tour guide also showed us curved glass sushi plates (one of which was unfinished), created by the processes of fusing and slumping. Fusing is the process of heating multiple pieces of glass in a kiln until they bond, which allows the artist to create depth. Slumping involves placing a superheated piece of glass into a mold and letting gravity take over, which creates curves like those found in bowls and plates. Edges can then be filed down and made smooth with a grinder. The finished sushi plate featured an elegant curve, smooth edges, and layers of color in the foreground and background.

From the flat shop, we headed off to the hot shop, where we were seated in rows and given safety goggles to protect us from the heat of the furnaces, in which the molten glass is stored until ready to use.

Our tour guide narrated while two professional artists created a vase, with one serving as the other’s assistant. The lead artist shaped the piece and regularly returned it to the glory hole to keep it hot and malleable, and his assistant (who had taken the lead on the vase that the two had created just prior to our arrival) followed his instructions to inflate the glass by blowing into the pipe onto which it had been gathered, or to smooth it out with a wooden paddle. The two worked together to perforate the glass at the point where it needed to be broken off the pipe, to widen the opening in the vase, and to catch it with heavy firefighters’ mitts when it was ready to be struck off.

The glass is shaped by blowing into the pipe, tilting the glass towards the floor to let gravity elongate it, and rolling and squashing it on a cool sheet of steel called a marver:

(These photos are slightly blurry, due in part to my sitting on the third row and having to shoot through people’s heads, and in part to the motion of the glassworkers and the intense light from the white-hot furnaces.)

The glass has to be kept above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, to keep it from stiffening and cracking while being worked on, so the lead artist (with the help of a heat shield) frequently returns it to the glory hole to keep it white-hot and fluid. A handheld blowtorch occasionally serves in a pinch.

On the few occasions when the pipe becomes too hot to handle, the artists douse it with water and immediately resume working with it.

The whole process of creating the vase took no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but the artists did not have a moment to rest during that whole time; molten glass has to be kept in constant motion to prevent the effects of gravity from distorting the piece, so the artists kept rolling the vase back and forth while they were shaping it with tools, in between trips to the glory hole. Here you can see the red-hot, flared opening of the smoky-gray vase, as the lead artist rolled it to maintain its symmetry:

At the end of the process of creating a vase or another blown glass item, the artist doesn’t have long to admire his handiwork; the object has to be rushed off to a 1,000-degree oven, which, once full, is slowly cooled over a period of 25-30 hours to prevent the objects within from cracking under the stress of sudden temperature changes. But for the sake of comparing the nearly-finished vase to the glowing, gooey lump it had been at the beginning of its life, here’s a very blurry shot of the shaped glass coming out of the glory hole for some finishing touches:

At the end of the guided tour and demonstration, we returned to the reception area, where a completely darkened room currently houses a small exhibition, Matsukaze, by the Japanese-born artist and architect Yumi Kori. The exhibition consists of glass objects flickering with electricity (or at least the illusion of it), and it produced one of my new favorite photos.

It looks like some kind of luminous sea creature in one of those darkened rooms of an aquarium meant to simulate the bottom of the ocean.

Now, when I’m beginning to feel gloomy about the state of New York City’s art scene, I can remember that we still have lively, functioning glassworking studios in Brooklyn, and I’ll feel just a little better.

Found it? Okay, now press “play.”

It’s a fitting song for a recap of Sunday afternoon’s adventure aboard the MTA’s Nostalgia Train. I met up with a few friends at noon at the Queens Plaza station to take advantage of this holiday treat. And just look how festive!

This was just the thing to get me out of bed on a dark, rainy Sunday: a fully operational subway train, made up of the R1-9 cars that ran in passenger service from the 1930s through the 70s, with authentic period details including vintage subway ads and classic maps.

Each December the MTA runs the Nostalgia Train several times each Sunday on the V line from Queens Plaza to the 2nd Ave station in Manhattan. Most of the train’s cars were constructed during the early 1930s, and as a result of the various degrees to which each car’s interior was modified during its life as an active passenger car, each retains the appearance of a different year or a different decade.

Just to put these cars into some context, here’s a quick but fascinating bit of subway history. Prior to 1940, there were not one but three subway systems in New York City: the Interborough Rapid Transit system (the IRT, which opened in 1904 on routes that are known today as the 1, 2, 3 and 4, 5, and 6 lines), Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (the BMT, which operated on the elevated subway lines in Brooklyn, such as today’s B, Q, and N trains), and the Independent Subway, or IND. The city opened the IND in the 1920s, and when no private operator could be found for the system, it became the first city-run subway. The IND operated on the Eighth Avenue line (today’s A, C, and E trains), the Sixth Avenue line (today’s F and V, which now share their Manhattan route with former BMT trains B and D), and various lines in the outer boroughs, including some of the underground trains in Brooklyn, the Queens Boulevard lines, and what is known today as the G train.

In 1940, the city took over the bankrupt IRT and BMT systems and began what is known to subway historians as the “unification” process of merging three subway divisions into one system. Although the original names of the three divisions are now mostly defunct (though still visible in pre-unification signs and mosaics in some stations), the differences between them are still very much a part of the subway as we know it today. These differences explain why cars on the 4, 5, and 6 trains seem smaller than cars on the lettered lines. They are smaller — the older IRT tunnels can not accommodate the wide, spacious trains that run on the former BMT and IND lines. And I have bad news for the tourist from Chicago who I once encountered in a station on Canal Street, grouching loudly about having to walk up and down staircases and around endless corners to transfer from the 6 to the N, and blaming it on New York’s obvious inferiority to Chicago. It may disappoint him to find out that the Canal Street station and others like it were not designed in a needlessly complicated manner by boneheaded New Yorkers, but were in fact unified after 1940, as some rather ingenious New Yorkers made the best of what they had to work with in creating free transfer points between previously unconnected stations and lines.

Now you know why the Times Square station is so awful. But getting back to the reason why I brought up this brief history lesson in the first place: the cars in the Nostalgia Train are all pre-unification IND cars. Until unification, each division of the subway operated its own cars of various types, but over time the fleet of IND cars, consisting of models beginning with the letter R, became the standard for the whole system. In fact, the newest car in the subway fleet, the R160, that sleek and shiny model now running on certain lines with its (frequently incorrect) electronic route display, is a descendant of the earliest IND cars.

The Nostalgia Train actually includes the very first car produced in the R1 line. Car 100, built in 1930, still has wicker seats, ceiling fans, incandescent lighting, and a dark, army-green color scheme that, perhaps more than anything else, evokes the year of its construction — a year when Italian immigrants still lived in Lower East Side tenements, gangsters rode on the running boards of cars, alcohol was illegal, jazz bands played at glamorous parties held in Midtown hotels in spite of the Depression, Coney Island was still a beloved destination for middle-class New Yorkers, and cars like this one (maybe even Car 100 itself) carried Billy Strayhorn on the A line up to Duke Ellington’s house in Harlem.

R1 cars like this one, all constructed in the first few years of the 1930s, were so reliable that many of them remained in service until around 1969. A few even lasted until the mid-1970s. As a matter of fact, because air conditioning on subway trains was considered a practical impossibility until the 1950s, and did not become a regular feature of trains throughout the system until the mid-70s, the ceiling fans and wide-open windows on the R1 cars continued to serve their purpose over four decades after their installation.

More views of Car 100 and its nearly identical counterpart, Car 381:

A few R1 and R4 cars received an upgrade from wicker seats to red leather. But the leather was equally prone to vandalism, and by the 1950s plastic and fiberglass had become the choice materials for seats. In some cars on the Nostalgia Train, the leather has remained intact.

(I think this is my favorite picture of the bunch, simply because the people in the picture make it look as though I stepped back with my digital camera into 1932. On the left, a Bowery tough; on the right, a weary bachelor in a fedora, making his way home.)

Another unique car on the train this year is Car 484, an R4 car constructed around 1932. (Despite a gap in the numbering, the R4 was the immediate successor in the IND division to the R1.) In 1946, Car 484 received updated lighting fixtures and an early, experimental version of that most unreliable of subway features: the PA system.

A few photos of Car 484:

Finally, there is Car 1575, originally built as an R7 car in 1937 or ’38. Car 1575 got into an accident in 1946 and reentered passenger service one year later, after having its body and its interior reconstructed into a prototype of the R10 train. The R10 remained in service until the 1980s and developed a reputation during that decade for being rundown and covered in graffiti, but in the 1940s, this type of car was innovative. As you can see from the photos, even the ceiling fans had received a more modern upgrade.

I’ve saved for last my photos of one of the best parts of the Nostalgia Train: the advertisements! Every car on the train is decked out with classic ads selling everything from insurance to kosher meats to cigarettes (with filters that allegedly stop all nicotine and tar from reaching your throat and lungs!). Based on the fact that several of the ads encourage buying war bonds for victory, or observing Meatless Mondays, it seems that most of them date from the World War II era, with a few older and more recent ones thrown in. (A handful of ads for formerly alcoholic beverages even make reference to their compliance with the Volstead Act.)  There was some uncertainty among my group of friends about whether the ads were replicas or genuine advertisements, and based on some water damage that I discovered on one or two of the ads, I think that at least some of them are the real deal. They do repeat throughout the train, however, so clearly most of them are replicas.

This public service announcement about teaching children to safely cross the street is…shocking by today’s advertising standards, to say the least.

But it’s nothing compared to the Power of the Hat! This ad was unanimously voted our favorite. 84 out of 100 women prefer men who wear hats — and this lucky hat-wearing gentleman has snagged three of those women! Three fawning women who just can’t take their eyes off of him the hat.

If you live in New York and you’re interested in catching the Nostalgia Train yourself, go here for the details on where and when to catch it. (If you happen to work near 42nd Street — or to not work during the morning and afternoon — you can also try to catch one of the vintage buses on the M42 crosstown route on weekdays.) Finally, I don’t profess to be an expert on subway history by any means (not yet, anyway!), so do visit the wonderful nycsubway.org for more fun facts about the subway divisions, early trains, and everything else you could possibly want to know.

You must take the “A” train

To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem…

The crowd…

…and the confetti!

I simply had to take the opportunity to see this for myself, because ticker-tape parades are such an iconic feature of New York City life — and because they are such an uncommon sight. In the 1920s there were 24 ticker-tape parades; in the 1970s there were two. When a parade does take place, it’s like a scene from history come back to life.

I looked through my little library of books about New York City and found some information on ticker-tape parades of the past that is absolutely fascinating, considering that the parades rarely take place nowadays unless a local sports team has won a national championship, or unless the city decides to honor its veterans. It’s hard to imagine massive crowds turning out for them today, but in the first half of the 20th century, aviators, winners of the British Open golf tournament, monarchs of foreign countries, swimmers of the English Channel, and Antarctic explorers regularly received the honor. (Since the assassination of JFK, the practice of welcoming visiting heads of state with ticker-tape parades has all but ceased.) The latter half of the century saw a great number of astronauts being honored. Almost all ticker-tape parades follow the same route on the “Canyon of Heroes” — the stretch of Broadway between Battery Park and City Hall Park — and almost all conclude with the honorees being received by the mayor at City Hall, though the parade for astronaut John Glenn in 1962 stretched on for seven miles. Today there are black granite plaques embedded in the sidewalk on lower Broadway with the names of past honorees and the dates of their parades.

The first ticker-tape parade on lower Broadway was a spontaneous celebration of the opening of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. Office workers tossed ticker tape — paper used in machines which provided updated stock market quotes — out of their windows onto the parade route. In 1919, Mayor Grover Whelan established ticker-tape parades as an official function of the municipal government, and the U.S. Department of State began to arrange parades for leaders of foreign countries.

Important figures from Winston Churchill and Pope John Paul II to the United States Olympic team have received ticker-tape parades, but I think my favorite honoree is Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan, an aviator who in 1938 was scheduled to make a return flight from New York to California, but instead flew east to Ireland in a small, unsound plane. (Most people believe that Corrigan intended all along to fly the wrong way — having been previously rejected in his application to aviation authorities to make the transatlantic flight, he appears to have taken matters into his own hands, and disguised the planned trip as a mistake — but he never publicly admitted it.) He received a mild punishment and, in an era in which solo transoceanic flights were still a rarity, a proper reception in the Canyon of Heroes.

The headline of the New York Post article about his parade read “HAIL WRONG WAY CORRIGAN” — and it was printed backwards. Clearly, when it comes to the Post and their attention-grabbing headlines, some things never change.

I snapped it this morning as a young acrobat, no more than ten or eleven years old, completed a death-defying aerial flip in the middle of Main Street in Queens. As you can see, I was not the only person to find him a subject of great photographic interest. Here, I would just like to note that if I had taken this photo with my old camera, it would have been a complete blur. Everyone go buy a Panasonic Lumix TZ-5 right now. If you already have one, buy another. It has a “sports” setting for moving subjects!

As you can see, I ventured out as promised into the cold on this sunny Saturday morning to photograph the continuing Lunar New Year festivities, this time in Flushing, Queens. And boy, was it cold. I stood to watch the parade for about an hour, and when I finally moved from my spot, I discovered that my legs did not work properly because they were completely numb. Fortunately, the nearby public library provided much-needed relief for my aching feet and hands.

The last time I was in Flushing, it was to hurry from the subway to a bus, so I am glad I was able to have a look around in spite of the frigid temperatures. Flushing is home to the borough’s Main Street and is also notable as the home of the fabulous central branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, where I warmed my toes this morning, and the city’s second-largest Chinatown. Flushing was originally settled by the Dutch, like much of the rest of New York City (its name, by far the most unintentionally funny title for a New York neighborhood if you happen to be twelve years old, comes from the name of the Dutch town Vlissingen and has nothing at all to do with plumbing), and in its earliest days it witnessed battles over religious freedom between Dutch colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant (the guy with the big nose) and the Quakers. After the revolution, commercial gardens — the first in America — began to pop up throughout the area, and Flushing became a quiet, pastoral town for summer vacationers. That lasted until the New York World’s Fair brought busy highways to Queens and urbanization to Flushing. Flushing’s Chinatown is only a few decades old; Asian immigrants, including large numbers of Taiwanese and Koreans, began to arrive by the tens of thousands in the 1970s, and they have revitalized what was then a downtown full of empty storefronts. I noticed that Flushing’s Chinatown is today much cleaner and less crowded than its old, noisy, and bustling partner in Manhattan. Stores are more spacious and streets easier to navigate on foot, although the architecture is nowhere near as interesting and historic.

Today’s Lunar New Year parade kicked off with the NYPD and civic leaders, followed by Korean organizations, and then Chinese and Taiwanese groups. There were also plenty of lions and lots of confetti. Some of my best photos from the morning:

I’m not sure who or what these fellows are. They were preceded by a sign indicating that they are Taiwanese in origin. Anyone able to identify them?

Also, I was interested to see that Falun Dafa has a marching band. A very, very large marching band. Man, these folks are organized.

Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong) has been getting a lot of attention in New York in recent years as a spiritual practice which has been banned and persecuted — often violently — by the Chinese Communist Party. Its practitioners are everywhere in the city, often holding political protests in public parks or distributing anti-CCP literature with graphic photos of torture victims. Some mainstream Chinese immigrants have criticized the group as a cult, or as giving a bad name to the country of China and its people with shocking protests; many have argued that the group is far more political than spiritual, and not always upfront about its ties to things like the touring Chinese New Year Spectacular. For all the controversy surrounding it, Falun Gong seems to be generally accepted by scholarly folks as a legitimate spiritual practice whose followers have done a lot to draw attention to human rights abuses in mainland China. But the controversy made it interesting, in light of Falun Gong’s official cult designation in China and the debate over its status within some immigrant communities, to see this massive Falun Dafa marching band thumping along Main Street not far behind a group of people carrying a banner that read “Chinese Anti-Cult World Alliance.” I can’t find any information about the latter group, but I would be very curious to know if the two groups are in tension with one another, and what the community reaction has been to Falun Gong’s very boisterous participation in events of this nature. It’s fascinating stuff, to be sure. I haven’t learned enough about the group to have much of an informed opinion, but they certainly added some pizzazz to the parade.

On a lighter and less cerebral note, these two lion dancers are my favorites. The fellow who was bringing up the rear would periodically lift up the guy in front, who would then stick out his legs, causing the lion to appear to rear up on its hind legs. Very creative, and I award them extra points for covering their legs to break with the modern trend of lions wearing jeans.

After the parade and a brief spell in the library, I ventured out to find a Taiwanese restaurant recommended by Wendell. I found it, but it was absolutely packed and people had gathered in the entrance to wait for a table. I walked back up the block towards Main Street and decided to instead try Sago Tea Cafe, a bubble tea joint. I ordered a pot of hot black milk tea and a bowl of noodles in broth with shredded chicken and mushrooms, depicted below:

It was merely okay. I regret the vermicelli noodles, which I thought would be an interesting choice, and there were way too many noodles and not enough chicken. Still, it was just the right temperature and had a satisfying flavor. Sago has an extensive and unique drink menu, but the food seems average at best, and the servers are all teenagers who are more interesting in gossiping than working. Maybe not the best choice for lunch or snacks — or bubble tea — in Flushing. But while I was eating, a lion appeared in the restaurant! Its appearance was so brief and it moved so quickly that I did not have time to focus the camera or adjust for light, but I love the blasé expressions of my fellow diners.

Still a bit hungry, I popped into a branch of Taipan Bakery — which also has a location in Manhattan — and ordered an egg custard to take home.

Sort of a flan, in a sweet and flaky crust. Decent, but a bit more eggy than I had expected. I stand by my original bakery recommendation of roast pork buns. Even if you think you want something sweet, what you actually want is a roast pork bun. Resistance is futile. Unless you’re a vegetarian or kosher or halal, I suppose.

That’s more than enough for now. I’m happy to see that my blog has taken off somewhat, at least according to StatCounter. (Welcome, reader from Guyana!) Thanks for reading, all. I promise I am taking a break from parades for a while.

January 26 was the first day of Lunar New Year, more commonly known as Chinese New Year, and I am frankly let down by the fact that Google has not incorporated an ox into its website logo to mark the occasion. I, on the other hand, decided to do this particular holiday right, in hopes that some good luck for the new year will rub off on me and my job-hunting efforts, now that I’ve finished up my internship. I was born in the Year of the Ox, after all, and because the ox has come around to take its turn again, I am hopeful that that can mean only good things for me.

I have also been suffering from severe cabin fever due to the persistent below-freezing temperatures, and Lunar New Year celebrations downtown afforded an opportunity for me to get out of my apartment in the morning, put my cover letters aside for a little while, and enjoy the sunshine. It was still appallingly cold — and that’s coming from someone who much prefers chilly weather to summer heat — but I bundled up in a scarf (red, of course) and hat and set out for Chinatown. I attempted to make it down to Roosevelt Park in time for the firecracker detonation, but I missed out because I didn’t set out from my apartment quickly enough to make up for my having to transfer on the subway. I did, however, manage to see plenty of large and intimidating beasts, some of which appeared to have swallowed teenage boys whole.

I’m going to horrify my former professors and every respectable blogger by linking to Wikipedia, only because they have a comprehensive article on the lion dance which seems to be corroborated by other websites. Lunar New Year is rich with symbolism and a variety of traditions and customs that vary by region, so it would be silly for me to attempt to summarize it all here, but it will suffice to say that this holiday is so important to the billion or so people who celebrate it worldwide because it represents a fresh start on the right foot, and a casting off of the bad things of the previous year. (See what I like about it?) Homes are cleaned from top to bottom and certain foods are eaten and certain omens avoided in an effort to usher in good luck, and firecrackers and the color red are used to frighten away evil spirits and clear the way for good fortune and prosperity. The lion dance and accompanying drum beats are also meant to drive away evil spirits and bring the blessings of a new year, which is why scores of ferocious but very friendly lions take to the streets of Chinatown to dance outside businesses. In a definite sign of the times, while I watched and snapped photos, a significant crowd of people gathered around the HSBC branch on Canal Street to watch as two lions shook their colorful manes at the entrance. Let’s hope that they succeeded in driving off the evil spirit known as Recession.

After getting my fill of lion dances, I meandered up Mott Street from Chatham Square towards Canal Street. Mott Street was packed with revelers who were trying to get photos of even more lions…

…when they weren’t busy blasting confetti into the air with firecrackers.

I love my new camera, because it managed to perfectly capture the violent red hue of this novelty store, which was selling firecrackers and lion marionettes and lanterns. Look closely and you will see a tiny lion cub.

After taking in the festivities on Mott, I wandered into a Chinese bakery on the Bowery, where I warmed up with a cup of hot milk tea and a roast pork bun. I stupidly failed to take a picture of my delicious bun because I wolfed it down too quickly, so you’ll have to go here for food porn (and a bonus Chinatown bakery recommendation). Roast pork buns, for those readers who do not live within the immediate vicinity of a Chinese bakery, are both tasty and quite possibly the cheapest lunch option in New York City. Two pork buns, at 70 cents each, plus a hot milk tea, will satisfy a hungry stomach. I opted for a baked bun, and received a soft, flaky, glazed roll — a standard dinner roll, essentially — with a filling of scrumptious char siu, or Chinese barbecue pork. Pork buns at dim sum restaurants are more frequently steamed, and are a bit less portable, but they contain the same heavenly filling.

Once thawed out and satiated by my succulent pork bun, I made my way back to Roosevelt Park to board the subway at Grand Street, and paused in the park long enough to watch a group of dancers entertaining a crowd.

My plan is to explore my home borough of Queens a bit more thoroughly by venturing out to the Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing this Saturday, so here’s hoping for slightly warmer temperatures. Maybe I will luck out; this is supposed to be my lucky year, after all.

Wasn’t it just charming, though?

I also marked the end of the season by allowing my curiosity to get the better of me this morning, and making my way up to El Barrio (also known as East Harlem or Spanish Harlem) for the Three Kings Day Parade.Three Kings Day (or El Día de Reyes, if you prefer) is better known as Epiphany, a Christian feast day which celebrates the manifestation of God in human form as Jesus Christ. In Western cultures, the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles is marked by the visitation of the infant Jesus by the Magi, better known as the Three Kings, or three wise men. In many Latin American cultures, Three Kings Day, and not Christmas Day, is the big holiday of the season, commemorated with the giving of gifts to children. Many Latin American children magically receive gifts from the Three Kings overnight, in the same way that kids in the United States receive presents from Santa Claus, and kids in the United Kingdom from Father Christmas. Most children who celebrate Three Kings Day leave their shoes out overnight, expecting to see them filled with money, sweets, and small gifts in the morning. Others leave out boxes of hay for the kings’ camels — the Three Kings Day equivalent of milk and cookies for Santa Claus.

Here in New York, El Museo del Barrio (a museum of Spanish Harlem culture and history) organizes a parade every year, which typically includes music, many people dressed up as the Three Kings, and live camels. This year, the participation of the camels was threatened by the economic crisis, but at the last minute, a sponsor stepped forward and donated the thousands of dollars required to rent a pair of dromedaries.

This was my second encounter with camels this Christmas season, and I’m beginning to see a theme. I was surprised last month to see live camels on stage at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which I attended for the first time (and which I was happy to discover is a very fun show, and nowhere near as painfully corny as it appears on television). Like the secular Brits and the practicing Jew with whom I attended two showings of the Christmas Spectacular, I could have done without the rather heavy-handed “Jesusy bit,” especially because it interrupts the tone of an otherwise hugely Santa-and-reindeer-flavored show, which is otherwise accessible as a fun, wintry holiday show for religious and non-religious people alike, whether or not they actually celebrate Christmas. Also, I did not believe for one second that those children would be that excited about reading the Christmas story in the Bible, after being magically whisked away through a swirling snowstorm to Santa’s workshop to dance with life-size ragdolls. Unless, of course, their nativity scene came to life in similar fashion. If I were one of those kids, I would be breathlessly telling everyone in sight about how I totally met Santa Claus, not sitting down harmoniously with my siblings and taking turns reading aloud.

But the camels were a nice touch.

Brief digressions aside: the parade was fun but short, which was actually a good thing, as the temperatures this morning were below freezing. Besides the camels, there was a single float, plus a few adults dressed as the Three Kings (men and women alike, with a few public figures heading up the procession), a couple of stilt-walkers, some drummers, a group of men in elaborate headdresses playing maracas and recorders, and a lot of schoolchildren wearing paper crowns. Some of the kids seemed less than enthusiastic, but others were soaking up the attention from the adults and the other groups of schoolkids lining the parade route.

Here are some more photos from the parade:

This little girl looks cold, and not at all happy to be a princess:

I guess they had the fake camels ready because they thought there would be no live ones?

Now that Epiphany is behind us, it is officially time to celebrate the season leading up to one of my own cultural observances, as a part-Cajun who grew up on the Gulf Coast: Mardi Gras! “King cake season” officially begins with Three Kings Day. In fact, Mexicans and some other Latinos who celebrate Three Kings Day enjoy a type of fruity cake which is similar to king cake, called rosca de reyes, and, like celebrants of Mardi Gras, they hide a small plastic baby Jesus or a bean or piece of candy inside the cake, with positive or negative consequences for the person who finds it. My family’s tradition always involved the recipient of the plastic baby having to buy the next king cake, although I’m not sure that anyone ever actually did. Other families — including, as I understand it, many Latin Americans who celebrate Three Kings Day — require the unlucky finder to throw a party and invite everyone. Part of the reason why the tiny plastic baby Jesus has replaced the bean in the traditional king cake is that it is much harder for people to simply eat it when they find it, thereby hiding the fact that they would have been responsible for buying something or doing something. (Sometimes the finder becomes “king for a day,” but that’s just silly.) Of course, growing up, I always heard horrible stories about so-and-so who got the infant Jesus lodged in his esophagus after accidentally swallowing it with his king cake and had to have surgery, so I’m not sure the plastic figurine is an improvement.

Curious about its contents, I looked up a recipe for rosca de reyes, but I’m not sure that I would ever trouble myself with making one, having never even made my own king cake. On the subject of king cake and Mardi Gras, I will write more when the holiday actually approaches — and it’s not until February 24, so you’ll just have to wait.

Also, for those of you who weighed in on the subject (and berated me for being indecisive), I have made the switch to Flickr from Photobucket. Certain aspects of Photobucket were starting to annoy me, but the kicker was their decision to limit pro accounts to 10 GB of space — as opposed to Flickr, which still offers unlimited space. Now that I have a fancy new camera, I am fully expecting to completely overdo it with photos, so unlimited space is a good thing indeed.

I will make an attempt at updating this thing fairly regularly, with the intention of having it replace my old NYU-hosted website. I will still take pictures of old buildings and tell you why you should think they’re cool, but I think I can do that in a less didactic and more casual way, while also writing about other stuff, like good books I’ve read that I think you should read, or fun stuff I’ve done that you really should do. (Gosh, I feel so influential already.)

Do enjoy, and feel free to comment and link to me.

- Shea