Discrimination. If you're not being racist, you're discriminating. This escpecially goes to Peter and LSJ. If you think about it, any parade can get out of hand.

For the comment about us Puerto Ricans celebrating back in PR.. Don't you think we would prefer to go back there and celebrate? We would be around people who want to take part of the celebration. Of course not everyone can travel every year so we settle for the next best thing.

Oh and this year I went to Bike Week (In Florida) which is composed of mainly Americans. Believe me I saw some things that I would never see Puerto Ricans do.

For LSJ, in PR we have an annual celebration, San Sebastian Street Festival, in Old San Juan.

This celebration lasts a whole week, none stop.

Personally, I think you would die or faint there, if only a couple of days of celebrating irked you so much.

Btw any discrimination I might have done is to prove a point.

ViVa Puerto Rico ! I am a NewYoRican, Born in Brooklyn and I have to say that I look forward to the Puerto Rican Day Parade every year not only to Celebrate the advancement of Puerto Ricans in America but also to remember and pay respect to our grandparents who sold everything they had back on the island to come here.




Its a shame that a handful of idiots have to go out and ruin it for the rest of us by groping women and committing crimes.




No one ever stops to think that those who commit these crimes are probably not even puerto rican. I say this because I dont know a single Boricua out there that would want to ruin such a great event. We love our flag and our people.




Viva Puerto Rico !!

I`m Puerto Rican, Born in the island & raised in New York City, And i (DON`T CARE for any F---ken parade) .

I myself am a Puerto Rican. I also was part of the parade. I am the Puerto Rican Queen of Trenton, Nj. First I would like to say that I can't believe that everyone is compaining about one weekend. That's pretty much all we get so we have to make the best of it. The gangs that were there were not only Puerto Rican gangs. I also saw the bloods gang and let me tell you they were very disruptive. They were there to cause troble. I didn't see any of the hispanic gangs going around chanting or being diruptive. They also weren't going around feeling on all of the beautiful people that were their that day. Its not our fault that our culture has something to be proud of. Its also not our fault that our culture is happy, loud, and filled with flavor. It broke my heart to here all of the nasty comments everyone posted on this site. We are not embarressed to express our culture and say who we are. If you don't like what is going on in the parade or that weekend I suggest you move. Because we are not going to take the parade back to Puerto Rico. I think what you guys problem is that you don't know how to live alittle. We are here to stay. We are not going any where because you say so. The celebration in New York is so big that people come from all over the country to see and celebrate the parade. Leave our "weekend" alone cause its all we get. Anyother weekend you are welcome to celebrate, but not ours. You don't know the pride that I feel to be represtenting my land (THE ISLAND OF ENCHANTMENT) Puerto Rico. Please stop the raicest comments. It is not that serious. Get over it. And remember you cant control anyones actions no matter their race. And the Puerto Rican Day Parade is not what you need to be worrying about. Much love to my culture and my people and My Island Puerto Rico!

Sars, I live on the upper east side, and made a point of leaving the area early to avoid what I knew would be a crowded environment. I spent the majority of my day on the west side, and at 4pm headed back home as it had been a long day for my son. As I have lived here for a while I made a point of crossing the parade at a place where I thought I would not encounter much in the way of crowds.

I am happy that the city hosts many diverse parades, what I am less than happy about is that some parades and the associated crowds make it difficult to navigate safely in ones home neighbourhood. Thanks so much for your very useful, capitalised advice, you're a pal.

I have to wonder why on earth Will went to, or near, the PRD Parade with an infant in the first place. It's not like the parade is a big secret; it's not like parades don't obviously involve large crowds; complaining about the crush at A PARADE, one which almost everyone I talked to KNEW WAS THAT DAY (Puerto Rican or no), seems more than a little disingenuous.

Here's an idea: if you don't want to get jostled, don't go to midtown ON A PARADE DAY. Or live in a city.

Don't blame Puerto Ricans for your bad planning, damn.

Thanks, Kevin, for the Mermaid link!

Dave, the past several years at the Mermaid parade has also included celebration with intoxicants. This crowd is pretty well-behaved, and I greatly look forward to this year's.

guapgirl, here you go:

http://www.columbuscitizensfd.org/pages/mainframeset.html

Click on Parade link.

what do italians have to do with Columbus day??

Will, I have no problem with you walking around with your baby strapped to your chest. My problem is your "go back to Puerto Rico" statement. I'll post it here to refresh your memory.

...I agree with the suggestions that our PR 'friends' should celebrate in Puerto Rico next year.

We need thousands of police officers and metal fences to protect the city and its inhabitants from these locusts swarming over the city. Let them celebrate in Puerto Rico next year.

I am a Puerto Rican born and raised in the island. I hate to break it to most of you here, but the situation is not that much better back home. Class, people. It's a matter of social class, which makes it rather complex.

I'll be the first one to admit I won't go close to the paraders, and if possible, will leave town. I live in Williamsburg, in the heart of the Puerto Rican community there. Fortunately, my particular street was rather quiet this weekend. Puerto Rican Day here is more of a source of shame than anything else for me. I have a hard time accepting as my brethren people whose behavior admitedly brings out the worst in Americans: tendencies to prejudice.

Back home I can see the same behavior throughout the year--political rallies, worker strikes, patron saint festivities, holidays...anything's an excuse to get loud and drunk. And eventually fight. Remember when the Navy finally left Vieques? Riots. I lived in PR for 18 years and couldn't stand it. That's why I won't live there and avoid "boricuas" here as much as I can. Am I prejudiced? You bet. I guess my experience has taught me to expect less of my own people.

However, I will also admit that not all Puerto Ricans are the same. And just because I don't enjoy their brand of "fun" doesn't mean they're less deserving of displaying their pride (ironically in a land most have never even visited!) than other groups in NYC. The thought of celebrating Colombus Day makes me livid, but I leave it to Italian Americans to reconcile that mess.

I remember there being a few incidents of sexual assault and rape at the last Woodstock incarnation in Saugerties and I don't think that crowd was exclusively Puerto Rican. Any time you get a large crowd together in an event that includes (openly or illicitly) alcohol consumption there is going to be some reprehensible behavior by a small fraction of the population. This is a fact completely independent of whatever ethnicity one happens to be discussing. If you think sexually aggressive behavior is limited to Puerto Ricans, I could introduce you to some friends who waitress on St. Patrick's Day on the UES and are repeatedly groped by drunken cops and firefighters, most of whom are not Puerto Rican.

As for the noise, I have every sympathy for people who are disturbed by a weekend of non-stop ear-splitting revelry on the streets. I'm sure the people that live in cities like San Juan, PR or Cancun, Mexico feel the same way about the thousands of American kids that invade their towns every spring break. Celebratory crowds populated with a number of inebriated people can be occasionally dangerous and more often annoying. I think we can complain about it without throwing ethnic generalizations into the discussion.

RHPR, I urge you to read my post again, my intent was to highlight that there appears to be elements in the PR parade who seem intent on causing trouble. I know, I was in amongst it, and through no choice of my own, I was minding my own business, trying to get home. I was swept up in a large crowd, intent to on breaking through the police barriers to get on to the parade route. As I mentioned, I had my six month old son strapped to my chest, and was very concerned for his welfare. Thankfully I was helped through the barriers into a shaded area (for my son) until I was escorted over 5th ave. If you have ever been caught up in a mass crowd, with no ability to control the direction you travel in, you know how unpleasant this can be. Sunday's crowd was for the most part young males, thugs, as I will again define them, who seemed hell bent on causing trouble (this is from first hand experience of what I saw and heard). My point, is that there were clearly many like yourself enjoying a good day out, but there was definately an element looking for trouble, who do more damage, and by association bring disrespect to their fellow countrymen (and women), than a few boards and barriers. This thug element validates all the negativity the responsible people of PR try to discount.

Even the NY Times lead with the number of arrests in their story about the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Like someone who posted earlier, I would be interested to find out how many people participated, and how the ratio of participation/arrests at the St. Patrick's Day Parade compares. I think there were about 240 arrests at the RNC demonstration parade -- most of which didn't hold up in court, which is another thing to think about in this case. But I'm not sure if the RNC demonstration was bigger or smaller than the PR Day parade.

NYC's greatest parade is coming up in 2 weeks...

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/mermaid2004/mermaid2004.html

For the record, I'm part Irish, and you won't see me anywhere near the St Patrick's Day parade. I think if it were held in warm weather, it would be 10 times as bad as it is.

Fierce national pride+hot weather+booze=disaster, no matter what group is in question.

The celebration outside of McCarren didn't seem out of control, but I wish someone would help me understand all the long t-shirts that hit the knees. ;)

Look at it all in perspective, there were tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans at the parade– this is one of the largest attended parades in the city (I would say it is the most attended, however I do not know that for fact). With that large of a crowd of course there are going to be some bad occurances.





Morever, I'm not even Puerto Rican (I'm mixed– which is a whole other story), and I was at the parade. It's not bad AT ALL. Most parades I've been to are boring, and you can't wait until they end. But this parade is not like that at all; I enjoyed being around the company of people who have so much pride in where they're from.





I think it's wrong to imply that whenever there are a bunch of Puerto Ricans, there's going to be trouble. You may be angry living in the neighborhood where there were Puerto Ricans celebrating from all the noise at night; however go up to the Bronx around Fordham University– on any given night during the semester drunk students will be vandalizing, urinitating on public property, making lots of noise, and things of that sort– I know this because I AM a Fordham student, and have seen it happen.





If every college/university in North America came together and decided to organize a huge parade on 5th avenue to celebrate something like Spring Weekend and it drew enormous amounts of people (comparable to the amount of people that come to the Puerto Rican day parade) lots of vandalism, drunken rowdiness etc would most likely occur.





It has nothing to do with nationality, if you have an insane amount of people coming together to celebrate something, especially something they are especially passionate or happy about, things are bound to happen.

well, we have two camps here. First camp says PR parade was just another NYC parade, practically identical to St. Patrick's day Parade with similar number of problems.

Second camp says that PR parade is very different from other parades as it generates much more problems (arrests, stabbings, gang bangers and the like).

Can we get some statistics please?

Let's compare basic stats before complaining. Links or stats anybody?

Red Headed Puerto Rican, IMO, don't waste your time.

Some "people" use race baiting phrases, pretend that they are NOT acting racist, pretend that Other Parades have no arrests, Imply that All of us Own Guns and are rapists, etc.

Oddly, being Puerto Rican, The only Puerto Rican's that I know that own guns are Police Officers. As for the "Rapist" Comment, Um, when did THAT happen? I somehow missed it among all the News coverage for Yesterday. Oooohhhh You mean 4 years ago! Gotcha.

Will, I'm sorry you and your child needed a Police Escort. Do you think that's common only to the PR Day parade?

Oh, And Peter? Would you act like this much of a Racist without the anonymity of the Internet? Say in "polite" Company? I have my doubts.

Loved the Rapist and Locust Comments.

RHPR, At this point, I think it's just feeding the Trolls.

RHPR, what do you have against locusts?