Happy year 4702, the year of the Monkey. Mr. P and I decided to check out the Chinese New Year parade and took a spot along Union Square, mostly because as a short person I have to take an opening where I can find one. The location was a slight disadvantage because it was obvious the performers, especially the 11-15yr olds, were saving it up for the hometown crowd further into Chinatown. But a spectacular parade none-the-less.

Last year we went to the parade in Chicago’s Chinatown. We’d missed the lion dancers, the highlight of any parade, because we were standing at the wrong end of the street. Not so much a problem in San Francisco. I think there were at least a hundred lion dancers as well as a number of full on smoke billowing, red eyed devil dragons, some sort of gigantic fake children, a 30 ft golden buddha and so much more. I’ll fall for the flash and glitter every time.

In addition to the dragons and lions there were a lot of high school, middle school and grade school groups too. Of all the groups, the Elementary schools took the most liberties with the Year of the Monkey theme including a purple and gold Mylar extravaganza to the tune of “Jungle Boogie” and white suited primates dancing to “Monkey Night Fever” in the tradition of John Travolta. By far the cutest were the pre-school kids in little tiny monkey costumes, most of them fast asleep and drooling in the car seats attached to their float. It’s hard to express in words how absolutely precious it was but since our digital camera has an ISO of about 25, you’ll just have to take my word for it. There is a collection of images in the photo section but because the shutter is so slow it appears as if it was a parade of ghosts and really fast moving gold foil for the most part.

Of all the lion dancers the naughty teen lion troupe was my favorite. Surly 15yr old boys made up of about eight or nine lion dragons that seemed to go into a feeding frenzy whenever their troupe leader set off fireworks. Mr. P's favorite were the gold and red banners that the 12 yr kids held up in front of one of the monkey floats that said "Be in Awe".

We stayed to the finale to see Gum Lung, the golden dragon. The nuttiest 200 ft long dragon you’ll ever see. Evidently over 600,000 firecrackers accompany it as it makes its way around the route. By the time we got to Gum Lung we’d moved to get closer to the action and I had a hard time seeing over the crowd but I got to see most of the craziness.

Gung Hay Fat Choy.