< Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry >

Puerto Rican Festival in Spanish Harlem

I went to the 116th Street Festival in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) today. A huge Puerto Rican festival just a day before the Puerto Rican Day Parade. It is one of the hugest Hispanic events in New York City. Thousands and thousands of people attended.
It's been a really crazy and interesting afternoon. There was Live Music, Dance Perfromances, Latin Food, Cocktails and of course all those interesting people on the streets. Some really good Latin Hip Hop over at the stand of AirWear NYC as well, some spontaneous dancing and break dancing on the street.

I started off by just walking around, looking at the people, nearly all of them have worn Puerto Rican shirts, flags, caps or necklaces. If you like tattoos this was the place to go as well. Men as well as women showed off nearly every part of their body if tattooed. Puerto Rican maps, letterings, dragons, flags, hearts, weapons and names could be seen. Some very interesting constelations of tatoos. Love tattooed one one hand, hate on the other for example. At the beginning I didn't feel that comfortable about taking pictures of all these young people. It's my prejudices again... Young people, a scowling view, tattoos, muscles, and groups of people. After walking around for a while I thought "What the hell..." and started to ask people if I can take their photograph. (As a note beside: Since this questions is often asked, I don't always ask for permission to take a picture. It depends on the situation.) And how else could it be, all of them have been happy to pose for me, most of them have been really interested in what I was doing, where I come from and how I enjoy the festival. No gang affection, no offends, just very nice people!
I started to get more and more comfortable, loving the fact that I meet so many interesting people with different backgrounds having one thing in common - enjoying the day, hanging out with friends, winding up girls or boys in a very direct but respectful way. So it's been a good place as well for boys showing off their hard masculin muscles and girls showing off their feminine bodies. Interesting to see how different these things are in New York compared to Austria. Everything is much more direct.
Check out nuyorica.com for upcoming Latino events in town.

Posted by Martin Fuchs on June 11, 2005 11:20 PM