Who wouldn’t want to be part of that world?
On Saturday afternoon, Coney Island sinks into the sea as thousands of well-dressed festival-goers show off their extravagant costumes in the 42nd annual Mermaid Parade.
“This is really a great day not just for Coney Island or Brooklyn, but probably for the entire city,” said Adam Lin, artistic director of Coney Island USA, the nonprofit that produces the event.
More than 3,000 people are expected to attend the 1pm parade, with an estimated 200,000 spectators eager to view the ornate sea-life-inspired floats, costumes and other creations made from beads, sequins and all manner of dingle-hoppers.
“This is a quirky event in the birthplace of quirkiness,” Lin enthuses.
Kate Dale, a theatre performer who has participated in the parade since the early 1990s, is the winningest mermaid in the parade’s history.
“I’ve won best mermaid three, maybe four times, and I’ve also won best push-pull float three or four times,” Dale told The Post during a short break from parade preparations Friday afternoon.
Dale recalls seeing the parade for the first time in the early ’90s and immediately knowing he wanted to take part.
“I thought this was my style: kitschy, pretentious, artifice,” she added.
Acclaimed performer and parade emcee Sherry Watson is known for her elaborate costumes, and she designed this year’s costumes to withstand any weather forecast.
“There was a chance of thunderstorms,” Watson told the Post, “so I had the luxury of creating a costume based on an umbrella hat, and then decorating it with sea creatures, like little jellyfish.”
Watson added that this year’s creation, which included a sequined skirt made to resemble fish scales, took about six hours to create.
The Juilliard School graduate and opera singer has been involved with the Mermaid Parade for about 25 years and began co-hosting the event with Bradford Scobie last year.
For his hosting debut, Watson created a towering headdress inspired by the costumes of the 1930s Ziegfeld Follies.
“It took weeks,” she recalled.
Watson added that over the years, her favorite part of the parade has been admiring the other costumes, especially the family groups who bring their young children and pets along to have fun.
“Last year we had King Neptune and mermaids and we dressed up babies and dogs in little lobster costumes,” she explained.
“But being a designer and costumer myself, I’m always amazed at how much work these people put into building these giant boats that you can pedal. It’s incredible.”
Watson also noted that parade-goers are looking carefully below the surface when searching for costume ideas.
“I often ask people, ‘What is that costume?’ and they say, ‘Oh, it’s a horned seahorse,’ or a anglerfish that we can’t see, like a lanternfish or something like that,” she told The Post.
“The ocean is where we know the least. As we get closer to the ocean floor, new species are being discovered all the time.”
“[The costumes] “You go from nothing to wearing a big, heavy suit and everything in between,” Adam Lin agreed. “Each one is a work of art.”
The guests of honor at the Mermaid Parade are the king and queen of the festival, Lin explained.
This year, artist Joe Coleman and his wife Whitney Ward took on the headline roles, but one of Lin’s personal parade highlights came when the roles were filled by rock singer Lou Reed, who died in 2010, and his wife, performance artist Laurie Anderson.
“I love Lou. I was in the same room as him and I got to shake his hand,” Lin recalled of spotting the star. “I had to suppress my inner fanboy!”
Ms Lin promised first-time Mermaid Parade goers “the most surreal experience you can have in New York”, although a “heat dome” currently hangs over the festival grounds.
“It’s a fantastic dream come true. It’s so colorful and vibrant. You think, ‘What have I found? I wonder if I can get more?'”
