May 6, 2002 - The New York Times

Parades, Festivals and 30,000 Bicyclists Rule Streets Across City

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Hordes of bicyclists toured the boroughs. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out at parades saluting Israel and Cuba on Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas. Midtown demonstrators shouted for Palestinian justice. And throngs celebrated a Mexican national holiday at street festivals in Harlem and Queens.

In short, it was Sunday in New York a sweet, sun-drenched day of throbbing mambo drums, blaring bands, passionate protests, salutes to diverse heritages, battalions of sweating bikers and joggers, parks crowded with strollers and sunbathers and the scrimmage of traffic caught in a maze of blocked streets.

For all the goings-on, there was a timeless serenity in the passing day for those not snared in traffic or the emotion of protests. A soft breeze caressed the cheek and a golden sun sailed west in a cloudless azure sky, bathing the city in Southwestern earth tones or the delicate pastels of a Japanese print.

"We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day," Louisina Estime, 36, a marshal for Bike New York, said as the last of 30,000 cyclists whizzed past her into Central Park on a 42-mile journey from the silent canyons of Manhattan through quiet neighborhoods of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Nearby, outside the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South, Barbara and David Allen, tourists from Gulfport, Miss., found themselves in the center of a New York swirl the Salute to Israel Parade to the right, La Gran Parada Cubana to the left and supporters of Palestine screaming in Grand Army Plaza.

"That's New York," Mrs. Allen said. "The great melting pot plays out once again."

Many of the day's events the parades and protests, even the bicycle tour were reflections of Sept. 11 and the terrorism and fighting that have enveloped the Middle East in recent months. The police were out in force, and there were a few angry confrontations. But there was also a softness about the day that, for many New Yorkers, seemed to provide a respite from tragedy.

The 25th annual Bike New York tour, for example, began in the early morning with a ride past ground zero, a tribute to the thousands who were lost and those who have labored at the site for seven months. But it proceeded uptown at a leisurely pace and in a lighter mood fathers bantering with sons, mothers riding with babies strapped behind them, serious bikers and amateurs rolling side by side, strangers resting together in shady parks along the way.

"I'm exhausted," Jo Ann Motero, 29, an architect from Elizabeth, N.J., said as she sprawled on the grass of John Paul Jones Park on the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. She had pumped 35 miles, and had 7 to go to reach the finish in Staten Island. "I just keep seeing myself sitting in my car."

Resting nearby in a red T-shirt, Hazel Stricker, 24, a physical trainer from Westchester County, sipped water and marveled at the perfection of the setting a greensward strewn with family picnics and children running, sailboats aglide on the harbor, whiffs of fresh-cut grass and the afternoon ripening like fruit.

"This day, how beautiful it is," she said, gazing up through the emerald canopy at the drama of the soaring bridge. "It makes the long ride worth it."

Back in Manhattan earlier, huge crowds lined Fifth Avenue as tens of thousands of New Yorkers joined the annual Salute to Israel parade, a sea of marchers, flags and placards in support of a nation beleaguered by Palestinian terrorists. With them were politicians courting votes, including Senators Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gov. George E. Pataki and two men seeking to replace him, the former housing secretary Andrew Cuomo and State Comptroller H. Carl McCall.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was there with two of his predecessors, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Edward I. Koch. Mr. Giuliani, who marched with his friend Judith Nathan, was clearly the star of the show, getting more and louder cheers. But it was Mr. Bloomberg, before stepping off, who got the attention of reporters.

"Between last year's parade and this year's parade," he said, "we had the terrible tragedy of 9/11. And if New Yorkers don't stand up today, I don't know when you would."

Alongside the parade route, at Grand Army Plaza at 59th Street, hundreds of people supporting the Palestinian cause staged a noisy counterdemonstration. "The Israelis, if they want peace, they have to give justice," Zahira Ali told The Associated Press. "And justice means a free Palestinian state in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and dismantling Israeli settlements."

A distinctly more festive air suffused the smaller Cuban Day Parade, which unfolded on the Avenue of the Americas, a block to the west. There were floats carrying mambo bands and smiling teenage beauty queens wearing formal gowns and tiaras. There were no political banners, only red, white and blue Cuban flags, the throb of maracas and trumpets and expressions of Cuban pride.

"I've been to Cuba four times to visit my family," said Elisabeth Tejera, 19, a high school student from East Elmhurst, Queens, beaming at her father, Cristobal, a welder who came to New York from Havana shortly before she was born. "I love Cuba."

Reynaldo Llanos, 80, a retired plumber who came to the United States from Guantanamo in 1941, looked as if he had just stepped out of a 1930 poster for Cuban cigars: white straw hat, powder-blue jacket over a flowered shirt, white slacks, sandals. Waving a walking stick adorned with jangling brass bells, he said he was known in his Crotona, Bronx, neighborhood as the mambo dancer.

"I'm the master dancer, the old-time Cubans all know me," he said. He goes to the parade every year, he said, adding: "I love to see all my brothers and sisters from Cuba. My grandkids, they are born here, and they don't want to come. They're home looking at television and going to the refrigerator."

With two avenues in Midtown closed to traffic for simultaneous, parallel parades from late morning until late afternoon, traffic in the heart of the city crawled for much of the day. There had been numerous warnings to take public transportation, and many people seemed to have heeded them. But Alice Tan and Sandra Brown were not among them.

Ms. Tan, 21, who works at a management company and had to show an apartment in Midtown, tried to make her way west on 51st Street in her yellow Mercedes-Benz sports car and was caught in the mess. "I'm supposed to meet someone at 12 o'clock," she said. It was 11:38, and prospects looked dim.

What should have been a 20-minute drive from Brooklyn to her son's seventh birthday party at an arcade on West 45th Street took an hour, Ms. Brown said. "Everything was blocked off," she said, exasperated. "It was awful."

El Cinco de Mayo, the annual celebration of Mexico's defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, drew big crowds to festivals in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens and on East 116th Street between Lexington and Second Avenues in East Harlem.

On 116th Street, mariachi music and sentimental ballads filled the air, as did the smoky aromas of grilled meat and roasted corn. Booths sold tacos and beer, along with heaping stacks of chicken and beef. There were pony rides for children, and a stock pen held a llama, a donkey, a few goats, a sheep and three ducks. Mexican flags fluttered in the breeze, and balloons and a lone kite rose into the sky.

Anthony Mata, 28, a construction worker in a white T-shirt, his arms covered with tattoos, was joyous. "I didn't realize there were so many Mexicans in the city," he said. "This is terrific. The thing about all Latinos is we get together when festivals like this take place, no matter where we're from."