Coney Island Mermaid Parade makes a splash once again
The Coney Island Mermaid Parade made quite a splash once again.
The 43rd annual event — the nation's largest art parade — welcomed revelers close from the Big Apple to around the world, many donning over-the-top aquatically-themed costumes for the tropical festivities.
'It's a great expression of people's creativity,' gushed Noella Owen, 53, of Brooklyn, who attended with her two children, aged 11 and 12.
Advertisement
The trio, who show up annually, hand made their marine-centric ensembles.
'My kids are dressed as krill and they wanted me to be a blue whale because of their fat jokes,' Owen said.
6 Many came to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade donning aquatically-themed costumes.
Michael Nagle
Advertisement
The joyfully unconventional parade kicked off at 1 p.m. and the crowd quickly swelled to 30,000, which included marchers, spectators and those on the boardwalk, according to police.
Caroline Northrop, 44, a public school teacher from Atlantic Highlands, N.J., also expressed her love for the unique 'celebration of creativity.'
'[It] shows so many people are still creative even with AI everywhere, it's so refreshing,' said Northrop, who donned a 'woodland enchantress' outfit decorated with fake mice.
6 The joyful event dates back to 1983.
Michael Nagle
Advertisement
6 Victor Gonzales spent a month creating his outfit.
Khristina Narizhnaya
Victor Gonzales, 39, a civil engineer who lives in Queens, dressed as a lion fish, and said it took him one month to painstakingly create the costume.
'Because I have to sew, I have to do this structure. I have to design the makeup as well. Today, [it took to get dressed] probably about two and a half hours … I have to glue on the paper things,' he explained.
Each year, a new King Neptune and Queen Mermaid are crowned — Ukrainian-American singer and Gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz and Bed-Stuy based pornstar Queenie Sateen were awarded the day's honors.
Advertisement
6 Eugene Hütz and Queenie Sateen were crowned King Neptune and Queen Mermaid.
Michael Nagle
6 There were 30,000 at the festivities, according to police estimates.
Michael Nagle
Hütz, who has been living in New York since 1997, was not only finally able to attend this year, but take on the venerable title.
'Every year I hear about it and … some kind of a big splashy burlesque action … and I'm always on tour,' he said.
'And all these years go by like that, let's finally see it already, you know? And then this year, miraculously, we're touring in the later part of the summer, not earlier part of the summer. And I get a call, so it's like, you know, 10 out of 10.'
6 Paula Carlson dressed as a 'more modern mermaid.'
Samantha Olander
Paula Carlson, 47, of Bay Ridge, a retired emergency manager, dressed as a 'more modern mermaid' in homage to Hütz.
'I wanted to pay tribute, because it is Eugene [Hütz as King Neptune] and he's Ukrainian, to the Rusalka, which is the Ukrainian myth of the mermaid, and she brings water to all of the crops.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
The mystery of the paedophile who hired out Disneyland
When it emerged that last weekend a convicted paedophile had organised a fake wedding to a nine-year-old at Disneyland Paris, many people were perplexed. Who would do such a thing? How was it even possible? The BBC understands it was the latest bizarre stunt by Jacky Jhaj – a British man I have been investigating for two years. He first came to my attention after a tip off from a teenage girl came out of the blue in 2023. She was horrified that she had come face to face with a paedophile who she had been hired to fawn over. She was too terrified of him to go on the record - but I tracked down a number of aspiring actors who had also been directed to scream at Jhaj while he was parading down a red carpet, and reach out to try and touch him. In all, 200 children and young women had been recruited by reputable casting agencies to play Jhaj's fans at a fake film premiere in London's Leicester Square that year. Some were as young as six. Towards the end of the event someone recognised Jhaj - who had previously been found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016 and sent to prison. The fake red carpet was one of a litany of stunts he has organised since his release which often involve casting girls as his fans. All have been organised at great expense, while he was on the Sex Offenders Register and subject to restrictions on his activities. For the mock-wedding at Disneyland Paris a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was flown in to play his bride. The theme park can be privately rented outside of its opening hours and actors had been booked at great cost to be there – one received £10,000. The BBC understands that Jacky Jhaj, 39, who is from west London, has now been charged by French authorities in connection with organising the event. Over the past two years I've set out to try and understand how he has been able to carry out these stunts and why there are not more stringent rules preventing them. Many have taken place at high profile British landmarks – including the British Museum, the Royal Exchange in London and the University of Oxford. They also typically involve young people being hired to act as his fans in elaborate productions. Videos of some of them were uploaded to a YouTube channel which was watched more than six million times and had 12 million subscribers. Many remained on YouTube for years until last September, when the BBC alerted Google, which owns the platform. A video on a separate channel showed him next to one of the victims he was convicted of sexual activity with – with her face anonymised. It had remained on YouTube for four years with more than a million views. Google told the BBC at the time that it takes users' safety seriously but offered no explanation as to how an account featuring a man with almost no profile or success had 12 million subscribers, or why the videos had not been previously removed. Clips on social media sites appear to cast Jhaj as a successful writer and singer and are often styled as music videos. Many are highly concerning - some feature him posing with young children and weapons. It is not clear if the guns are real or fake. Others revel in his infamy. In one, he is greeted by fans apparently celebrating his release from Wormwood Scrubs prison. I wanted to know how he had organised the stunts – and if he had received help. Over the past two years, I have spoken to videographers, production assistants and technicians who were hired for some of the events before they discovered Jhaj's real identity. One man repeatedly appears in videos they shared with me. We have been sent images and footage of him at three of the stunts by people who described him as assisting the choreographer hired for dance auditions, and apparently filming. At a different event last year, he was confronted by duped cast members who recognised Jhaj from our reports and showed him the online article. The cast members filmed him acknowledging that Jhaj is a convicted sex offender but he says he is his "friend" and is now "free". At this event Jhaj was filmed posing naked in front of a mocked-up BBC News lorry in London which had been set on fire. Jhaj had initially appeared there disguised by prosthetics – before he removed them and was identified as the man from our story. Preliminary findings from the French prosecutor also said that make-up artists had allegedly changed the organiser's facial features dramatically at the Disneyland event. How Jhaj funds his stunts - which involve extraordinary costs on venue hire, casts and props - is a mystery. One production hired a tank, while in another a mock police car was set on fire. The booking of Disneyland Paris alone would have cost more than €130,000 (£110,000), according to the French broadcaster BFMTV. I was also told that hiring the red carpet space that is the home of movie premieres in Leicester Square would have required tens of thousands of pounds. Jhaj was listed as a director of a business that was wound up in 2016 – but there is no other obvious source of money. I also wanted to know how he had been able to carry out these events while subject to a sexual harm prevention order. We have seen a copy of it. It lists ten restrictions on his activities – but does not appear to explicitly prohibit the stunts he had organised. The order restricts Jhaj from contacting his previous victims, entering public places for the use of children and deliberately contacting any girl under the age of 16. However, there is no blanket ban on hosting events with children under 16 if they are supervised – as was the case with the Leicester Square stunt, where some adults attended as chaperones. I also wanted to know who, if anyone, was responsible for monitoring convicted paedophiles. Following my first report, a police officer who helped monitor Jhaj rang me, asking for information on his movements. He said he was responsible for managing the whereabouts of dozens of offenders - and it was challenging work. The National Police Chiefs' Council advise that the minimum safe staffing levels at which paedophiles should be monitored is one officer to every 50 offenders. The Metropolitan Police's average offender management ratio was one officer to 40 offenders – well within the benchmark. I asked other forces what their ratios were and some never replied. But 10 out of 26 forces failed to meet this benchmark, according to Freedom of Information requests received last year. At one force, officers were responsible for monitoring 85 offenders each on average. Some forces defended their resourcing – arguing that these are advisory levels only and also dependent on risk assessments of offenders. But successfully managing 50 sex offenders is "impossible" according to Jonathan Taylor, a safeguarding expert and former child abuse investigator. "I feel so sorry for the officers", he says. "It's a poisoned chalice - one of the paedophiles will re-offend. This case also highlights concerns about a lack of safeguarding in entertainment and tech companies enabling these types of offenders." The BBC understands that Jhaj is currently detained in French custody. The local prosecutor there says the Ukrainian girl involved in Saturday's stunt had not been a victim of either physical or sexual violence and had not been forced to play the role of a bride. His statement also said Disneyland Paris had been "deceived" and that the organiser had used a fake Latvian ID to hire the venue. The BBC approached Disneyland Paris for comment - they did not respond. The Metropolitan Police said that a 39-year-old man is wanted by them for breaching restrictions placed on his activities, and is also separately being investigated for "any possible" fraud offences. Additional reporting by Alex Dackevych and Richard Irvine-Brown.
5 hours ago
Coco Gauff says criticism of Aryna Sabalenka's French Open comments went 'too far'
LONDON -- It didn't take long for Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka to patch up their relationship after this month's French Open final. Now as Wimbledon is about to start, Gauff is hoping everyone else can also forget what the top-ranked Sabalenka said in the wake of her loss to the American at Roland-Garros. A day after dancing together on Wimbledon's Centre Court in a TikTok video, the two tennis players faced more questions on Saturday about the aftermath of Sabalenka's comments right after the final, when she said her loss had more to do with her own mistakes than Gauff's performance. The Belarusian later wrote to apologize to Gauff and said her comments were 'unprofessional,' but not before she faced some major backlash from fans and pundits — especially in the United States. Gauff is trying to make sure the criticism stops. 'I'm not the person that will fuel hate in the world,' said Gauff, who opens her Wimbledon campaign against Dayana Yastremska on Tuesday. 'I think people were taking it too far. … It was just really targeting and saying a lot of things that I felt were not nice. I didn't want to fuel that more.' Sabalenka, who faces Carson Branstine on No. 1 Court on Monday, said she hopes the TikTok video shows that all is well between the two. 'We are good, we are friends,' the three-time major winner said. 'I hope the U.S. media can be easy on me right now.' Sabalenka reiterated that she never meant to offend Gauff. 'I was just completely upset with myself, and emotions got over me,' she said. 'I just completely lost it.' Gauff did acknowledge that she was initially tempted to hit back publicly at Sabalenka, who said the American 'won the match not because she played incredible; just because I made all of those mistakes from ... easy balls.' Gauff also said she was slightly surprised that it took a while for Sabalenka to reach out to apologize. But once that happened, the American was quick to bury any grudge. 'I preach love, I preach light,' Gauff said. 'I just want us to be Kumbaya, live happily, hakuna matata, and be happy here.' Other players were also pleased to see the top two women's players getting along again. 'I'm happy to see that they turned the page about it,' said Frances Tiafoe, who is seeded 12th in the Wimbeldon men's bracket. 'That's the biggest thing, because they're the best players in the world. So those relationships you kind of need.' Then the American added with a laugh: 'But also it wouldn't be too bad if they were also back-and-forth. That'd kind of be cool if they kind of didn't like each other.'
Buzz Feed
5 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Rainn Wilson: Making The Office After Carell A Struggle
At this point, the American remake of The Office is one of the most beloved TV sitcoms in the history of the medium. It's just a fact. A large part of what made the show work so well was Steve Carell's performance as Michael Scott. He effectively made the character iconic, and he even won a Golden Globe for his efforts in 2006. You probably also know that Steve left the show at the end of its seventh season, in 2011. The show would go on for two more seasons before closing out for good in 2013. Some believe that the show was never the same after Steve left, and it sounds like that includes Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute across all nine seasons of The Office. In a recent appearance on the Good Guys podcast, Rainn got real about how the cast tried to make it to the end without their effective lead anchor of a performance. 'When Steve left, then it was a little bit chaotic of trying to figure out the tone of the show and who's the lead and, how are we telling these stories without, you know, the comic engine of the show, which is Michael Scott, and without one of the greatest comic actors in American history at the center of our show," he said. "That was also a struggle.' Rainn also said that, for most of the show's cast, the writing had been on the wall about anticipating Steve's departure — and they were none too surprised when it took place. "We knew it was coming for a long time," he said, after noting that Steve was "such a big movie star at the time." 'He was doing, like, Burt Wonderstone and these big comedies," Rainn added. "I'm forgetting all the names of them at the time, but, Get Smart, you know? [Movies] that were in 2,000 theaters at the multiplex." 'So, of course, he's going to leave The Office when he can!' Fair enough! You can listen to the entire interview here.
