With wind chill, I think the day of the 2013 Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade & Festival in Manhattan’s Chinatown was about 16 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s cold. And no one seemed to care.

It is hard to get clear and current information on this event from the website of the organizer, Better Chinatown Society, but in anticipation of the 2012 event a year earlier, they had written that they expected half a million attendees.

I am no good at estimating crowds, but I can tell you that in 2013 I couldn’t get close to the parade route. It was nuts, I was freezing, people were jostling me, I stopped feeling my fingertips, and I went home. 

Had I stuck around, here is what I might have seen, according to last year’s marketing copy: “A colorful spectacle featuring floats, marching bands, lion and dragon dancers, antique cars, beauty queens, Asian & Hispanic musical performers, magicians and acrobats, and local organizations.”

I am a parade wimp.