Rhythm of Life on Fifth Ave.
Far from McVeigh, parade reminds us
it's good to be alive

While Timothy McVeigh spent the last Sunday of his life in a gray cage, a glittering line of green, yellow, crimson and blue floats was turning awkwardly onto 44th St. and the streets beyond. Men and women and boys and girls rose from the subways and surged into the brilliant New York sunshine, all of them waving Puerto Rican flags and doing little dance steps. Music blared in the distance. Laughter was everywhere.

Here is what McVeigh, sick with death, did not see on Sunday and will never get another chance to see: a dozen schoolgirls in flamenco costumes, practicing steps in front of the Algonquin, three of them chewing gum; a guy dancing with a life-sized female doll; a trumpet player running through scales; Miss Universe, tall, smiling, beautiful, being led to the Daily News float; a young man wheeling twins in a stroller while his wife unwrapped a sandwich; a young woman in aqua shorts two sizes too small, talking on a cell phone; and a white-haired man, full of years and bedecked with badges and ribbons, suddenly moving a clave to the beat of a distant band.

Here on a glorious Sunday in New York was a chubby, cinnamon-skinned girl yanking nervously at the top of her spangled red dress; three laughing middle-aged guys coming out of a deli with sandwiches and bottled water; Mayor Giuliani walking onto Fifth Ave. on his heavy-booted right foot, hunched, looking as if he'd aged 30 years in the last three; a cluster of elegant women in the costumes of the bomba and the plena, calling up memories of the 19th-century Caribbean; and everywhere, working as marshals, or extra security, some of those gray-bearded, heavyset Puerto Rican men who work all year to save kids from drugs, to get them back to school, to help them pass exams, to lead them to the living of a life.

Because that was what you saw on the streets of Manhattan yesterday: something Timothy McVeigh could never understand. Life, baby. Life.

"You come to see friends, to see each other," a Bronx man named Richie Vasquez said to me. "Most of all, to say, 'Hey, man, we're not alone.'"

Of course. That's the point of all the ethnic parades, as it was when the Irish first started marching in the 19th century. We are not alone. Solitude numbs the heart and empties life. If McVeigh's pathetic life has any meaning at all, it is that: Solitude kills, starting with the self.

So the parade yesterday was a great joining, a celebration of family, food, music, the dignity of work and the belief in tomorrow.

Ornaments of the City

Many young men and women, working on floats, guiding the parade, spoke to each other in English, because they are Nuyoricans — born here, raised here, graduates of our universities; working in our large companies, our law firms, our hospitals, our schools.

They are ornaments of the city, as good, or better, than any who ever came out of our slums. They don't deny their origins — not yesterday, not ever; which is why so many of them reach out to the Mexicans who arrived last year or the Dominicans who arrived last week. Tito Puente said it once in music: Oye, como va? "Hey, how's it going?"

If the Nuyoricans are the great bridge between the older Latinos and those now arriving, they haven't eliminated Puerto Rico from their concerns. The largest concern now is the resumed use of the island of Vieques for target practice by the U.S. Navy. I asked a dozen people, old and young, about Vieques yesterday.

Each answered the same way. Stop the bombing, and free the jailed protesters. One group of marchers carried blown-up photographs of some of those jailed for invading Navy property to protest the shelling of an island where 10,000 U.S. citizens live.

One offered at least one alternate site: Kennebunkport, Maine, where the Bush family owns property. Across the long day, thousands of spectators waved the Puerto Rican flag and the blue-and-white flag of Vieques. Virtually every float carried a Vieques poster and every nubile beauty queen wore a Vieques sash. In saying no to bombs and shells, of course, they were saying yes to life.

But being serious about Vieques doesn't mean the end of laughter and music.

And so here were floats from Goya food, with two elegant girls moving to a driving salsa tune. Here was a boy named Justin Anthony, age 2, from the West Side, shooting a basketball with deadly accuracy through a hoop formed by his father's arms. Here were two little girls dressed as princesses, examining each other's glittery makeup.

Here were five girls dressed like Hiawatha beside the float of the Anasco Social Club, while behind them a painted version of history showed a dead conquistador and living Taino Indians who had just discovered Spaniards were not immortal. Here was the usual mixture of nostalgia and commercialism: floats for Café Bustelo and the Sociedad Mayaguezana, La Mega radio and the town of Aguadilla, all transformed by throbbing, vibrant life.

Too Young Yet to Know

Life took every form on Fifth Ave. Overweight men flirted with thin women. Mothers gave bottles to babies. A guy dressed as a chef did a mambo that would have been cheered at the Palladium. Many young women showed off fresh tattoos, this year placed on the lower spine, with shorts slung low to make them visible; they were too young yet to know how swiftly they will be grandmothers.

Up the block, on top of a Daily News float, the great prizefighter Felix Trinidad signed Puerto Rican flags with a felt-tipped pen, joined by the heavyweight champion John Ruiz, both of them gentle and courteous because they are truly tough men.

All the candidates for mayor were there, of course, as well as Sens. Schumer and Clinton, and singer Marc Anthony, who saw his first National Puerto Rican Day Parade from a shopping cart pushed by his East Harlem mother.

There were thousands of cops, on foot and on horse, and you saw some of them shaking hands with cheering people. A few of them gazed in suburban wonder at two young women in lime-green dresses, tottering on three-inch heels. On the edges of the parade, there were surely a few young men in hormone overload, but the vile events of last year were unlikely to be repeated. The day felt too full of life to be spoiled by thugs and idiots.

I suspect that absolutely nobody on Fifth Ave. yesterday gave a minute's thought to Timothy McVeigh. In his gray cell, he was preparing to recite a fifth-rate poem called "Invictus" by a sixth-rate British poet named Henley, all about being the master of his fate, the captain of his soul. In the world of the living, nothing could have seemed more preposterous. Out there, where people cheered and laughed and danced, it was one of those days when you wanted to live forever.

Original Publication Date: 6/11/01 New York Daily News