My wife, Laia, told me last week that she really wanted to attend the Coney Island Mermaid Parade this year. She’d been to it twice before, once with her family who were visiting from Barcelona and another when I had just started on tour with Justin Bieber, both times I was unfortunately unable to attend. Coney Island is a place I rarely get to, so it was a nice change of pace to zip out to the beach on my scooter with Laia today.

I’m not sure what to say about the parade other than it’s Coney Island’s official start of summer, it has a Mardi Gras feel to it with dancing, some brass bands, and lots of people dressed in ocean-themed outfits. Oh, there’s a fair amount of boobs too. Lots of these outfits are made entirely out of body paint, so there’s some partial nudity.

We arrived before the parade started and walked around, ate some hotdogs, and scouted out locations to shoot. We bounced around from the start and finish and decided to hang out for a while at the end in hopes some participants would peel off and head to the beach. They did, which was nice because it gave me an excuse to get into the water a bit. It was super hot and the sun was taking a toll. Laia and I got a lot of sun today.

We decided to call it a day pretty soon after as we had another 1+ hour ride on our little scooter. Coney Island is the farthest we’ve brought our little bike. Another fun day in NYC! My photos are in the order they were taken.

Today I decided to wake up early on the weekend and head to midtown on my bike with my wife and photograph some of the activity around the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Normally I try to stay as far away from Fifth Avenue parades as possible, but I felt motivated this morning. Also, this was not for an assignment, rather just for ourselves, so there was no stress with deadlines or editor’s expectations. We decided to  concentrate on the activity around the parade because in order to get a good spot, we would have to stay in one place and not move…this way we got to roam and see all the participants of the parade warming up for the before the parade started.

It was fun, but as the start time approached, more and more highly intoxicated revelers began pouring out of bars, which wasn’t so fun. Anyhow, I hope you like my take on the parade!