Mermaid Parade 2016 Date Announced

Posted on January 27, 2016 by The Coney Island Blog in Residents, Visitors // 0 Comments

The 34th Annual Mermaid Parade will be taking place at Coney Island on Saturday, June 18th at 1pm. The scantily clad celebration of the summer season inspired by the Mardi Gras Parades of Coney’s past has been attracting crowds of about 800,000.

Last year’s King and Queen were stars Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz. In 2014 Mayor de Blasio’s son and daughter Dante and Chiara were given the honors. The 2016 King Neptune and Queen Mermaid will be announced at the Coney Island USA Gala on Saturday, March 19th.

Check out this link for Mermaid Parades of the ancient past (over 25 years ago!).

Registration is not yet open. For more info click here.

About The Mermaid Parade:

The Mermaid Parade is the largest art parade in the nation. A celebration of ancient mythology and honky-tonk rituals of the seaside, it showcases over 3,000 creative individuals from all over the five boroughs and beyond, opening the summer with incredible art, entrepreneurial spirit and community pride. The parade highlights Coney Island Pageantry based on a century of many Coney parades, celebrates the artistic vision of the masses, and ensures that the summer season is a success by bringing hundreds of thousands of people to the amusement area in a single day.

The MERMAID PARADE specifically was founded in 1983 with 3 goals: it brings mythology to life for local residents who live on streets named Mermaid and Neptune ; it creates self-esteem in a district that is often disregarded as “entertainment”; and it lets artistic New Yorkers find self-expression in public.

Unlike most parades, this one has no ethnic, religious, or commercial aims. It’s a major New York holiday invented by artists! An American version of the summer-solstice celebration, it takes pride of place with West African Water Festivals and Ancient Greek and Roman street theater. It’s features participants dressed in hand-made costumes based on themes and categories set by us. This creates an artistic framework on which artists can improvise, resulting in the flourishing of frivolity, dedication, pride, and personal vision that has become how New York celebrates summer.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.