The crowd line crept ever more away from the curb on Sunday, on occasion making it anyone’s guess as to who was marching in and who was just watching the Greater Hartford Puerto Rican Day Parade. As with every parade, there was a contingent of elected officials, and a presence by some of the mayoral candidates and their families. Floats ranged from actual floats to pageant winners on foot to dancing horses to cyclists and skateboarders just joining in. There were a few large gaps in the marchers and floats, but paradegoers tolerated this on a day with perfect weather.
The parade attracts visitors from all over the region — something that merchants in Downtown have not attempted to capitalize on for whatever reason. While thousands of people gather along the parade route and in Bushnell Park, there are plenty more who mostly cruise around neighborhood streets, stopping to buy snacks from food trucks or residents selling $2 hamburgers that have been grilled in their front yards.
Some news organizations have erroneously reported this as being only the sixth year of the parade; in truth, Hartford has seen this parade in some form since the early 1960s. It was the sixth year for it being hosted solely by The Connecticut Institute for Community Development Puerto Rican Parade Inc. (CICD).
