It can be painful to ponder summer’s end, but at least the close of the season brings one of the borough’s best bashes. For 43 straight years on Labor Day, the annual West Indian American Day Carnivale has imbued Eastern Parkway with the sound of steel drums and the scents of eats from the islands. All day long, from Rochester Avenue to Grand Army Plaza, the Parkway becomes a crush of stories-high floats blasting the bass of reggae, of dancers (barely) dressed in masquerade style with spangles and bangles and feathers and fringe in the colors of Trinidad and Tobago, of Jamaica, Barbados, The Cayman Islands, Haiti and Grenada.
Brooklyn’s West Indian population is second only to that in the Caribbean itself, and for one delicious day the sidewalks are crowded with stalls sporting deep fryers, kettle smokers and the flavors of home. Diners line up 20 deep for fried whiting and cod fritters; for jerk chicken, oxtail, beef patties, collards and callaloo; for rice and pigeon peas and plantains; for the chickpea-stuffed sandwich snacks called “doubles” and the curry-stuffed flatbreads called “roti”; for little bags of barbecue shrimp with heads and tails intact; and for coconut water, mango-lemonades and sweet, cold pink drinks made with red hibiscus flower known in the West Indies as “sorrel.” As summer sets, you eat it all on the side of the street—or better still, out of hand as you dance to the beat.
Photo credit: Mira Zaki.
