What if You Threw a Parade and Everyone Just Thought You Were Delivering Produce?

Jon Stewart once said, "New York City has a parade-based economy." Truth be told, almost every weekend there is indeed another parade in Manhattan, celebrating a particular event, a particular culture or a particular organization. Always festive, often chaotic, the one thing these parades are never is dull.

That is until today. For happening right at this very moment, on Fifth Avenue along Central Park, is the annual (apparently) Teamsters Day Parade, a decidedly lackluster affair that can best be described as follows:

* Eschewing traditional floats, marching bands and balloons, the parade consists entirely of such crowd-favorites as "The Tropicana Orange Juice Eighteen-Wheeler," "The Liberty Moving Van," "Fleet of Propane Trucks," "Several Unmarked Tractor-Trailers" and "The Drakes Cake Truck." (In fact, for the first several minutes I just assumed I was watching "A Celebration to I-80.")

* What the parade lacked in live music it more than made up for by blasting "Glory Days" over the speakers again and again and again.

* While there were no official cheerleading squads present, there were several little girls in the parade who kept flailing their arms and chanting, "Defense! Defense!" (Whether that was in response to corrupt corporate governance or another, approaching parade could not be ascertained at the time).

* As one can tell from the above photograph, spectator attendance was exceptionally light. In addition to me the only other people watching the parade were some bored on-duty policemen, a confused family from Italy and a man dressed entirely in feathers with day-glo hair and beard and matching poodle in a baby carriage (he was asking $10 per picture. hence the truck photo).

* Judging from the marchers' turnout, most Teamsters chose not--or simply forgot--to attend. Most of those who indeed did show up could be seen asleep in the back of an open DHL truck.

* The official announcer for the parade called out a participating five-year-old for wearing "Commie red." He then went on to recap several Little League baseball games.

* In the ten minutes I watched the parade, the marching Teamsters stopped twice for breaks.

UPDATE: I've had several people ask me, so let me state for the record that this parade was indeed real and the above observations were indeed made.