![\"Caribbean](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alldayidreamoftravel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0314-scaled-e1756675965755.jpg?resize=620%2C280&ssl=1\")
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It\u2019s curious how memories come back in spurts. Late one night, over 20 years ago<\/a>, \u2013 it would have been Labor Day Weekend<\/a>, maybe even exactly tonight \u2013 I met up with a bunch of friends, most of whom were MTA workers. We drove out to a subway station in East New York somewhere on the 3 or L train \u2013 Sutter or Livonia, maybe.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t remember what the reason was, but it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n After, we drove through Brownsville and into East Flatbush, the streets came alive<\/a>. People were in the street laughing, drinking, dancing. Calypso, Dancehall, Soca, Reggae was pulsating. The sound of steel pan<\/a> in the summer night. You could smell the char of the jerk sizzling on the grill and see flags blowing with the breeze, illuminated by the street lights.<\/p>\n A friend of ours, who was of West Indian descent \u2013 his mother from St. Kitts & Nevis<\/a> \u2013 explained to us that everybody was preparing for J\u2019ouvert<\/a><\/em> \u2013 the first time I truly understood what the word meant \u2013 and the carnival, the big parade on Eastern Parkway with the costumes. It was after midnight but the streets were ELECTRIC<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I wish I could have stopped the car to take it all in. It was one of the uniquely New York moments in the late 90s or early 2000s, when you could just stumble upon something \u2013 a party, a performance, a work of art.<\/p>\n This night could never happen again. Most of the pan yards<\/a> and mas camps<\/a> have been displaced or pushed deep into the outer fringes of East Flatbush, to East New York or Brownsville. The fetes that were in Crown Heights and Flatbush are there as well, or in Canarsie or even in parking lots in Jamaica, Queens.<\/p>\n The last West Indian Day Parade before COVID, it rained torrentially in the morning. I thought we\u2019d never get there. But then, the rain let up. For a while, it did. We danced and stuffed ourselves and drank. Then it started to pour again and we left. But something about that afternoon left me ill at ease. I couldn\u2019t tell you why, but I knew something was about to change.<\/p>\n On the way back to the Bronx on the 2 train, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I cried. Something told me that it would be a long time before we\u2019d be back on the Parkway and that, when we were, it wouldn\u2019t be the same.<\/p>\n This year makes over 50 years that the West Indian Day Parade has been on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn (it began as a much smaller event in Harlem in 1947<\/a>.) But now, the gentrification is in full swing and all of this \u2013 not just the parade and J\u2019ouvert<\/a> \u2013 this whole community and culture is under siege<\/a>. Things really have changed.<\/em><\/p>\n Private homes have been demolished to make way for mammoth \u201cluxury\u201d rentals. Roti shops<\/a>, record stores, and bodegas have been replaced by \u201corganic,\u201d \u201cartisanal\u201d cafes and grocery stores. Ital restaurants give way to juice bars and vegan caf\u00e9s (oh, the irony<\/em>!) My first real job\u2019s offices are now vacant, left rotting over Flatbush and Church.<\/p>\n The media does a great job of marketing carnival and J\u2019ouvert as \u201cone big street party.\u201d To many of the newcomers<\/a> descending on Brooklyn, Labor Day Weekend<\/a> is simply a nuisance and the subject of dozens of 311 complaints. In reality, it\u2019s neither.<\/p>\n Yes, carnival is a celebration. But it\u2019s also a protest<\/a>. A rebellion. The sound of the pan, the oil glistening on bodies, the colorful flags announce to the world, \u201cWe\u2019re still here.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n But for how much longer?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Big](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/alldayidreamoftravel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_5825-scaled.jpg?resize=620%2C465&ssl=1\")
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