Parade

The Honk Parade this year included most of the Honk bands plus a wide array of community groups, each responding to the theme of “Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet” in their own way. The goal of the parade was to create a spectacular processional theater piece with striking visual images and plenty of brass band music in order to show by example how our streets and public spaces can function as places for community celebration and fun, as well as for their everyday practical purposes. The parade showcases alternative modes of transportation (pedicabs, bicycles, feet) and celebrates the possibilities of live performance as a mode for entertaining and thoughtful inspiration.

The local organizations inventing colorful processional street spectacle for the Honk Parade include community performance groups such as the Open Air Circus, the Boston Hoop Troop, Tumbling for Two, the Royal Frog Ballet, the Disbanded Drill Team, and Can-Can Revolution; activist groups such as the Livable Streets Alliance, Food not Bombs, Somerville Climate Action, Veterans for Peace, the Red Bandanna Brigade, the Green Streets Initiative, the Tufts University Peace and Justice Group; and fascinating art and performance projects such as Mitch Ryerson’s Star Wheel, the Endangered Species with Lipstick parading comparsa, the world-renowned Bread and Puppet Theater of Vermont, Jamaica Plain’s Spontaneous Celebrations, and Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Club. The parade has also attracted neighbors joining together to have fun, such as Somerville’s Barbecue Co-op, which is constructing a four-wheeled wagon full of pigs (children in costumes) to be pulled by a contingent of chefs (their parents, also in costumes).