2016!
This year's parade is tomorrow! In the meantime, here are some pictures I took at the 2012 one.
That year I barely watched any of the parade, it was mostly just an excuse to get my friends to the beach. When we were walking back down the boardwalk, probably an hour after the parade ended, we stopped to watch this guy playing music. The woman who did his body paint was dancing around at the front. (you can just see her at the right edge of the second picture). I don't think I've ever seen body paint as thick as hers; in some ways a bikini top would have been more revealing, but she was still distracting about half the crowd's attention, and rightfully so.
That all changed when the three girls in these pictures showed up. The small crowd let them right through to the front, where they started dancing, seemingly oblivious to all of us. Immediately all the attention was on them, and lots of cameras came out. The musician seemed amused by the whole thing, happy to take advantage of the sudden doubling of his audience, even if they were obviously not there for the music. The crowd, meanwhile, seemed to appreciate having the music as an excuse so they could stop and stare. And the guys they were with, well, they did a pretty good job of acting nonchalant, but you could tell that they and the girls were the happiest people there.
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