Dia de los Muertos -- Day of the Dead
YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia
Photo Essay, Walter Lopez
Nov 04, 2010
Another Dia de los Muertos was celebrated in the Mission District in good ol’ San Francisco this year, and as usual, people were in attendance parading up 24th St. with their face painted. For those who refuse to lament over their lost ones and prefer to honor them in a festive way, this is the day when you can march with your ancestral spirits. However it seems that a bunch of these people ‘don’t get it’ so to speak.
There are several children at the parade who remembering their loved ones
A seat and a guest book to sign.
Beautiful makeup adorns the face of marchers.
Some bros just parade around smoking ‘mad trees’ and shooting the shit, not really knowing what they are doing. This year, there seemed to be a ton of those folks—somehow a ‘Scream’ mask doesn’t feel like it does the spirits justice. The amount of people that ‘dressed up’ for the event appeared to be mostly white, which led me to wonder if those non-Latino bros who want to play dress-up and wear make-up would embrace the not-so-glorious aspects of being Mexican—you know, like prejudice, discrimination, and an overall feeling of dislike being thrown at you from the government and its ‘facilities’. It’s not all Dia de los Muertos and tacos, you know.
People went all out with their make-up.
Dancers in Aztec costumes.
Anyway, the parade featured perennial faves like the stilts and the bro in the giant skeleton-bobbleheadish costume. My favorite part of the parade however was the bus that acted as a ‘portal to famous spirits’. It was clever and kind of cute, which made the nonsensical gibber jabber spoken by everyone around it tolerable. The performers did well, and the highlight was the ‘Lucy Show’ skit, which featured banter between ‘Lucy’ and ‘Ricky’. All in all it was thoroughly enjoyable.
The parade seemed to go by quickly, I was there for two hours and it had begun to dissipate. I would have enjoyed it more, but it was okay that it drew to an early close. The incense/armpit smelling bush thing that I like and don’t like at the same time was kind of giving me a headache. Check it out next year y’all.
High Dis de Los Muertos fashion.
This bro was saying something about the apocalypse while he was on a giant chariot.
1 of 1
