Christmas in Kingston, sort of

This past Saturday, the Kingston annual Christmas parade at night. That's right, we gotta be different.

 Not to be confused with the line up outside of Stages.

 Yeah, there really was no po-po presence.

 Here it comes!

Kingston is home to the World Champion Town Crier, dontcha know. Apparently his official duties have taken him to Australia, Belgium, England, Ireland, across Canada and the US to cry in praise of Kingston. I'm not sure if that posse follows him around permanently, but if I were him I would probably force them to.

Apparently his promotional duties did not include looking at the camera. Fucker.

The historical costume society (I'm not capitalizing that... ) followed by the RMC's flotilla device.

 Not RMC's flotilla device.

 They're everywhere, probably because they get free money and a place to drink beer.

 Most floats looked like this: a big truck hauling a trailer full of garbage and people.

Not sure what this thing is doing here. The #4 runs like this all year around here in Kingston. Also, an extremely drunk/high guy got out of this bus in front of us; apparently Bagot and Princess was his stop.

That's a good costume. 

Big trucks with Christmas lights. At least there was an effort. The mayor of Kingston drove through in a black Chrysler with a magnet on his door stating that he was in fact the mayor. He did not wave his hands and was alone in the car. I will not speculate as to what he was doing with his hands alone in the car.

The abrupt stop this thing made was pretty hilarious...

Not officially part of the parade. This is how the Kingston kids dress these days. 

 

And of course you have the Harry Potter float. 

We skipped the lighting of the tree, mostly because we were freezing and relatively bored (really, an hour of this is more than enough once a year), and instead opted for beer and burgers at the Kingston Brew Pub. Walking back, we found evidence it was in fact lit, and found its obvious sponsorship partner next door.

Glowing full moon between the best tree silhouette I could find.

Want to enter next year? Of course you do. And so do I. Julia looked up the application process. Official entry fee is $150, but you can easily work it down to $80 with a little creativity.

http://www.downtownkingston.ca/files/09%20non%20commercial%20application...pdf

I already got some ideas.