Little known to most people, New York City has a lot of interesting and different activities to partake in on Easter that are a lot more exciting than watching younger family members search for plastic eggs filled with jelly beans and pennies. If one is uninterested in the religious aspects of Easter, chocolate bunnies or dyeing eggs there are a variety of fun and strange activities they can do instead.
Saturday, April 4, in NYC there will be “The Amazing Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt,” where participants can assemble their own teams for a more extravagant version of an egg hunt. Participants fill baskets and figure out clues to complete the hunt. The first team to fill their basket wins tickets to Quiet Clubbing, Shake Rattle & Roll and other local activities.
There is an Easter parade every year on Easter Sunday, but instead of floats, balloons and bands there are bonnets. During the parade participants all create or buy very intricate hats shaped like anything from the NYC skyline to bunnies and the Coney Island Cyclone. This parade has been going on since the 1800s from Fifth Ave, from 49th to 57th Street and has no plans of stopping.
At Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, on the Lower East Side from April 1 to April 5, there is an extremely bizarre carnival that lasts four days and was made by the creator of Nightmare Haunted House. The carnival has games like “Chicken Scratch,” which involves beating a giant chicken at tic-tac-toe and “The Keister Bunny,” where participants have to pull candy from an Easter bunny’s behind. And if those two are not weird and crazy enough there is also the main event, an egghunt cage match. In this event volunteers have to battle challengers in rabbit costumes in a 16-by-20-foot steel cage; however, if one does not plan on participating in the chaos, there are several food trucks and even bars inside the carnival as well.
On April 4, in Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village there is the NYC pillowfight. This year will mark New York’s 10th annual International Pillow Fight Day. Past celebrations have included flash mobs that brought in over 5,000 participants. However, during this park-size slumber party, there are a few rules which include not hitting too hard, avoiding destroying others' cameras and not using down feather pillows because they create the biggest mess. All pillows brought can also be donated to a person in need by simply placing them in a truck at the event.
mcalicch@ramapo.edu
