JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Masqueraders dazzle in downtown PoS

... but vendors upset at slow sales

by

Jesse Ramdeo
11 days ago
20250305

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

South Quay, Port-of-Spain erupt­ed with colour, rhythm and Car­ni­val en­er­gy yes­ter­day, as mas­quer­aders pa­rad­ed be­fore judges and spec­ta­tors in a daz­zling dis­play of cre­ativ­i­ty and spir­it for Car­ni­val Tues­day.

From as ear­ly as 7 am, judges and on­look­ers be­gan as­sem­bling at the Lord Kitch­en­er Stand.

Short­ly af­ter 8 am, mas­quer­aders be­long­ing to the 10 dif­fer­ent sec­tions of The Lost Tribe, which cel­e­brat­ed its 10th an­niver­sary this year, crossed the stage, blend­ing chore­o­graphed moves with un­in­hib­it­ed rev­el­ry to Machel Mon­tano’s Pardy.

Be­neath the beat­ing sun, mas­quer­aders jumped, sang, hugged, waved and danced their way in­to the next leg of the pa­rade, car­ry­ing with them the elec­tric en­er­gy.

A heavy po­lice pres­ence bol­stered se­cu­ri­ty in the area, which record­ed in­creased crowds by noon.

As the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty pulsed through South Quay with waves of mas­quer­aders, there were a few mo­ments of de­lays. There were min­i­mal dis­rup­tions to danc­ing as Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Car­ry It and Machel Mon­tano’s Pardy, both con­sid­ered to be the main con­tenders for Road March, were blast­ed re­peat­ed­ly by mu­sic trucks.

One of the spec­ta­tors was vet­er­an Car­ni­val an­nounc­er Jem­ma Jor­dan, a for­mer teacher who al­so lends her voice to the Boston Car­ni­val and New York Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions.

“This morn­ing I am look­ing for a very smooth flow of bands. I hope we have all the bands com­ing here, we al­ready have Lost Tribe wait­ing to cross the stage and they have been the first band for the last two years. We look for­ward to the fan­tas­tic cos­tumes,” Jor­dan said, say­ing Car­ni­val 2025 had show­cased unique cre­ativ­i­ty. “This Car­ni­val, well you know on Mon­days they come with piece of the cos­tume and based on the pieces of cos­tume that we saw yes­ter­day, I can imag­ine that the cos­tumes to­day will be a kalei­do­scope of colour and a nice va­ri­ety of cos­tumes and I am look­ing for­ward to that.”

While thou­sands may have flocked to down­town Port-of- Spain over the last two days, street ven­dors voiced their frus­tra­tion over slug­gish sales. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the ven­dors blamed the ex­ist­ing pa­rade route as one of the key con­trib­u­tors for the de­cline in foot traf­fic.

Ven­dors like Pauline Bap­tiste, who re­ly on the an­nu­al fes­tiv­i­ties for a fi­nan­cial boost, ex­plained that mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors were be­ing di­vert­ed away from their stalls.

“All they need to do is to make the routes bet­ter like long time than hav­ing them in drome (So­cadrome). That killing them be­cause when you go South Quay, you see­ing all the ven­dors park up and noth­ing not pass­ing there, they pass­ing dif­fer­ent place and they charg­ing peo­ple for them places.”

Ac­cord­ing to ven­dor Sher­win Sander­son, Car­ni­val no longer pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for those con­sid­ered to be dis­ad­van­taged.

“Car­ni­val is not for the peo­ple again, it too com­mer­cialised, big bands, big peo­ple with mon­ey. Car­ni­val used to be ven­dors and poor peo­ple, no longer poor peo­ple and ven­dors any­more.”

Cindy Ja­cob ex­plained that her fam­i­ly has been vend­ing in the South Quay area for years and not­ed that sales have not been as high as in years gone by.

“We had to pay a high rent to sell here so we have to make back we mon­ey and a lit­tle prof­it too.”

While Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne hailed Car­ni­val 2025 a suc­cess, he not­ed the con­cerns raised by ven­dors.

“We have some adap­ta­tions that we need to do. We need to en­sure that we keep the Car­ni­val as safe as pos­si­ble, so that we not on­ly po­si­tion the mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors but the ven­dors in a way that al­lows the fes­ti­val to con­tin­ue to grow. We have some teething is­sues that we need to work our way through and we’re well on our way to work­ing through them.”

How­ev­er, Al­leyne con­tend­ed that the ex­ist­ing Pa­rade of the Bands route was his­tor­i­cal so it was un­like­ly they would make too many ma­jor changes.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored