2013 Rockland's Firefighter Parade

Rockland's Firefighter Parade is an annual event held at Rockland County, New York. The annual parade that attracts fire departments from around the area is hosted by a different community every year. New City Fire Department, celebrating their 125th year in existence, was the host of this year's event. The last time they hosted the parade was in 1995. More than 40 separate organizations with over 100 firetrucks were in the parade. The parade was led by the Budweiser Clydesdales.

2013 Rockland's Firefighters Parade, a set on Flickr.

Love Parade now longer...

Love Parade, the longest and popular electronic dance music festival held annually in Germany, was struck with tragedy this year when a stampede broke out in the tunnel entrance to the festival killing 19 and injuring 342 festival goers (as of this writing). And now, the organizers has announced that this was the last Love Parade that will be held.

So another EDM festival has been struck by tragedy this year. The blaming game has started with the city and police officials at Duisburg, where the festival was being held, blaming it on the organizers and vice versa. But would this solve any problem?

Investigation is still on going on who really is to blame. What will happen now to the other Love Parade spin-offs?

This is an awful tragedy but will canceling future Love Parades really solve this problem?

How I know the economy is still down...

The economy is still down but sometimes you wont be able to tell till you experience it. And I surely did see it during Halloween.

I went to Nyack Halloween Parade last weekend which has been deemed as the second largest parade in the Northeast, just second to Greenwich Village Parade. I was a little bit disappointed because the parade lasted not even half an hour which was fairly short since I was informed that this parade usually last at least an hour or so. Yes, you could probably blame the rain and that its being done during Halloween instead of the usual week before but you could see that economy has it hands on it as well with fewer floats and fewer revelers in the parade.


Since the parade ended early, me and my friends decided to head to Forest of Fears. This haunted place is located in Sterling Forest which makes it scarier since its surrounded by woods. The last time I went to this place was 4 years ago and vividly remembered the place having two haunted house and the slaughterhouse, which was pretty scary and had a ton of haunted activities as well as actors and actress scaring the bejebus out of the visitors. Anyway, when we got there, I notice that the place scaled down drastically. There was only the Slaughterhouse surrounded by game booths and ride making it feel more like a carnival instead of a haunted place. There were fewer actors scaring the people waiting online. And to top it all, the Slaughterhouse wasn't scary at all.

Anyway, Halloween was still fun though especially that later night when Nyack was filled with revelers all dress up and hitting every bar in town. And with the time change, everyone had a chance to stay an hour later without worrying about the places closing down.

Will the economy affect the Holiday Season like Halloween? Time will only tell