'Labor Day Parade, Rest in Peace Bob Marley'

It's a rite of passage each year for Caribbean ex-patriots and their American-born hyphenates to revel in roots when summer skips off into memory.

Eastern Parkway becomes a corridor lined with stalls of our oxtail, rice, griot, lambi, bottles of sorrel...This season I'm honoring this city, making sure he knows I never take him granted.

I went to Carnival this year after sitting out a few and as always I was so up. (Yeah, it can be a grope-fest, but so can the subway. And Bloomberg has barricaded it and squeezed some of the lawlessness out, probably for the gawking tourists and the gentrifying set.)

Snapped a few flicks and wanted to post a couple. Did you know that the ritual J'Ouvert (or juvee) celebration that kicks off at about 2 in the morning, the night before the Labor Day Parade has its origins in the French West Indies, when Haitian slaves (and those from Dominica, Guadeloupe, etc.) spilled into the avenues to fete emancipation?

At the parade this year, revelers in fitteds and jeans came splattered in the ceremonial powders, mud, oil, and general goodwill. What a sight to behold.

I Think I'm From Where Dreams Are Made. The Lights Will Inspire You.

First things first.

One Hand in the Air for all of us Born Yankees, we the few New York City natives, who know what it is to walk by skyscrapers and never look up because we were too busy slinging tokens and bus passes, stopping at the deli for a beef patty and a quarter water.

Shout to the barber shop with the beautiful black men getting the edge-up, to the corner where the grizzled elders are politickin as the scent of Nag Champa wafts overhead, to the beauty shops like Harlem Berry where the ablutions happen over the sink. You might have relocated to Houston, W. VA, FL, no matter, I bet you still bleed blue. And I bet that Blueprint 3 is on repeat today.



As the still agile Jigga Man preps his show at the Garden (I see you, Greg!) tonight, benefitting the city's bravest and finest, I wonder where were you on 9/11? I was on Morningside Heights and some of us converged on my friend M's Uptown pad overlooking the George Wash. Smoke billowing even from that vantage point, we prayed, talked, reflected, cried, called out incantations. A Towering loss.

Allow me to reintroduce myself: I'm from the Empire State, most definitely from New York and I go by the name of Black Girl Named Becky. If this is your first visit with me, wipe your feet, welcome. To everyone else who's supported me, I appreciate you. I'm back.

You coming?