PHOTOS: Ridge kids all smiles at 50th annual Ragamuffin Parade

Third Avenue was alive with the site of smiling faces on Saturday, October 1 as costumed children of all ages took to the Bay Ridge strip to show off their funny, colorful, gleeful and ghastly get-ups for the parade’s 50th anniversary.

A tried and true Bay Ridge tradition since 1967, the parade – which started as a way for the nabe to celebrate the youth of the community after Father James McKenna of Our Lady of Angels and Ridgeite Cliff Scanlon decided to round up neighborhood children and put on a parade with the kids dressed in their parents’ oversized clothes – is something children and their parents, many of them former parade marchers themselves, look forward to every year.

“It’s very important for the children and it is a wonderful thing,” said Ridgeite Dawn Barry Hansen. “People come out just to watch and it’s a tradition – from my mother making costumes to me making costumes and then my daughter making costumes, so it’s wonderful.”

This year saw no shortage of spooky, scary, lively and detailed costumes, all the way from a mini Charlie Chaplin to a box of Easy Mac Macaroni and Cheese.

“The parade started along Fourth Avenue to the delight of everyone living here in our community,” said Ragamuffin President Colleen Golden. “Who would have thought that, 50 years later, we would still be celebrating our children and our parade!”

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