Year of the Fire Horse

Started: 2026-05-12 21:30:58

Submitted: 2026-05-12 22:44:11

Visibility: World-readable

Visiting Chinatown and seeing the Chinese New Year Parade for 2026, the Year of the Fire Horse

This year I invited my family to attend the Chinese New Year parade in Chinatown, and Julian agreed. (This, along with the expedition to see Big Boy in Roseville, should serve as a reminder that the story I tell myself, that no one else in my family wants to leave the house, is not strictly true; they're just selective about what they want to do. So I guess I need to ask, and maybe promise side quests for ice cream.)

We took MUNI to Chinatown and walked past a group of elementary school children dressed as mahjong tiles on the sidewalk. Grant Ave, running the length of the neighborhood, was closed to traffic to make room for a street festival. There were booths from community organizations and vendors selling various things. We walked down to the Chinatown Gate to get a selfie at the gate, then headed back into the festival.

I saw a booth roasting chestnuts on a propane fire, so I bought a bag and then tried to figure out how to eat them. Someone on the street saw me struggling to open one of the nuts and pointed out a small plastic tool on the booth table; it was roughly the size of a guitar pick but with a toothed edge that would cut into the tough shell of the nut. I could crack the nut open and scoop out the edible fleshy heart of the nut. It had a mild, earthy flavor; somehow I got the flavor profile of winter squash. I gave Julian a couple of nuts and he wasn't quite sure what to make of them. I didn't really get the hang of opening the nuts, and I barely made a dent in the lunch bag of nuts I bought, but it was an interesting experience.

We walked up Grant Ave looking for snacks and didn't feel especially inspired by the booths in the street, or the shops lining the sidewalks (and it was hard to get a good look at everything with the crowds of people) so we ended up walking the length of Grant Ave and heading around the corner on Columbus Ave to an ice cream shop in North Beach.

Properly fortified we headed back into Chinatown and walked down Kearny St to find a place to watch the parade. It was almost an hour until the parade was scheduled to start, and there was plenty of space a few blocks down the street at Pine where we could stand right at the crowd-control fence lining the street for an uninterrupted view of the parade route. As we waited I watched an SFFD ambulance ATV pull up from the side street, open the a hole in the fence for it to drive through, then close up the fence behind it. Some time later it returned and ran the whole process in reverse to exit the parade route through the fence.

The crowd lining the street behind the barricades filled out as the parade approached. We were near the end of the parade, though it appeared that many other people had the same idea I did, to take MUNI to Chinatown, visit the street festival, and then walk up the parade route to find a space to watch. Finally the front of the parade approached us, escorted by a pair of SFPD police motorcycles.

I took pictures of many of the parade entries; rather than try to recount everything I'm going to share the highlights:

State Senator Scott Wiener, now running to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress. All of the politicians in the parade were carefully identified with their current roles, not any other offices they might be running for.

An old SFPD police car.

An old Oakland Fire Department engine.

Grand Marshal Eileen Gu, recently returned from the Winter Olympics, waving to the crowd from the back of a convertible, surrounded by security.

San Francisco mayor David Lurie showed up somewhere in the middle of the parade, walking ahead of his official parade vehicle that actually bore the sign identifying him, in the middle of his security detail. He walked past so fast and I didn't recognize him in time (until someone in the crowd next to me made a comment about it), so I didn't have the chance to get a picture.

There were a number of high school marching bands from around the Bay Ara (and, I think, at least one middle school); but I only saw one University of California: Berkeley, which didn't need to come very far across the bay.

San Francisco Public Library decorated its bookmobile for the parade.

There were many lion dance groups in the parade; one of them ran past my side of the parade route for some crowd interaction so I managed to get a fast photo.

Garfield Elementary School dressed up as mahjong tiles.

SFO advertised all of its direct flights to Asia.

BARTmobile dressed up for the parade.

After more than two hours of watching the parade, Julian was clearly getting bored (which I finally noticed when he laid down on the sidewalk) so we started walking up the parade route. We were on the west side of Kearny, so we were cut off from the direct escape route to Market Street. We ended up walking all the way along the parade route to Union Square; and along the way I saw the Cal Poly marching band.

We ate a late supper at Super Duper on Market Street; and along the way I saw that Salesforce Tower was showing an animated flock of red horses galloping around the LED screens on the superstructure above the roof, representing the Year of the Fire Horse.