Ticket sales down for New Year's Junkanoo parade

One Family dancers on Bay Street during the 2018 Boxing Day Junkanoo parade

As of Friday, December 28, 2018

By RIEL MAJOR

JUNKANOO Corporation of New Providence officials said Friday ticket sales are down for the New Year's Day parade.

“(Ticket sales) are at 30 per cent," Silbert Ferguson, chairman of JCNP said in an interview with The Tribune, "We are hoping we will be able to do a little better than that as we move into the parade for January 1st.”

After criticism over the delay of the Boxing Day parade, Mr Ferguson said junkanooers work hard all year to achieve one common goal, which is to have a great parade. He reminded the public of the "inclement weather" on Boxing Day that affected the parade.

"A lot of people still don’t understand and the news has not reported we had inclement weather. Any time you have inclement weather anything can happen. This isn’t an excuse (but) unfortunately we got a report that we would have some showers in the hours of 2 am and 4 am but it rained the entire day on Christmas Day.

"That prevented groups from mobilising and getting into the parade but, of course, some of things we agreed to with the police…we agreed with the police to bring the containers in on the western side, we will then off load them and we will then push them to the east side of Elizabeth Avenue.

"Unfortunately the groups had a challenge when they bought their costumes in…they felt uncomfortable moving them to the east so they kept them at the west and, of course, that is what triggered the blockage."

Mr Ferguson also "apologised" saying "it’s not their fault that we had that kind of situation."

"So we are looking at New Year’s morning to make sure that we ask the police to enforce the laws of the streets because what happened, happened outside of the arena which is out of our control…totally out of our control and we have to rely on the police to make it happen," said Mr Ferguson.

Lead sponsors for the parades include BTC, the title sponsor, Kalik, and Rubis.

Tickets for Rawson Square are on sale for $50.40, Scotia Bank (Parliament Street to Charlotte Street) tickets for $39.20, and John Bull (Charlotte Street to Frederick Street) tickets for $16.80.

The 2019 New Year’s Day parade will start on January 1, 2019 at 2am.

John 5 years, 4 months ago

Bahamian merchants were crying that this is the worst December they experienced in decades, but The Tribune published a joyful story saying that local merchants sales matched last years. And even those that may have seen a spurt in the two days just before Christmas it was not enough to erase the 20 - 30 % declines then have been experiencing since July. Hopefully the booming tourist winter season will help to erase more of the losses of second half, 2019.

SP 5 years, 4 months ago

July to mid-November was like death by a thousand cuts for businesses. With over 20 years in business, I have never experienced anywhere near the depressed sales for this period.

Let us not forget to pay honor where it is due and thank Hubert Alexander Ingraham and Perry Gladstone Christie, who while fooling most people by calling themselves honorable men, strutted around chest out and heads held high in our Parliament for 25 years for their absolute mastery job of phucking up what used to be one of the topmost prosperous countries in the region!

Ingraham, Christie, and their crew of minions deserve all that is coming to them. Amen!

DDK 5 years, 4 months ago

AMEN! Christie, Ingraham AND Minnis!

ThisIsOurs 5 years, 4 months ago

Rain and traffic. Who could have known. We do live in a coastal city so it's not unusual for us to get rain during winter. And ever year, for the past 20 years at least, they've needed to use big trucks to get costumes to bay on narrow congested streets. But other than that, seriously, who could have known?

I'll watch from tv and wait to hear about a wheel falling off of an unnecessarily huge costume in the middle of rawson square, the music makers, prodigal sons and 99% of the b-groups will bring mashed up reused costumes and be disqualified..... But who could have known.

SP 5 years, 4 months ago

Nobody should be surprised with 17% unemployment and 6,000 people living in darkness and can't pay their light bills that many people find it impossible to find $50.00 to throw away on a non-essential item like Junkanoo!

This is a classic example of what's happening throughout the economy as expat blue-collar workers do not patronize Junkanoo or local merchants.

Unfortunately, Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie were too thick to understand the dynamics of an economy and the all-important role of keeping Bahamians employed as blue-collar workers to keep money floating through the economy.

Well_mudda_take_sic 5 years, 4 months ago

LMAO

DDK 5 years, 4 months ago

NOT funny, Mudda!

Islangal1 5 years, 4 months ago

On top of what everyone else mentioned above. Had the discussion while watching online with my daughter, ZNS commercials ran on forever. I think the groups are too large, which makes intermission is too long and the parade starts too late. It was good to start Junkanoo at midnight when the groups weren't so massive. I don't really enjoy watching the parade during the daytime because it takes away a lot of the ambience, you don't see all the glitz of the tricks on costumes.

joeblow 5 years, 3 months ago

I really don't like the Carnival influence in Junkanoo and stopped going to parades many years ago. Leave it to Bahamians to destroy one of the most unique aspects of our culture in an effort to embrace another!

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