NEW YORK – Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony lent Hollywood glamour to the Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday -- and attracted such a horde of paparazzi that police officers and Guardian Angels kept them roped off from the crowds as they marched.
"The Puerto Rican parade has been a long-standing tradition in my life. It was always an event that I looked forward to every single year," said Anthony, who led the parade with his wife, Lopez, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Salsa music blared from dozens of floats as the parade made its way up Fifth Avenue past a sea of revelers waving the red, white and blue Puerto Rican flag.
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Beauty queens wore Barbie doll dresses and foot-high tiaras. Folk dance troupes wore ruffled skirts and flowers behind their ears.
A contingent of high-stepping show horses was followed by two sanitation workers wheeling garbage bins.
In addition to Bloomberg, politicians marching included New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, and U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer.
The Puerto Rican parade, an annual event in New York since 1958, has grown to be one of the city's largest. Although it was impossible to estimate this year's crowd, hundreds of thousands have attended in recent years.
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