Bensonhurst’s Italian-American community came out in droves on Saturday, Oct. 6 to celebrate the borough’s own 37th Annual Brooklyn Columbus Day Parade, which routinely marches along 18th Avenue, also known as Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard, after the Italian name for the explorer. The southern Brooklyn parade preceded the city’s larger scale Columbus Day Parade, held on Monday, along Fifth Avenue. Though, the Bensonhurst parade certainly held its own.

Sponsored by the Federation of Italian-American Organizations (FIAO) of Brooklyn, the parade is a longstanding Bensonhurst tradition that still draws large crowds every October, despite the fact that the neighborhood has undergone a sea change in recent years, transitioning from a predominantly Italian-American community to one that includes a large number of Asian-Americans.