Liberty Weekend was not a parade.

It was a four-day celebration commemorating the restoration and centennial of Statue of Liberty in New York City that took place over the Fourth of July weekend in 1986.

It consumed all of downtown with people running around in Statue of Liberty hats, shirts, foam tiaras, and American flags. In addition to the usual 4th of July visitors, NY was filled with soldiers, sailors and fleets of ships that were open to the public to go on and tour. 

At its peak, there were so many boats filling New York Harbor that looking out at the Statue you couldn’t see Liberty Island, causing an out-of-towner to remark, “I didn’t know the Statue was on land. I thought it was on water!”