In pictures - the colourful Coney Island Mermaid Parade

The annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade saw the Brooklyn neighbourhood explode with festivities this Saturday. The colourful spectacle of participants in zany aquatic costumes ushered in the New York summer for the 37th time. This year, the corner of Mermaid Avenue and West 35th Street in Brooklyn is being named Woody Guthrie Way. The songwriter famous for This Land is Your Land and his wife moved into a modest first-floor apartment on Mermaid Avenue in 1943. Guthrie's children, Arlo and Nora Guthrie, were king and queen of this year's Coney Island Mermaid Parade (below). The siblings grew up in Coney Island, and Arlo is a famous singer-songwriter in his own right, most famous for Alice's Restaurant . The parade was founded in 1983 to promote the historic amusement park district and what Coney Island advocate Dick Zigun calls its "wacky art." The parade now has a global following and is staged each year on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice. And now, to reminisce, here's Guthrie's most famous hit:

In pictures - the colourful Coney Island Mermaid Parade

There were plenty of zany costumes at the annual event, which was founded in 1983