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BOROBEAT: Throngs in thongs

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By Max Jaeger

Brooklyn Daily

This festival of flippers was no flop.

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade rolled through Sodom by the Sea on June 21, bringing with it hundreds of thousands of revellers and enough pasties and prosthetic fins to choke a blue whale.

“From my point of view, it was the best parade we’ve thrown in 32 years,” said Dick Zigun, founder and artistic director of Coney Island USA and the Mermaid Parade.

This year’s march included a special mayoral entourage — Bill DeBlasio and wife Chirlane McCray sashayed down the Boardwalk as a pirate and mermaid, and their kids Dante and Chiara donned their foamy regalia as King Neptune and Queen Mermaid.

“The mayor was very cool,” Zigun said. “I don’t think we embarrassed him too much.”

The added security accompanying the city’s first family even made the pageant of freaks run a little smoother, Zigun said.

Saturday’s march birthed an exciting first, too, he said.

“Rumor has it there was a birth,” the unofficial mayor of Coney Island said.

The mermaid mom’s water reportedly broke while she was watching the seaside spectacle, and she delivered the tadpole in an ambulance on the way to Coney Island Hospital.

The Hospital could not immediately confirm the birth.

The People’s Playground’s biggest celebration appears to be getting its sea legs back. After Hurricane Sandy wrecked Coney Island USA’s headquarters, the Boardwalk boosters scrambled to raise $100,000 for the 2013 parade.

This year the cavalcade of carnies at Coney Island USA broke even on the exhibition, Zigun said. He expects smoother seas ahead and doesn’t see any 11th-hour fund-raisers on the horizon, he said.

Reach reporter Max Jaeger at mjaeger@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-8303. Follow him on Twitter @MJaeger88.

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