From the pit
The 53rd annual Boston Caribbean Carnival road march stepped off at one o'clock on Saturday, August 29, 2026, from MLK Boulevard and Warren Street in Roxbury, ran up Warren and down Blue Hill Avenue, and ended at the entrance to Franklin Park. State Senator Nick Collins and state Representative Brandy Fluker-Reid served as Grand Marshal and Grand Matron. J'ouvert had already opened the day before dawn. Picatra and I started at the head of the road with Envy Mas, the first band out, where the route is still clean and the sections still hold their shape. Then we turned around and walked back against the parade to find our own band, Secret Soca Society, and stayed with them the rest of the way down Blue Hill Avenue. Walking backward through a road march is the only way to see all of it: every band coming at you, every truck, every section leader working the frontline. The light through that stretch in late August is the best light this city gives a photographer all year — high, hard, and honest. And then there is the turn onto Blue Hill, where the band leans into the corner and the truck bass hits the buildings on both sides and comes straight back at you. No carnival in the world has that turn. What a camera can carry from a mas band is not really the costume. It is the moment a masquerader forgets the camera is there.
Words & photography — Bobby Shakes