Mayor Bloomberg
Mayor Bloomberg was booed yesterday as he walked in the annual St. Patrick’s Parade in the hurricane-ravaged Rockaways.
The jeers grew so loud toward the end of the Queens parade that mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn appeared to break away from the mayor to march separately.
A spokesman for Quinn later said she always intended to walk separately from the mayor.
Locals didn’t spare their ire over the area’s slow recovery, hoisting signs reading, “Mr. Mayor, we need jetties” and “Listen to the Rockaways.”
“We’ve been dying down here, up to our ears in muck trying to rebuild, get back to a regular life,” one heckler told The Post.
“For the politicians to come down here and try to take our celebration and make it their thing . . . it’s disgusting.”
At the end of the route, Bloomberg thanked the Sanitation Department, cops and firefighters who worked to restore the neighborhood after the storm.
“I don’t think there’s anybody who could have ever done the job that you guys did,” the mayor said before he jumped in his car and was driven away.
The mayor wasn’t the only politician crossed by paradegoers.
Revelers heckled Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer after he cheered through a bullhorn, “Let’s hear it for the Rockaways.”
“Send money, pal. Send money!” one heckler yelled back. “Talk is cheap!”
Public Advocate and mayoral contender Bill de Blasio’s crew was also booed after a staffer chanted through a megaphone, “Mission accomplished. Thanks, Bill de Blasio.”
Many Rockaway residents saw the parade as a sign of their neighborhood’s recovery.
“This town really needed this parade, just to show the world that this hurricane is not going to keep us down,” said Nick Muro, 49, a plumber. “We’re looking forward to the bands, the bagpipers — they’re really just pumping us all back up,” he added. “We needed this parade just to show the world that this hurricane is not going to keep us down.”
“This is Rockaways’ rebirth,” said retired sanitation worker Patrick Kearns, 58.