The Post tracked down the artistic New Yorkers behind some of the most over-the-top head gear of the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival — including a woman who will festoon her noggin with a NYC pigeon.
“If you ever want to know what it’s like to be a celebrity, you put on a really nice hat and you go to the Easter Bonnet Parade,” said Gina Kim of Sunnyside, Queens, who constructed iconic New York City images to adorn her bonnet.
The bejeweled pigeon is wearing sunglasses and a tiny Mets cap, while coffee cascades down Kim’s hair from a ubiquitous sidewalk-vendor coffee cup.
There is also an opened pizza box with a half-eaten pie spilling out.
The toy designer has attended the Fifth Avenue tradition — which dates to the 1870s — for close to a decade, and has a head for hats.
She’s adorned her dome with everything from a box of Tide detergent and a cup of Ramen noodles to a spinning NYC sign.
She says she is stopped for “easily over 100 photos” during the Sunday stroll from 49th to 57th streets.
“It’s like having paparazzi come at you,” she said.
Art teacher James Haggerty and his 13-year-old daughter, Zoe, start brainstorming bonnet ideas for this year’s parade last Easter.
“And we both chew on the idea for a good six months, and as soon as the new year begins, we start,” Haggerty said.
Their most popular ensemble was when Zoe wore a Chinese takeout container on her noodle while James donned a giant fortune cookie on his — which actually gave out fortunes.
One year she wore “a plate of spaghetti and meatballs … And I was a cheese grater,” he recalled.
Brooklynite Jairus Abts turned heads in 2019 when he wore a crate holding a staggering 76 real eggs he hollowed out by poking a pin in them.
“I planned ahead about a month and a half early that every single morning I’d blow out like two or three eggs and hang on to them,” said the Metropolitan Opera actor.
He actually had to remove the hat in order to exit the parade because too many people were stopping him for pictures.
When he finally made it to a gin mill in Hell’s Kitchen, the Minnesota native “threw it back on and everybody at the bar loved it.”
