The parade is best known for participants' elaborate bonnets and colorful costumes.
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art and graffiti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s.Haring's work grew to popularity from his spontaneous drawings in New York City subways – chalk outlines of figures, dogs, and other sylized images-on blank black advertising-space backgrounds. After public recognition he created larger scale works, such as colorful murals, many of them commissioned. His imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language" His later work often addressed political and societal themes – especially homosexuality and AIDS – through his own iconography.