Crowds of spectators packed the town’s downtown streets Saturday night time, standing on newspaper racks or huddling underneath division retailer awnings, craning their necks to see the 2023 Lunar New Parade snake up Geary and Submit streets towards Chinatown.

Behind the throngs stood scores of cops, fulfilling a promise that Assistant Police Chief David Lazar made final month, a day after a gunman killed 11 folks of Asian descent in Monterey Park. With the specter of that bloodbath looming over this 12 months’s festivities — and heightening the concern and anguish of a neighborhood already reeling from anti-Asian hate crimes — Lazar pledged to beef up police safety, and supply “a visual presence.”

On Saturday, even the cops appeared transfixed by the spectacle of lion dancers, marching bands, revelers in conventional Qipao clothes, and rabbits of every kind. Two attendees trudged up Geary Road in bunny-eared ski masks, and the bandleader of the San Francisco Lesbian/Homosexual Freedom Band wore a cotton tail.

“My favourite half is the dragons and watching the youngsters’ faces,” stated Melissa Gustafson, who had pushed her youngsters from El Dorado County for what she hoped would develop into an annual custom. The household had spent the day wandering via Chinatown, consuming dim sum and shopping for trinkets at little outlets. Gustafson’s 5 12 months outdated daughter fortunately waved a fish decoration, watching the parade from her father’s shoulders.

Parade Grand Marshall Wealthy Ting, an actor from Los Angeles who spent a part of his childhood on the Peninsula, smiles and waved from a shiny purple convertible.

“I’m very humbled,” he stated in an interview Friday, recalling the e-mail he obtained from the parade committee in November, saying he had been tapped for the function. As a fourth era Asian American, Ting stated he grew up attending the parade along with his dad and mom, who wished “to showcase what my Chinese language heritage was about.”

“If my Chinese language grandparents had been nonetheless round, they’d be very proud,” Ting stated.

Jared Lue, a fifth grade trainer within the afterschool bilingual program at Cameron Home — a 149-year-old neighborhood middle in Chinatown — climbed a tall planter on Geary Road to get a good view of the parade, and see a few of his college students marching. They appeared within the contingent from Gordon J Lau Elementary College, sporting ponchos and matching bunny ears as they waved streamers to “Increased Love” by Kygo and Whitney Houston.

Delma Dunon, a vacationer from Australia, came upon the parade by chance, whereas strolling from her lodge to Macy’s in Union Sq.. She and her husband stopped to observe, discovering the vitality infectious.

“I simply like to see the enjoyable everyone seems to be having,” Dunon stated, grinning via the hood of her parka.

Anni Chung, president and CEO of the Self-Assist for the Aged, a corporation that serves low-income seniors, together with many Cantonese and Mandarin-speaking immigrants, stated her favourite a part of the Lunar New 12 months comes earlier than and after the parade, when households get collectively and retailers go to each other to “trade good tidings.”

This 12 months, the mass taking pictures in Monterey Park left a cloud over the celebrations, she stated, noting that folks turned extra agitated days later, when a separate assailant killed 7 Asian and Latino farmworkers in Half Moon Bay. Simply this week, District Legal professional Brooke Jenkins introduced hate crime fees for a person accused of attacking three folks of Asian descent in Dolores Park.

Rattled by the spate of incidents, Chung stated her household needed to skip celebrations on the seventh day of Lunar New 12 months, a day referred to as “Everyone’s Birthday,” when folks feast on greens and rice porridge.

“Peace, prosperity and longevity — these are the three symbols of the 12 months of the Rabbit,” Chung stated. “However with the shootings, folks had been asking, ‘The place is the peace?’ ”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle employees author. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan