Columbus Day and I was sitting outside the Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue and 72nd Street.

I was early for my doctor’s appointment so I was whiling away the hour having a coffee.

Two lanes on Madison were closed off and sanitation trucks were lined up awaiting the end of the Columbus Day parade so they could swoop in and do their clean up thing in usual record time.

Police were everywhere.

So many parades…Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Village Halloween Parade, Puerto Rican Day Parade, St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the Pride Parade.

The parades cost the city so much money and wreak traffic havoc.

The madness is an annual occurrence, marching to their own unique beat dozens of times a year.

With the exception of a handful of marquee parades find an alternative form of expression.

Macy’s spends upwards of $12 million on the Thanksgiving Day parade and it costs the NYPD millions of dollars, as well…in 2010, the city ordered the parade to cut its route by 25 percent and limit itself to five hours. NYPD claimed these cuts saved the department $3.1 million.

But the city gets hit up for big bucks.

Paying reams of overtime to New York’s finest so they can collectively lean on barricades and light poles, yawn and hang onto their paper coffee cups, munching on an egg on a bagel while the Parade passes them by, seems totally wasteful.